The Denton wharf on the Choptank River was a center of steamboat traffic, escapes of enslaved people on the Underground Railroad, and the Civil War arrests of active secessionists. On August 17, 1862, the steamboat Balloon landed a company of New York infantry and a troop of cavalry there, and the soldiers quickly arrested twelve prominent residents and transported them to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Among the prisoners were Francis Gadd, a paroled Confederate soldier; Dr. G.W. Goldsborough, who had been commissioned a Confederate officer; and William Holt, reportedly "hurrahing for Jeff Davis" while imprisoned at Fort McHenry. Most of those arrested were merchants, doctors, and attorneys who led the pro-South Democratic Party, along with editor Albert Gullett and the owners of the Denton Journal, a paper that had not advocated secession but had sharply criticized the U.S. Army's suppression of the press and free speech and its imprisonment of dissenters. In trying to keep Maryland in the Union and prevent Washington from being isolated in the Confederacy, the Lincoln administration sometimes overstepped Constitutional boundaries, while also allowing loyal slave owners, even after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, to keep their property. As a result, enslaved people increasingly escaped their bondage, and if the Caroline arrests were intended to intimidate other Eastern Shore residents, they were probably successful.