(PDF) Maryland Historical Magazinemsa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5800/sc... · o n' P N 5" Maryland Historical Magazine ^ 00 0 p o B AL * D E s ^ux^ 15 z s • Published Quarterly

o n'

P N 5"

Maryland Historical Magazine

^ 00

o B AL * D E s ^ux^ 15 z s •

Published Quarterly by the Museum and Library of Maryland History The Maryland Historical Society

Fall 1990

THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

OFFICERS AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES, 1990-91

L. Patrick Deering, Chairman

E. Mason Hendrickson, President

Bryson L. Cook, Counsel William R. Amos, Ttvasurer Brian B. Topping, Past Ptvsident Samuel Hopkins,

Fast Chairman of the Board

Jack S. Griswold, Vice President Mrs. David R. Owen, Vice President Walter D. Pinkard, Sr., Vice President A. MacDonough Plant, Vice President E. Phillips Hathaway, Vice President

Together with those board members whose names are marked below with an asterisk, the

persons above form the Society's Executive Committee

H. Furlong Baldwin (1991) Gary Black, Jr. (1992) Clarence W Blount (1990) Forrest F. Bramble, Jr. (1991) Mrs. Charles W Cole, Jr.* (1994) Stiles T. Colwill (1994) George D. Edwards (1994) Jerome Geckle (1991) C. William G\\chnst,Allegany Co. (1992) Louis L. Goldstein, Calvert Co. (1991) Kingdon Gould, Jr. Howard Co. (1992) Benjamin H. Griswold, III (1991) Arthur J. Gutman (1991) Willard Hackerman (1991) Louis G. Hecht (1992) Michael S. Hoffberger (1992) Bryden B. Hyde (1994) William S. James,//«r/o«/Co. (1991) Richard R. Kline,* Frederick Co. (1992) Stanard T. Klinefelter (1994) Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. (1990) Robert G. Merrick,Jr. (1991) F. Grove Miller (1992) J.Jefferson Miller II (1992)

Milton H. Miller, Sr. (1991) Jack Moseley (1992) JohnJ. Neubauer,Jr. (1992) James O. Olfson, Anne Arundel Co. (1991) Mrs. Timothy E. Parker (1994) Mrs. Brice Phillips, Worcester Co. (1991) J. Hurst Purnell, Jr., Kent Co. (1991) George M. Radcliffe (1992) Richard H. Randall, Jr. (1994) Dennis F. Rasmussen (1993) Howard R Rawlings (1992) Adrian R Reed, Qtteen Anne's Co. (1991) G. Donald Riley, Jr., Carroll Co. (1991) John D. Schapiro* (1991) Jacques T. Schlenger (1992) Dorothy Mcllvain Scott (1992) Truman T Semans (1994) Jess Joseph Smith, Jr.,

Prince George's Co. (1991) John T Stinson (1992) M. David Testa (1994) Bernard C. Trueschler (1991) Mebane Turner (1994)

Dates note expiration of terms

COUNCIL, 1990-91

Phyllis Bailey Robert J. Brugger Mrs. Charles W Cole, Jr. R McEvoy Cromwell Alan N. Gamse Louis G. Hecht Mrs. Jay Katz

Bayly Ellen Marks Charles E. McCarthy III William E. Miller James L. Nace Charles E. Scarlett III Dorothy Mcllvain Scott Mrs. Aristides C. Alevizatos

Charles T Lyle,

Director

Penny Catzen, Acting Library Director

Jennifer F. Goldsborough, Chief Curator

Judith Van Dyke, Education Director

Maryland Historical Magazi

VOLUME 85

RECEIVED SEP 13 1990

MARYLAND STATE ARCHIVES

FALL 1990

CONTENTS

HALL OF RECORDS LIBRARY

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

George Alsop's Indentured Servant in A Character of the Province

of Maryland hy Darin E. Fields

221

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology, 1753-1762: A Prelude to Revolution

in Maryland 236 hy James Haw

Allen C. Redwood and Sophie Bledsoe Herrick: The Discovery of a Secret,

Significant Relationship 256

by Stephen Davis and Robert Pollard III

Bookplates in Baltimore 264 by Madeleine Doyle

The Charcoal Club of Baltimore—A Retrospect 268

by Barclay Browne

Research Notes and Maryland Miscellany 277 Dr. William Gwynn Coe of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal

