THE LEGISLATURE OF 1860.

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The Legislature of 1860 met on the 4th of January, and in view of the matters presented before it, the session was one of the most important that had ever taken place. It was one unusually prolific of important measures, both of a public and private nature, and, judging from the good laws that were passed, the session of 1860 may be considered a bright chapter in the legislative annals of our State.

Among the many important laws passed at this session, the "reform bills" that were drafted by the reform committee of Baltimore, were the most important. They were the police bill, the election law and the jury law. These important measures were drawn in Baltimore, for had the Legislature been endowed with a greater amount of capacity and intelligence than it really possessed, it would have been incompetent to the task. Nothing but a personal experience of the evils to be cured, could have supplied the wisdom necessary to remedy the evils which the people complained of. Yet the praise for their passage is largely due to the Legislature, for they adopted, readily, the views and suggestions of leading reformers in Baltimore, even to the extent of appointing as police commissioners the gentlemen whom they nominated. The honest determination of the Legislature to grant to the citizens of Baltimore all the redress they needed, could have no better illustration than was shown in its willingness to let the people be themselves the judges of the mode and manner of that redress.

Another important Act of the session, which, like the passage of the reform bills, consisted rather in the adoption of the fruits of other men's labors, than in the performance of any great amount of work on the part of the Legislature itself, was the passage of the Code. The necessity for a careful and thorough revision of the Statute Law of Maryland had long been acknowledged. Such was the mass of confused, inconsistent, and oftentimes contradictory legislation, that it was almost impossible to tell what was the existing law upon any important point, without long and laborious research. The important duty of bringing order out of this legal chaos of doubt and uncertainty, had been committed, by a previous General Assembly, to competent hands. Their work had been revised by a committee of the Legislature of 1858, composed exclusively of members of the legal profession. The Legislature of 1860, completed the Code by giving to it the efficacy of law.

With honest commiseration, this Legislature also removed Henry Stump from his position of Judge of the Criminal Court of Baltimore City.

On the last day of the session, this Legislature also declared null and void the election pretended to have been held in the City of Baltimore on the 2d of November, 1859. The expulsion of Charles L. Krafft, Thomas Booze, Robert L. Seth, George R. Berry, F. C. Crowley, R. A. McAllister, Thomas M. Smith, Robert Turner and Marcus Denison, the sitting members from Baltimore, from their seats, on the last day of the session, was regarded as, if posible, more ignominious than if it had taken

place at an earlier period. They were kept in during the session, simply to be used, and then, when their votes were no longer wanted, they were unceremoniously turned out of doors.1

On February 6th, 1860, Messrs. Charles Howard, William H. Gatchell, Charles D. Hinks and John W. Davis, the Police Commissioners designated in the new police bill, entered upon their duties and soon after appointed Colonel George P. Kane, Marshal of Police. It is impossible to overrate the change that the organization of an efficient police force wrought in the condition of the city. But a short time before, Baltimore had been at the mercy of as brutal and reckless desperadoes as ever defied law and justice in a frontier settlement. Brutal assaults were their daily pastime, and murder was a familiar thing. The Exchange, the ablest and most fearless paper in the city, on the 18th of the previous August, thus commented on the condition of the city:

"In the police department, from the organization of which so much was expected, and for the support of which a heavy tax is annually imposed upon the citizens of Baltimore, men have been appointed and retained in office, whose incompetency is so notorious, that ignorance of their disqualifications, on the part of Mr. Swann, is impossible, and has never been pretended. The police force has contained, and contains, many men who were and are the personal friends and intimate associates of ruffians, in defence of whose characters not even charity has the hardihood to speak. So far from being either feared or respected, as the representatives of the law, by those who habitually violate it, the entire force, from the marshal down, has been constantly subjected to insult and violence. Nowhere else have policemen handled so tenderly the ruffians whom it is their duty to arrest, or permitted themselves to be resisted and assailed with such Christian-like forbearance and resignation. The court to which has been confided criminal jurisdiction in this city, has been by turns, the jest and the reproach of the community. Whether treating with insolent disrespect the decisions of a higher tribunal, or releasing from custody felons by the score, upon the worthless security which every outlaw may purchase at pleasure, the judge of that court has so acquitted himself in his high office, that men have long since ceased to look to him for law or justice. Criminals who have been indicted over and over again, have never been brought to trial by the State's attorney, and dozens of others have been nominally held to answer for their crimes, but, in reality, have never been summoned to appear. The clerk of the court and the warden of the jail have, by turns become security for noted desperadoes. Straw bail has been taken by magistrates from one end of the town to the other, not excepting those whom the mayor himself appointed to sit at the station-houses, and of whose dereliction of duty he has constantly complained-but whom he has never dared to remove. Murder redhanded has stalked abroad and grown familiar to us all. The names of Benton, Rigdon, Armstrong, Connery, Fischer, King, Patterson, Richardson, O'Brien, Leyburn, Chronister, Taylor, Duffy, and Esjanis, remind us of some of the bloody graves that have been filled within a twelvemonth from the date at which we write."

