In 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to prohibit voting on reforms. The soviet premier used the same rationale as our 16th president did in Maryland, as authority for his actions, the “security of the government.”

In 1861 Lincoln ordered the arrest of the duly elected members of the Maryland legislature and Congressman Henry May as well as the Mayor and police chief of Baltimore. He was able to do so because of his suspension of the habeas corpus writ in the state. 

Twelve members of the General Assembly were arrested and held in Baltimore City. In Frederick, a Wisconsin regiment of the U.S. Army arrested additional members of the General Assembly “believed to be” disloyal to the Union. 

The legislators were taken by train to Annapolis where they boarded a steamboat that transported them to a prison at Fort Lafayette in the New York harbor.

The first actual bloodshed of the war took place in Baltimore when citizens tried to block passage of a Massachusetts Regiment form moving through town on the way to Washington; (April 19th 1861) 4 soldiers and 12 citizens were killed, dozens injured.