The Mural Story

The mural scene presents several periods in Leonardtown’s history, generally moving from an older era around the turn of the century on the left to the mid 1950s on the right, but returning in a sepia-toned vignette to the 1860s for the arrest of Congressman Benjamin Gwinn Harris on April 26, 1865, on the porch of the Fenwick Hotel. Harris, arrested after the Civil War had ended, was charged with war crimes for giving a small amount of money to two freed Confederate prisoners traveling from the Point Lookout prison camp to Baltimore after Union officers had detained them and directed them to seek lodging from him. Suspicious of the men, Harris did not take them into his home at Ellenborough outside town, but gave each a dollar and suggested that they find food and lodging at the hotel. After the soldiers reported this to Union officers, Harris was brought from his home into town for the reading of the charges, transferred to a boat waiting in Breton Bay, and taken to Washington, D.C. for incarceration. A military tribunal convicted him of war crimes even though he was a civilian and the war was over when the alleged offense occurred; he was removed from his seat in the House of Representatives and jailed. Leonardtown lawyer John A. Camalier appealed Harris’s case to President Andrew Johnson, who agreed that Harris had been treated unfairly, granted a pardon, and told Camalier to invite Harris to the White House for dinner that night. Harris refused the invitation in the strongest terms, returned to Leonardtown, and was sent back to Congress at the next election.

Leonardtown, Maryland · United States