Church, by Carl Robert Coe A First for Baltimore—The S. S. Maverick, by David L. Fisher

Book Reviews 296 Parks and Wiseman, eds., Maryland: Unity in Diversity, Essays on Maryland Life and

Culture, by Virginia Geiger Geiger, The Administration of Justice in Colonial Maryland, by Michael C. Tolley Dear Lizzie: The Papers of John Marsh Smith, by Robert Barnes Click, The Spirit of the Times: Amusem*nts in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore, Norfolk,

and Richmond, by David Zang Gallagher, ed., Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign, by Tom Clemens

Freeman, The Arabbers of Baltimore, by Shepard Krech III

Orser and Arnold,* Catonsville, 1880 to 1940: From Village to Suburb, by Robert

| Fprster arid;Elizabeth S. Hughes

Faragher, The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionaty America,

by Daneit K. Blewett

Jordan and Kaups,»7)&<? American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological

Interpretation, l^y Keith W. Olson

Spindel, Crime an4 Society in North Catvlina, 1663-1776, by Jim L. Sumner

W&fd, Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty,

L-..—.-..- • - b^David C Ward

Kaplan and Kaplan.eds., The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution,

byWL. Calderhead

Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White

Officers, by Jack Shreve

Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, by}. C. A. Stagg

Fehrenbacher, Constitutions and Constitutionalism in the Slaveholding South,

by Peter Charles Hoffer

Wimsatt, The Major Fiction of William Gilmore Simms: Cultural Traditions

and Literaty Form, by John Mayfield

Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil

War, by Michael B. Chesson

Books Received 321

Notices 323

Maryland Picture Puzzle 326

Editorial Board JOSEPH L. ARNOLD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County JEAN H. BAKER, Goucher College GEORGE H. CALLCOTT, University of Maryland, College Park Lois GREEN CARR, St. Mary's City Commission CURTIS CARROLL DAVIS, Baltimore, Maryland RICHARD R. DUNCAN, Georgetown University BARBARA JEANNE FIELDS, Columbia University ROBERT L. HALL, Northeastern University JOHN HICHAM, Johns Hopkins University RONALD HOFFMAN, University of Maryland, College Park EDWARD C. PAPENFUSE, Maryland State Archives ROSALYN M. TERBORG-PENN, Morgan State University

ROIIKRT J. BRUGGER, Editor MELINDA K. FRIEND, Managing Editor

MARY MANNK, Art Editor Assistant Editors

ELIZABETH CADWALADER, PATRICIA A. CRAMER, JANE GUSHING LANGE,

AND ROBIN D. STRAHAN

ZANOVA MICKENS, Circulation Manager

Regional Editors JOHN B. WISEMAN JANEC. SWEEN LOU ROSE JOHN R. WENNERSTEN Frostburg Montgomery County Calvert County University of Maryland State University Historical Society Historical Society Eastern Shore

Editor's Corner. We are especially pleased in this issue to bring readers a potpourri of

articles ranging from seventeenth-century literature to eighteenth-century politics and nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. Further essays explore family and maritime history, both the subject of intense interest among MdHS members.

Sincere thanks to Pat Cramer of Silver Spring for her help these past few years as a volunteer copyeditor on the magazine staff. She and her colleagues have done a great deal to help contributors strengthen and polish their work, and we owe them a deep debt.

Cover Design: A 1923 print by Harold L. Harvey used for the cover of the invitation to the Charcoal Club's 1925 Bal des Arts. The theme of the event was An Evening on Mars, the cost eleven dollars per couple. The festivities began at 9:00 RM. and the evening included three prizes given for the most artistic costumes. Supper was seized between 12and 1. (The Charcoal Club Collection.)

at Baltimore, Maryland and at additional mailing offices: POSTMASTER please send address changes to the Maryland Historical Society, 201 West Monument Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, which disclaims responsibility for statements, whether of fact or opinion, made

by contributors. Composed by Publishing Concepts, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland and printed by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pennsylvania 17331.

