one man who was brought here to fort mchenry was jhohn merriman. john merriman was an officer and a pro-confederate horse unit called the baltimore county horse guard. even though they had been disbanded, they had a reputation of being pro-southern. he was arrested under the pretext of training programs that are -- pro-confederate on his property. n was brought here and held in one of these rooms. perhaps in this very room. word got out and the chief justice of the supreme court at that time, who happened to be in baltimore, actually condemned the decision. he condemned it as a more local judge in chambers. but he issued a stern condemnation on president lincoln, saying that lincoln did not have the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and not only did he himself not have the power, but he delegated that power to other union officers in the area. in clear violation of the constitution of the united states. not long thereafter, a federal marshal, taking his orders came to fort mchenry to demand the release of john merryman. and he was turned a

it's about the merriman trial, and about what he did. the one thing i saw different in that than a lot of the books i've read, it really approached it from two sides. it approached it from a social side and a legal side. and it's easy to just get kind of hung up on one or the other. so we have both these books out front if anybody -- thank you. >> you know, i remember doing that class on c-span, and i remember that question, and the question essentially was, is secession really unconstitutional, is it treason? i was nervous being on c-span for the first time, i always get a little nervous going on c-span. i thought, there is no way i'm going to tackle this question on national television. i managed some sort of answer to get myself out of having to answer it, but i went up to my student maddie afterwards and said, good question, but sorry i couldn't answer it on tv. i'm really happy to be here. thank you to karen for inviting me. thank you to the lincoln -- yes, please give her a round of applause. i've hosted events like this before and