Henry Stump (1795–1865) served as Judge of the Criminal Court, 5th Judicial Circuit in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, from 1851 to 1860, one of the most lawless and politically violent decades in Baltimore history. He presided over the infamous trial of Plug-Ugly Henry Gambrill for the murder of a Baltimore police officer. In 1860, the Maryland General Assembly removed Stump from office for "misbehavior," the only jurist in Maryland history to be removed from the bench. Stump was also an eyewitness to the April 19, 1861 riots in Baltimore that marked the first bloodshed in the American Civil War.
Stump was the brother of John Stump of Cecil County, Maryland, brother-in-law of Mary Alicia Stump and uncle of Henry Arthur Stump (1857–1934). The latter served as Judge to the Baltimore City Supreme Bench from 1910 to 1934. Henry Stump's Baltimore office was located at 57 West Fayette Street and his residence at Barnum's Hotel. According to the American Almanac, he earned a salary of $2,000 per year.The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, For the Year 1857. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1856, p. 279. Stump died on October 29, 1865, at his brother's Cecil County home.
Baltimore in the 1850s Between 1790 and 1860, Baltimore's population increased from 13,000 to 200,000,Brown, George William. Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (1887), p. vii. making it the third largest city in the United States. The Bank crisis in the 1830s, large numbers of European immigrants (a quarter of the population by 1860), a large free black population (25,000 in 1860), as well as slavery, created economic and political tensions. In addition, the "state's 1851 constitution altered traditional political alignments in Maryland, and on the national front, the struggle over the Compromise of 1850 gravely injured Maryland's political equilibrium. The subsequent dissolution of the Whig Party in the 1852 national elections left many Marylanders in the lurch. These voters turned to prohibition and nativism as answers to the problems facing their communities. By 1854, the Know-Nothing, or American, Party seized the reins of mayoral power in Baltimore, marking the rise of one of America's most unusual third parties."Brown, George William. Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (1887), p. ix. In 1855, the American Party won power in the Baltimore City Council, the General Assembly and the Maryland delegation to Congress.
The American Party, representing nativist, anti-immigrant views, was associated with gangs such as the Plug Uglies which "practiced intimidation, assault, arson, and assassination."Melton, Tracy Matthew. Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2005, p. 50. Much of the gang activity in Baltimore was political in nature: intimidation at the polls, for example. Immigrant and Catholic social clubs were organized by the Democratic Party (which was pro-slavery and sympathetic to the South) which competed for power with the American Party. This conflict resulted in violence "in which scores of participants were killed and hundreds wounded. The large number of casualties made the American Party years some of the most violent in the city's history. The rates of criminal homicide would not be exceeded for another 100 years."
In the midst of the political turmoil and violence, Plug-Ugly member Henry Gambrill was arrested and convicted for the murder of Baltimore police officer Benjamin Benton. As Tracy Melton writes,
[w]ithin a single month the city had seen raw intimidation prevent the holding of a free and fair election and the assassination of a member of the police force because of his testimony at the criminal court. Violence was no longer merely an aspect of the rough culture on the city's streets, a friction in the transaction of daily affairs, entertainment for some, a nuisance for others, but only occasionally disruptive. It now threatened life and property, imperiled civil rights, and endangered the administration of justice and the rule of law.Melton, Tracy Matthew. Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2005, p. 251. Demands for reform and an end to the violence plaguing the city resulted in the conviction and hanging of Gambrill and a beginning to the end of the political-based violence.Melton, Tracy Matthew. Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854–1860. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2005, p. 7.
Baltimore, just prior to the Civil War, was "at a crucial moment of transformation. Its politics were raw and corrupt, its civic services and justice system underdeveloped and unprofessional. Out of the resulting carnage came reforms ..."Evitts, William J., "In Review, Hanging Henry Gambrill," Urbanite, #26, August 2006. After the 1859 election-related violence,
the Reform Association asked the General Assembly's new Democratic majority to clean up what one delegate called a 'God-Forsaken and God-accursed city.' Reformers successfully lobbied for passage of the Baltimore Bills, laws that gave the state control over the city's police, militia volunteers, and juries and reduced crowds at polling places by subdividing each ward into four election precincts. Citing fraud and intimidation at Baltimore's polls, the legislature unseated the city's representatives. It also dismissed a criminal court judge, Henry Stump, who habitually acquitted Know-Nothing defendants.Towers, Frank. The Urban South and the Coming of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004, p. 156.
In 1860, Baltimore voters elected as mayor reform candidate George William Brown, who had called for
establishment of professional police and fire departments in Baltimore; the sentencing of juvenile delinquents to the House of Reform as opposed to prison; the end of 'straw bail'; and tougher punishments for adults criminals. Brown also advocated stricter rules for the pardoning of criminals.Brown, George William. Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (1887), p. xi.