MAKYIAND HISTORICAL MAGAZiNii

'Vieui here tne ^hMaui^ ni-fuftiImfentous IfamC JCuH Jrvvtu exaA-tiu Trovinct. Jfary 'LaiuL liifplay-'it br Gtoty in. Juci SctentS of Witt 'Vrutttfiojc tHat ratiC mufi;J-'aJCvv Love witji' it IVA* wlacli las Lalovr liee JefefVcS t£e~ vraift A-S MielLas 'Poets c&a t&e. -tvreatH of Hayj- .

-4MIUT>O: j$66.se-tiitisS'iije. z8. KW.

A 1666 engraving of George Alsop, at the age of 28, which served as the frontispiece of A Character of the Province of Maty/and. (Library, Maryland Historical Society.)

George Alsop's Indentured Servant in A Character of the Province of Maryland

DARIN E. FIELDS

.Historians in general hold that George Alsop's attitude toward indentured

servitude in A Character of the Province of Maryland was genuinely favorable and openly praising. Escaping the politics of Cromwell's England, Alsop, a devout Anglican and Royalist, arrived in Maryland in December of 1658, having committed himself to four years as a bondservant. The son of Peter Alsop, a tailor, George Alsop was baptized at St. Martin-in-the Fields on 19 June 1636. He had apparently served a two-year apprenticeship in London before coming to America. Alsop, indentured to Thomas Stockett (also a Royalist) by January 1658/9, spent his entire four years at the head of the Chesapeake Bay near present-day Havre de Grace. Though he apparently did not travel extensively in Maryland, his indenture with Stock- ett provided him with a range of experiences he would later put to use in his promotion tract. Alsop would have seen, and probably traded with, nearby Susquehanna Indians, and he would have benefited from Stockett's social standing as a militia captain, prominent Baltimore County citizen, and legislator. George Alsop completed his indenture in 1662, returned to England sometime in 1663 or 1664, and wrote A Character of the Province of Maryland in London in 1665. Historians writing about indentured servitude in colonial America have frequently used Alsop's depiction of the servant's life as a favorable exaggeration of the much bleaker reality of servant treatment and opportunity in the Southern colonies. Robert J. Brugger writes that Alsop "painted a bright picture of the common man's fate in Maryland," and Hugh T. Lefler, calling A Character an "unduly favorable account," believes that Alsop "portrayed the lot of a servant.. .as both easy and alluring." Montrose J. Moses in The Literature of the South

notes "who could resist the fair picture of indenture Alsop paints of four or five years servitude?" Louis B. Wright in the Literary History of the United States maintains that "the passage defending the system of indentured servitude" offers "the impression of sincerity and truth"; and W. Howland Kenney claims that Alsop "extolled the virtues of indentured servitude."

Professor Fields teaches American literature at the University of Delaware.

MARYLAND HISTOMCAL MAGAZINE 221

VOL. 85, NO 3, FALL 1990

222 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Avoiding his manifest literary skill and his clear awareness of 1658-62 Maryland society, historians attribute Alsop's persona's open endorsem*nts of indentured servitude to either limited experience or a kind master. However, close attention to details of language and style shows that Alsop's diction, punning, and innuendo frequently undermined and even satirized the very endorsem*nts they comprised. Overstatement and exaggeration were primary constituents of seventeenth-century promotion literature, and the depiction of the colonies as bountiful and life as easy were the rule rather

than the exception. Alsop intended to overstate his case as would a promoter; that he called so much attention to his overstatement as over-

statement by his elaborate style makes his work highly self-conscious and Q

ambiguous—uncommon traits in a promotion tract. A careful reading of A Character proves that while Alsop extolled the beauty and plenty of life in Maryland, his position regarding indentured servitude was highly ambivalent and often satiric.

