BALL'S BLUFF AND THE ARREST OF GENERAL STONE
By Richard B. Irwin. Lieut.-Colonel and Assistant Adjutant-General, U.S.V.

ABOUT 1 o'clock on the morning of the 9th of February, 1862, General Charles P. Stone, a native of Massachusetts, a graduate with honors of the United States Military Academy, a distinguished officer of the ordnance corps during the Mexican war, colonel of the 14th regular infantry, and brigadier-general of volunteers, commanding a division of ten thousand men in the Army of the Potomac, was arrested in Washington, by the commander of the provost guard, and sent, in custody of a lieutenant and two policemen, to Fort Lafayette, in New York harbor. There, and at Fort Hamilton, he was kept in close and solitary confinement, his pockets being emptied and his letters examined, until the 16th of August, when, after the lapse of 189 days, he was set at liberty, under the peremptory requirements of an act of Congress, approved July 17th, 1862, forbidding the detention of any officer or soldier more than thirty days without charges.

It will be observed that he was held for a fresh period of thirty days before this law was allowed to operate, and it is also worth remarking that a law as old as the Government, known as the Articles of War, the fundamental law of the army of the United States, contained substantially the same provision, the only essential difference being that the new law, in effect, lengthened the time for preferring charges from eight days to thirty.

Though promptly and often asked for, and repeatedly promised, no statement of the charges was ever furnished to General Stone. In truth, no charges were ever preferred against him. No cause for his arrest has ever been shown. It has even been disputed upon whose initiative it was ordered. The vague and loose "evidence," and the floating suspicions engendered by it, that formed the groundwork for his arrest, never admitted of being condensed into an accusation, simply because there was nothing in them to condense. The real cause must be sought for amid the tangled mesh of a net-work of circumstances, such as is occasionaof men who read history by the light of human sympathy.

Before trying to trace its threads, it may be well to recall how for weeks the safety, not only of Washington but of the President and his cabinet, had depended mainly upon the loyalty, the prudence, and the vigilance of Colonel Stone and his District of Columbia volunteers. ^ Well might Mr. Lincoln exclaim, with his smile, "Oh! I could never believe General Stone would be disloyal!"

In the autumn of 1861 Stone's division, comprising the brigades of Gorman, Lander, and Baker,^^ was observing the ferries or fords of the Potomac in front of Poolesville. On the 20th of October, McCall's division being at Dranesville, General McClellan telegraphed to General Stone directing him to keep a good lookout on Leesburg to see the operations of McCall should have the effect of driving the enemy away, adding, "perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them." This slight demonstration resulted in the battle of Ball's Bluff.

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^See General Stone's article, "Washington on the Eve of the War," Vol, I., p. 7.--EDITORS.

^^ Afterward Sedgwick's division, Second Corps, brigade commanders Gorman, Dana, and Burns.--R. B. I.
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