Nine more murders were added to this list before the year was out. As for brutal assaults, stabbings and shootings in the open streets, desperate

1 In honorable contrast to the behavior and fate of his colleagues, was the conduct of Mr. Wisong, who, during the entire session, never appeared, nor claimed the seat to which he knew that he was not entitled. He had his reward in

the respect with which the whole community regarded his motives and action, and the vacation of his seat by the Legislature entailed upon him no disgrace.

AN INDEPENDENT REFORM MOVEMENT.

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affrays between gangs of ruffians, wanton outrages upon the unoffending participants in picnics and steamboat excursions, they cannot be enumerated. Election days were mere carnivals of unchecked ruffianism. Day by day during that lawless period, gangs of well-known thieves and outlaws, the terror of their respective neighborhoods, congregated in public places, the police seldom daring to molest them.

Night after night, the report of the revolver broke upon the ear, and few persons were startled at the sound, so familiar had it grown to be. Day after day bands of rowdies drove laborers from their work and dictated terms to their employers. In the affairs of business and of pleasure men purchased at their hands-peace. The most abandoned ruffians in the community were not only thus paid and subsidized, but even delegated to exercise various functions and offices of honor and trust for honest citizens. Arrested for an offence one day, they were sent to a convention, or nominated for a public office the next. If, by rare good fortune, one met his deserved doom on the scaffold, pious people glorified them in their last hours, and virtuous respectability attended in sorrow at their graves. All, and more than all this the citizens of Baltimore witnessed during the years 1856-7-8-9. Not crowded into one short hour of wild anarchy, these things followed each other in an unbroken series as month followed month. Humiliating as the confession may be, the facts are unhappily but too true.

Realizing, therefore, the nature and extent of the great change which had been effected by the new police bill of 1860, and valuing the peace and security it brought them, the people of Baltimore, as the ensuing municipal election approached, determined to do something more to commend it. Accordingly, on the 18th of August, 1860, in pursuance to a call published in the daily papers, a large number of the citizens favorable to the object of the "independent reform" movement, assembled in the saloon of the Law Buildings to provide for the nomination of candidates for Mayor and City Council. On motion of George M. Gill, Esq., Dr. Alexander C. Robinson was chosen president and Hugh A. Cooper and Laurence P. Bayne, vicepresidents. James P. Thomas and Henry M. Fitzhugh were chosen secretaries. The officers of this meeting were directed by a resolution unanimously adopted to appoint a central committee to consist of one from each ward, to whom the duty of bringing forward independent reform candidates for the offices of Mayor and City Council at the ensuing election, was confided. In obedience to the resolution the officers of the meeting shortly afterwards met and appointed one gentleman from each ward to constitute a central committee. This committee, animated by a desire to rescue Baltimore from the embarrassments into which an unscrupulous and partisan administration had plunged it, and to redeem its tarnished reputation, accepted the unwelcome duty, and discharged its duty worthily. On the 29th of August, it nominated for the mayor's office, George William Brown, Esq., a gentleman not only worthy of the fullest confidence in virtue of his

irreproachable private character and acknowledged ability, but especially entitled to the respect of his fellow citizens, by the manly stand he took at the municipal elections of 1859. Without partisan motives or objects to induce him to incur unnecessary risks, he placed himself in the front ranks of those who endeavored to hold in check the ruffians who surrounded the tenth ward polls. Deeming it incumbent on him to assist in protecting the rights of the humblest and weakest of his fellow citizens, he threw himself into the midst of their assailants, and endured such outrages and insults as few men would have cared to face.

