City Hall - Frederick, MD - Famous Fires on Waymarking.com

The plaque says, "Connections with the Civil War abound around this Courthouse Square, where the first official act of defiance against the British crown - the 1765 Stamp Act Repudiation - occurred almost a century earlier. In 1857, Roger Brooke Taney, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and a former resident who is buried in Frederick, wrote in the Dread Scott Decision that the Constitution's freedoms did not extend to African-Americans, one of the steps on the road to war. Taney and his brother-in-law, Francis Scott Key, both practiced law here. A bust here honors the Chief Justice who administered the Oath of Office to seven presidents, including Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

Governor Thomas Hicks called a special session of the Maryland Legislature in 1861 to address the question of secession. Because of the large number of US troops in the capital city of Annapolis, the legislature met here at the site of the former Frederick County courthouse. Finding the space inadequate, the lawmakers convened a block away in Kemp Hall. Under orders from President Lincoln, legislators likely to favor the South were detained in route. With no quorum, Maryland's legislature could not vote to secede. The courthouse burned during the session, and the legislature promptly authorized financing to construct the present building, now City Hall."

Type of Structure: Public building Fire Date: 01/01/1861 Structure status: Plaque Cause of Fire: Unknown Documentation of the fire: [Web Link] Other: Not listed Construction Date: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/01/2013 Searcher28 visited it