"The election of George William Brown to mayor of Baltimore marked the beginning of the end of a long streak of political violence, perhaps unique in American history."Brown, George William. Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (1887), p. xii.
Removal from the Bench Stump was elected in 1851 to serve a ten-year term to the 5th Judicial Circuit but was removed from office in 1860 for "misbehavior." Stump's removal is the only case in Maryland history in which the complicated procedure (initiated in the Constitution of 1851) for electing judges to office and removal of them "by address to the General Assembly" has been carried out.The Archivists' Bulldog: Newsletter of the Maryland State Archives, Vol. 17, No. 19, p. 2–3.
Watkins v. The State of Maryland: "Incurable Judicial Blunder"
The misconduct case against Stump included charges that he repeatedly appeared in court drunk and as a result of his drunkenness was late to court, took frequent lengthy breaks and adjourned early, to the detriment of the business of the court. "Even if the police could be persuaded to arrest someone, the American judge of the criminal court, the notoriously corrupt and alcoholic Henry Stump, was likely to let them go."Evitts, William J. A Matter of Allegiances: Maryland from 1850 to 1861. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, p. 113
Stump was also accused of passing erroneous judgments such as in the case of Thomas M. Watkins, a free Negro convicted of simple larceny in Stump's court. Watkins was tried and found guilty of stealing a silver watch valued at $6. Stump then sentenced Watkins as follows:
Judgment – to be sold for the period of five years out of the limits of the State, from March 31, 1859.Thomas M. Watkins, (Free Negro) vs. The State. Court of Appeals of Maryland. 14 Md. 412; 1859 Md. Lexis 87. July 29, 1859, Decided. Maryland State Archives. Special Collection 5339-41-8.
The guidelines for sentencing free Negroes in cases of simply larceny of $5 and more, found in the Act of 1858, chapter 324, stipulated that "they should be sentenced and sold at public sale, as slaves, for the period of not less than two, nor more than five years." Charles E. Phelps, counsel for Watkins, claimed that the "Court has no power to sentence the party to be sold 'out of the limits of the State.'"Thomas M. Watkins, (Free Negro) vs. The State. Court of Appeals of Maryland. 14 Md. 412; 1859 Md. Lexis 87. July 29, 1859, Decided. Maryland State Archives. Special Collection 5339-41-8, p. 1. Basically, Stump sentenced Watkins to be sold out of state and did not have the authority to do so. In the judgment above, Stump also neglected to specify a public sale (as opposed to private) according to law.
Furthermore, Stump's critics accused him of amending the judgment before sending it to the Court of Appeals upon a writ of error from the Circuit Court of Baltimore. The judgment in the record transmitted to the Court of Appeals read as follows:
Therefore, it is considered by the Court here, that the said free Negro, Thomas Watkins, be sold out of the State of Maryland, at public sale, as a slave for the period of five years, under the provisions of the Act of Assembly in such case made and provided.Thomas M. Watkins, (Free Negro) vs. The State. Court of Appeals of Maryland. 14 Md. 412; 1859 Md. Lexis 87. July 29, 1859, Decided. Maryland State Archives. Special Collection 5339-41-8, p. 5.
The Opinion of the Court of Appeals (which reversed the judgment on July 29, 1859) reads:
Without intending to impute unworthy motives to any one, we have no hesitation in saying that the judgment that was actually rendered by the court in this case, pronounced in the presence of the prisoner, entered upon the docket and transmitted to the sheriff under the solemnity of the court's seal, to be executed by him, is not the same judgment set out in the record and originally transmitted to this court for review. The discrepancy between the two is obvious and material.
Stump's defense claimed that "the judgment extended in the Record, is nothing more than a technical amplification of the docket entry according to its legal meaning and effect."
In response, Phelps contended that
the question is submitted to the court whether it is not, on the contrary, an ex gratia and unwarranted interpolation of matter of substance – an ex post facto clerical amendment of an incurable judicial blunder." And furthermore, "the judgment in this case is not only a piece of arbitrary judicial usurpation, but inasmuch as it gratuitously deprives this negro of the protection of the laws just cited, the benefit of which is expressly secured to him by the 3rd Art. of the Declaration of Rights, it assumes the graver aspect of a cruel or careless violation of a sacred and chartered right.Thomas M. Watkins, (Free Negro) vs. The State. Court of Appeals of Maryland. 14 Md. 412; 1859 Md. Lexis 87. July 29, 1859, Decided. Maryland State Archives. Special Collection 5339-41-8, p. 2.