To the Senate and House of Representatives1Jump to section
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I transmit to Congress a copy of a correspondence between the Secretary of State and Benjamin E. [H.] Brewster, of Philadelphia, relative to the arrest, in the city, of Simon Cameron, late Secretary of War, at the suit of Pierce Butler, for trespass, vi et armis, assault and battery, and false imprisonment.
Washington, April 18, 1862. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Annotation
[1] Thirty-seventh Congress, Second Session, Senate Executive Document No. 43. The correspondence between Cameron's attorney, Benjamin H. Brewster, and Secretary Seward, April 16 and 18, 1862, was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary in each house. Pierce Butler of Philadelphia, a South Carolinian by birth and a secession sympathizer who was accused of accepting a Confederate commission, was arrested August 15, 1861, on Secretary Cameron's order, and imprisoned at Fort Lafayette from August 20 to September 24, 1861, when he was released on pledge that he would do no act hostile to the U.S. and would not visit South Carolina without a passport from the Department of