HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA,
Baltimore, Md., October 21, 1861.

Honorable WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

SIR: I have the honor to inclose a letter from Mayor Brown. I know before he left Fort McHenry. He is a person of very simple character and without influence. I am inclined as I was while he was here to believe his statement. But whether true or not I think he has been sufficiently punished and recommend his immediate release. The closing paragraph of Mayor Brown's letter will attract your attention without any suggestion from me.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General.

[Inclosure.]

FORT LAFAYETTE, October 8, 1861.

His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

President of the United States.

SIR: I respectfully ask your attention to the case of a citizen of Baltimore who is confined in this fort. He is Captain Charles M. Hagelin, aged forty-nine years, and for twenty-seven years a resident of Baltimore. In March he invested nearly all his hard earnings in the purchase of a schooner called the Alverda in which he made but two trips. The first was to the Patuxent for a load of wood; the second was to the same river for the purpose of getting off a vessel which had run aground. On this trip he was requested to take ten men as passengers who were represented to be mechanics in search of employment. He consented, and it was not until after the voyage had begun and when it was nearly over that he ascertained from the conversation of these men that most of them designated to go to Virginia.

On the 19th of July, some time after his arrival in the Patuxent River, Captain Hagelin and his vessel were seized. He was brought here, and his vessel, as he is informed after having been stripped, is left aground on the shores of the Patuxent. Thus Captain Hagelin is likely to be deprived of nearly everything he is worth, has been subjected to a long imprisonment, and is taken away from his wife and children who look to him for support, for no act except having taken on board his vessel a few passengers whose business and purposes he did not scrutinize before receiving them.

These are the statements of Captain Hagelin, and have gain the entire confidence of his fellow-prisoners including myself in consequence of the simplicity of his character and the gentleness and propriety of his whole demeanor. He is a Swede by birth, a perfectly harmless person, and with neither power nor disposition to do injury to the Government. There are doubtless other cases here equally worthy of examination and relief, but as Captain Hagelin is one of my constituents and has personally interested me I confine my application to him. I hope that it will meet with a favorable consideration.

I cannot close, however, without calling your attention to the condition of the prison. My official duty has made me somewhat familiar with the management of similar institutions, and I do not hesitate to say that the arrangements here are in human and disgraceful to the