Commentary on Alsop's style and language has ranged from Newton D. Mereness's claim that Alsop's lack of education made him "verbose, bombastic," and "given to ridiculous extravagance in style" to J. A. Leo Lemay's pronouncement that A Character of the Province of Maryland is "a jewel in the genre of promotion literature" and "the earliest of a long line of distinguished Southern works in baroque prose." W Howland Kenney says that Alsop's Character, "a wildly unorganized book," is "prefaced by innumerable rambling introductions." Kenney's claims need clarifying on both accounts. Far from being "wildly unorganized," Alsop's tract, as Lemay has shown, followed most of the conventional patterns for promotion literature. Alsop covered in typical order the geography, animals, and plants; the government and inhabitants; and the commerce of the province. Chapter three, the most unconventional chapter of the tract, purportedly appealed to the lower classes to come to Maryland. Alsop included a brief discussion of the customs and manners of the "Susquehanock" Indians, and he appended, in typical fashion, a collection of realistic letters to the end of the tract.

Alsop's two dedications and "Preface to the Reader" were uncommon in both style and number, but careful analysis is in order before dismissing them as "rambling," for each informs our understanding of the work as a whole. Alsop's literary persona emerges over the course of the dedications and preface, and in these passages the initial undercutting of indentured servitude takes place. Each passage is precisely tailored in wit and satire to the designated audience and purpose, yet all three also offer, in some form, a legal defense, beginning with a statement of the act that has been committed, followed by a plea (specifically in the first dedication, non compos mentis) and a recourse to defense in the form of precedent ("Magna Charta of Fowles" and "Tryals at Assizes") or testimony ("Billings-gate Collegians").

George Alsop's Indentured Servant 223

The first dedication (to Lord Baltimore) naturally assumes the tone of an indentured servant to his master, but a tinged current of satire and deliberate mask-making underlies the praising of servitude. The humble servant, having undertaken a task by his own volition, resolves to repent, begs "Indempnity" and declares his unswerving obedience, if in his presumptuous action he was mistaken. He then claims that his comments are experientially true and direct results of his fateful position and condition as a servant:

And had not Fate by a necessary imployment, confln'd me within the narrow walks of a four years Servitude, and by degrees led me through the most intricate and dubious paths of this Countrey, by a commanding and undeniable Enjoyn- ment, I could not, nor should I ever have undertaken to have written a line of this nature, (p. 19)

Alsop continually creates tension by linking incongruous elements of style and content. Here the heavy emphasis on confinement and obligation in word choice and diction undercuts the ostensible claim that his servitude beneficially provided him the experience necessary to fulfill his intentions. The use of the word "degrees" implies a torture-like quality to his indenture. The term "undeniable enjoynment" is ambivalent since "undeniable" denotes not only indisputable good, but inescapability as well; and "enjoynment," referring to the prohibitive and restraining injunction of indenture, sounds suspiciously like "enjoyment." That the "undeniable enjoynment" is "commanding" lends a military-like dominance to the entire experience.

In the next paragraph the narrator claims that if his work is "wilde and confused," it is because he is so himself (p. 20). Beyond the self-effacement, Alsop, playing on the word "wilde," is toying with a gullible English audience's conceptions of Americans as rustic simpletons and is also craftily building the mock legal defense which will have its comic iulfillment in the paragraph's conclusion. The end of the paragraph escalates the evasive undercutting by the incongruous coupling of the Latin phrase "non compos mentis" with the quick, slangy evasiveness of "to save my Bacon": "therefore I resolve if I am brought to the Bar of Common Law for any thing I have done here, to plead Non compos mentis, to save my Bacon" (p. 20). John Cowell's The Interpreter, published in 1607, noted that Non Compos Mentis "is of fouresortes: first, he that is an idiot borne: next, he that by accident afterward wholly looseth his wits: thirdly, a lunaticke, that hath sometime his understanding, and sometime not: lastly, hee which by his own act depriveth himselfe of his right mind for a time, as a drunkard." Alsop's mentioning of the weakness of his "Microcosm" would ostensibly imply that the plea would be of the second sort, but given the references to "Canary" and "Good Wine" in "The Preface to the Reader," a plea of the fourth sort, drunkenness, cannot be excluded from the defense of the shifty yet articulate indentured

224 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

servant (pp. 21, 23). A similar mock defense appears in the second dedication and in the "Preface to the Reader." The recurring travesty on the judicial process is one of the most telling aspects of Alsop's creation of his persona, for it establishes early that we should read the indentured servant am- biguously, that we should take his open reverence for order and obedient submission with as much irony as trust.

