Biography
The Rev. Isaac William Ker Handy was a Presbyterian minister held without trial at Fort Delaware as a Civil War political prisoner. While having dinner in Delaware in 1863, Handy — who had once served the congregation at Port Penn — remarked that the U.S. flag no longer represented its original "high and noble principles." He was reported and arrested without trial, the writ of habeas corpus having been suspended during the war, and imprisoned at Fort Delaware for roughly fifteen months (July 1863 – October 1864), until he was released in a prisoner exchange. In 1874 he published a detailed diary of his confinement — down to the measurements of his barracks — titled United States Bonds; or, Duress by Federal Authority. Handy had become involved with Delaware College (forerunner of the University of Delaware) in 1851, hired to sell scholarship certificates on the Delmarva Peninsula and appointed a professor of mathematics although he never taught; his brother-in-law, William Purnell, became the college's president in 1870.
