massive Baltimore City Hall of 1867–1875. While the high school moved to its first new building at the southwest corner of West Centre and North Howard Streets, dedicated 1875). Wallis maintained a frequent and constant interest in the premier local public school and in the public schools system as a whole From 1859 until 1861, Wallis contributed largely to the editorial columns of the local newspaper, the Baltimore "Exchange", and wrote for other journals as well. He was a Whig until the organization of the American or "Know-Nothing" party, after which when it faded as a political and moral force, he was a Democrat. In April 1861, Wallis was elected to the lower House of Delegates of Maryland in the General Assembly of Maryland, and took an active part in the special proceedings of the Maryland Legislature, called into special session that Spring by Gov. Thomas H. Hicks, (1798-1865), as the authority of the Governor of Maryland at Frederick instead of the state capital at Annapolis which was then occupied by Massachusetts and New York militia under the command of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, (1818-1893), deciding on the issue of secession and the state's relationship to the pending crisis and the forming war policies of President Abraham Lincoln. He was chairman of the committee on Federal relations, and made himself obnoxious to the Federal authorities by his reports, which were adopted by the Legislature, and which took strong ground against the possibilities of Civil War, as well as against the then prevailing "doctrine of military necessity". In September 12 of that year, four months after Butler's occupation of the state's major city, Wallis was arrested with many other members of the Maryland Legislature and other citizens of the city and state (including the new police marshal George Proctor Kane, (1820-1878), and newly elected reform mayor George William Brown), and imprisoned for more than fourteen months in Fort McHenry, Fort Lafayette, and Fort Warren for not citing a Union Oath before a succession vote. He was finally released by November, 1862, without conditions and without being informed of the official cause of his arrest. He then returned to the private practice of the law in Baltimore. In 1870, on the death of his friend John Pendleton Kennedy, (1795-1870), Wallis was elected provost of the University of Maryland at Baltimore. In December, 1872, as chairman of the art committee of private citizens