The first dedication ends, as it began, with an appeal to fate. Alsop's persona says "therefore what destiny has ordained, I am resolved to wink,

and stand to it" (p. 20). The play here is clearly on the word "wink" meaning to stagger or nod (Oxford English Dictionary), but also, perhaps, a shor- tened version of hoodwink, implying deliberate prodding and deception of the unwary reader.

With the same ease that Alsop's persona addressed his master. Lord Baltimore, he addressed the "Merchant Adventurers" and ship captains in the next dedication, but the language is no longer that of servant to master. Now the language is that of capital venture, money, and exchange. Self-styled as an adventurer in print, Alsop's persona seeks entrance into privileged "Company," obviously toying with both the social and the financial connota- tions of the word (p. 19). The next sentence plays off the persona's humble state as a servant presuming to move among the merchant class and his fear of rebuke for his well-intentioned attempt to come abroad in print:

You are both Adventurers, the one of Estate, the other of Life: I could tell you I am an adventurer too, if I durst presume to come into your Company. I have ventured to come abroad in Print, and if I should be laughed at for my good meaning, it would so break the credit of my Understanding, that I should never dare to shew my face upon the Exchange of (conceited) Wits again, (p. 21)

"Good meaning" can also imply clever word play, and the use of the word "so" as a qualitative adjective establishes the tone as not of fear of reprisal or mocking, but of acknowledged self-conceit. Premised upon financial terms, with "Exchange" being a clear reference to the London Exchange, the whole interplay, all the more ironic from the mouth of an indentured servant, is a scathing comment on the materialistic reduction of human values to monetary values, the trade of servants as commodities, and the captivating lure of potential prosperity in the New World. "Good meaning," like good money, is based on an "Understanding" of value and exchan- geability. Laughter equals failure of that understanding, and failure implies bankruptcy and loss of credit.

In the next paragraph Alsop initiated the conceit of a banquet, portraying himself as a servant serving up a "dish of Discourse" that has already been partially eaten by Lord Baltimore:

George Alsop 's Indentured Servant 225

This dish of Discourse was intended for you at first, but it was manners to let my Lord have the first cut, the Pye being his own. I beseech you accept of the matter as 'tis drest, only to stay your stomachs, and I'le promise you the next shall be better done. (p. 21)

Underlying the open joke that the "Pye" of a colonial lord might only "stay" the stomachs of merchants and sea captains, is the more subtle point that Lord Baltimore, as proprietor, profits by any commercial venture that

benefits his colony and will always have the "first cut." In keeping structurally with his being called to the "Bar of Common Law

in the dedication to Lord Baltimore, the indentured servant pleads that,

there's a Maxim upon Tryals at Assizes, That if a thief be taken upon the first fault, if he be not to hainous, they only burn him in the hand and let him go: So I desire you to do to me, if you find any thing that bears a criminal absurdity in it, only burn me for my first fact and let me go. (p. 24)

Here Alsop mocked the anxiety of many seventeenth-century courts regarding the benefit of clergy and the need for alternative punishments between execution and branding of the hand. J. M. Beattie notes that "there was in this period...an evident dissatisfaction in the courts with the sanc- tions available for the punishment of clergyable offenses and an anxiety to create stiffer alternatives than mere branding on the thumb." Alsop's use of this defense is particularly appropriate to his audience of sea captains and

merchants. Transportation became one of many alternatives that emerged after 1660 in a system run primarily, and very lucratively, by sea captains and private businessmen.1

