He remained at home, "pursuing the even tenor of his way," until Monday, November 7, 1864, when Deputy Marshal Carpenter, of Lancaster, aided by two soldiers, arrested him. The Marshal said that he must accompany them to Marshal Stevens's office, in the above-named city. Morton demanded his authority for making the arrest, and further inquired the nature of the charges against him. The Marshal failing to produce any warrant or authority, Morton denied his right to drag him from his home. Carpenter insisted that his being an United States Deputy Marshal gave him sufficient authority to make the arrest, and forced him to comply with his mandate. Morton accompanied him peaceably, but under protest. On arriving at Provost Marshal Stevens's office, in Lancaster, he was placed under a guard, and removed thence to the County Prison. While there confined, he was offered convict's fare, bread and water, but declined it, and paid the usual charges for board. The jailer afterward remarked: "That is the place where all Democrats should be." He subsequently inquired of the prisoner if, on his procuring his release, he would vote the Republican ticket. Mr. Morton indignantly spurned the proposal, and remained in prison until the 10th inst., when several of his friends demanded his release, or a hearing. Stevens feigned ignorance of his arrest, and ordered his immediate discharge. When the prisoner was brought into his (Stevens's) office, the Marshal simply said, "You can now go home, we have nothing to do with you." Carpenter then turned toward Mr. Morton and remarked, that "if he had no money he could walk to his home," (sixteen miles distant,) "as it was not very far."
The constable of Maytown, in his next return to the Court at Lancaster, reported a disturbance of the peace at the election polls in Maytown, on Tuesday, November 8, 1864, by Middleton Whitehall. But when the charge subsequently came before the Grand Jury, the bill was ignored; thereby sustaining men in committing outrages in direct defiance of the laws.
These premeditated arrests had but one direct purpose - to prevent citizens from voting. These were but the victims of the executed portion of a plot for the arrest and imprisonment of a number of other citizens named on the proscription lists. These gentlemen were known to be staunch and sterling Democrats, and so determined was the Marshal to serve his master, that no step was too vile for him to take in order to accomplish his end. His little soul being unable to conceive of any other method, he determined to deprive the above-named gentlemen of their votes, by arresting and imprisoning them, until after the election. But "time, that makes all things even," vindicates the innocent, rewards the persecuted, and inevitably punishes the persecutor.
American Bastile, A History of the Illegal Arrests and Imprisonment of American Citizens During the Late Civil War
by John A. Marshall, pages 629-631
Thomas W. Hartley, Philadelphia, Twenty-Third Edition, 1877