Kemp Hall

The pro-secessionist Maryland General Assembly met in Kemp Hall between April and September 1861.

In late April 1861, Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks called a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to discuss the state’s position in the impending war.  Annapolis was under federal occupation, so Hicks moved the session to Frederick.  Hicks and the majority of the citizens of Frederick were pro-Union, but a majority of the legislators were pro-Southern.  The General Assembly convened on April 26 in the Frederick County Courthouse, but finding the courthouse too small, the legislature met on the second day in Kemp Hall, a building owned by the German Reformed Church. The Senate met on the third floor and the House met on the second.   During the April session, the assembly passed resolutions encouraging peaceful solutions to the problem of secession, and adjourned on May 14th. Several other meetings were held over the summer.  Governor Hicks and President Abraham Lincoln were determined that Maryland remain in the Union.  Several pro-secession delegates had already been arrested elsewhere in the state. As the Assembly prepared to reconvene in September 1861, and possibly vote on secession, the Secretary of War ordered the imprisonment of the remaining secessionist legislators.  The Frederick meeting of the General Assembly came to an end on September 17, when the session was adjourned for lack of a quorum.