Biography
George Proctor Kane was Marshal of Police — head of the Baltimore City police force — at the start of the Civil War. Though he held Southern sympathies, his officers helped quell further violence during the Pratt Street Riot of April 1861. With Maryland a contested border state and Baltimore under Union military control, federal authorities regarded Kane as a security risk. On June 27, 1861 he was arrested at his home on St. Paul Street by federal soldiers in the night and taken to Fort McHenry; he was subsequently transferred to Fort Lafayette in New York and then to Fort Warren in Boston. He was confined for about fourteen months without trial, contracting malaria during his imprisonment and writing letters of protest to President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward. Released in 1862, he went to Montreal. His detention is frequently cited as an example of the suspension of habeas corpus and the arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers in Maryland during the Civil War.