The nominations of the reform committee for members of the City Council were nearly as acceptable to the community as was its selection of a candidate for the mayoralty; and taken as a whole, a better ticket has seldom, if ever, been brought out. In the selection of candidates all party tests were discarded, and all thought of rewarding partisan services repudiated. The name of no man was placed on the ticket for his gratification or personal emolument, or that of personal or political friends. Most of the candidates consented to the use of their names with reluctance-yielding from a sense of duty to the demand of the committee, that the city had need of their services. Honesty, capacity, fidelity, to the best interests of the citizen, and protection to all, loyalty to the constitution and laws of our State and country, were the qualifications they sought.

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The know-nothing party chose for its standard-bearer Samuel Hindes, and a full City Council ticket. But the halcyon days of that party were over. The blight of "a legislative despotism" had fallen upon the cherished ornaments of constitutional sphere." Many of them were seeking afar off some spot where "the free play of freeman's spirits" was still unchecked by the halter; and some of them were preparing to follow upon a drearier and darker journey. Stripped of their standing army of vagrants and loafers, their coops and armories, their affiliated police; their judges of elections; their yielding and complacent mayor; their magistracy; their court; their sheriff; their grand and petit juries, the elements of their past success, they stood naked and humbled, if not ashamed; while the reform party had everything upon which to rely to guarantee "the purity of the ballot-box and the freedom of access thereto." The issue was distinctly reform and antireform. Mr. Brown headed a ticket which personified and embodied the enforcement of the laws, the safety of society and the divorce of the city government from party politics. Those opposed to him and the other reform nominees were classed as the advocates of disorder, of a tainted ballot-box and a perverted and partisan municipality. Thus clearly and unmistakably marked out, the two parties entered the

MAYOR BROWN.

TRIUMPH OF THE REFORM PARTY.

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contest, in which the cause of right triumphed and the final measure of reform which placed the government of Baltimore in hands worthy to administer it was consummated. The election took place on the 10th of October, 1860, and a reform mayor, and a city council wholly of reformers were lifted into power by overwhelming and legitimate majorities, in the midst of enthusiasm so great and so general, as to show how terrible had been the oppression from which the people were now delivered.

The votes in the important city elections from 1853 to 1860, (inclusive), ran as follows:

In the election for members of the city council in 1858, the democrats were allowed to poll in the 20th ward, one vote; in the 12th, two; 19th, three; 17th, ten; 14th, eight; 1st, twenty-four; 2d, thirty-two; 4th, thirtyfive; 7th, thirty-seven, 16th, ninety-one; 18th, ninety-four, and the 8th, 1,013; and only 2,830 votes in the entire city.

The day of the municipal election of 1860, in strange contrast with those of former years, was quiet as a Sunday. Every officer of the law was at the post of duty, and every citizen felt himself safe. Not a pistol was fired nor a knife drawn throughout the day; and the presence and protection of the law were felt everywhere. The result justified the most sanguine hopes of the reformers. Baltimore at once resumed the position of a law-abiding, self-governed city; while those who for years had outraged their fellow citizens, either fled or hid in obscurity. Nor were her citzens wanting in gratitude to their fellow citizens of the counties as represented in the last Legislature, who by their good laws and wise appointment of the board and marshal of police, had rendered possible this triumph of law, justice, order and liberty.

With the triumph of the reform party in Baltimore, the reign of the American party ceased. The history of this party may be studied to some profit. As a party, it never advanced one liberal or comprehensive political theory, nor did it initiate a solitary practical and benificent public measure. It was organized under circumstances that it is disheartening to avert to; for the secrecy, the mystery and the solemnities which attended the formation of the know-nothing order, were far from creditable to the good sense and manliness of our age and nation. Its principles, as sanctioned by successive conventions, were the narrowest and the most indefensible that were ever adopted by any political party of the country. This assertion is not founded simply upon the interpretation which hostile critics have given to the platforms in question, but is supported by the conduct of the very individuals who