The "Preface to the Reader" is addressed to the "general Reader," or the London audience. The preface relies heavily on proverbial sayings like "Good Wine needs no Bush" and allusions to familiar and notorious London locales like Billingsgate (p. 23). Leslie A. Wardenaar points out that such "humorous analogies" reflected "the promoter's participation in the public English consciousness...making him seem less a propagandist and more a friendly acquaintance" in the hopes of increasing "the English reader's receptivity to the promoter's account." As the choice of allusions and proverbs show, the "Preface to the Reader" was aimed at the lower-class audience. Alsop's labeling of his work as a "character" was also pertinent since any London audience would have been familiar with a wide variety of the popular sketches and would have easily recognized Alsop's manipula- tion and use of the form for his own ends. In comparison to the previous dedications, each in a different tone and style of address, "The Preface to the Reader" immediately appears bombastic and self-conceited:

226 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

The Reason-why I appear in this place is, lest the general Reader should conclude I have nothing to say for myself; and truly he's in the right on't, for 1 have but little to say (for my self) at this time: For I have had so large a Journey, and so heavy a Burden to bring Mary-Land into England, that I am almost out of breath.. .Good Reader, because you see me make a brief Apologetical excuse for my self, don't judge me; for I am so self-conceited of my own merits, that I almost think I want none. (p. 23)

The shift in tone and style was absolutely intentional and not the product of a lack of ability or education on Alsop's part, for Alsop's readers would have recognized in the preface's pretentious rambling hints of a character- type appearing in many character books of the day, the self-conceited man. John Earle, in Microcosntography, first printed in 1628, described the "Selfe-conceited Man" as

one that knowes himselfe so wel that he does not know himselfe. Two Excellent well-dones have undone him; and he is guilty of it, that first commended him to madnesse. Hee is now become his owne booke, which he poares on continually, yet like a truant-reader skips over the harsh places, and surveyes onely that which is pleasant. In the speculation of his owne good parts, his eyes, like a drunkard's, see all double, and his fancy, like an old man's spectacles, make a great letter in a small print. '

Like the interchange among the merchants and sea captains, which relied on a credit of "Understanding," the interchange between the persona and the "general Reader" was built around the implicit understanding, common to all promotion literature, that the persona would skip "over the harsh places" and survey "onely that which is pleasant": "For its an ill Bird will befoule her own Nest: Besides I have a thousand Billings-gate Collegians that will give in their testimony. That they never knew a Fish-woman cry stinking Fish" (p. 24). Mock legal defense, self-conceit, and explicit deception here come together as the persona emerges—a character more fully developed than most will credit.

Chapter three of A Character, devoted specifically to "The necessariness of servitude proved, with the common usage of Servants in Mary-land, together with theirPriviledges," is uncommon among promotion literature. There can be no question that chapter three greatly exaggerates the favorable aspects of servitude in Maryland. But as the dedications and preface show, Alsop allowed for such exaggerations. The style of Alsop's indentured servant is highly wrought and intentionally self-conscious. As Lemay notes, such a style "burlesques itself," and "undercuts anyone who would ridicule it, for the scoffer would thereby prove himself a fool who did not recognize that Alsop was deliberately overstating his case and mocking himself." Alsop was, nonetheless, writing promotion literature,

George Alsop 's Indentured Servant 227

and however much he may chafe at the form, his work never loses this focus. Alsop's satirical thrust is not unified or even consistent throughout the piece, for, unlike colonial Maryland's more famous satirist Ebenezer Cook (who was writing Hudibrastic verse), Alsop was not working in a satirical mode. Like his incongruous wedding of Latin phrases with vulgar proverbs, Alsop wedded his intensely self conscious and satirical style to the more stolid promotional format.

The short poem at the end of chapter two prepares the reader for chapter

three by invoking and emphasizing order and tranquillity in the form of the chain of being:

Tis said that the Gods lower down that Chain above, That ties both Prince and Subject up in Love; And if this Fiction of the Gods be true. Few, Mary-land, in this can boast but you: Live ever blest, and let those Clouds that do Eclipse most states, be alwayes Lights to you; And dwelling so, you may forever be The only Emblem of Tranquility. (p. 52)

With its descending levels of order from the one perfect God to the many varied forms of man and nature, the chain of being justified class distinctions and the existence of servitude:

As there can be no Monarchy without the Supremacy of a King and Crown, nor no King without subjects, nor any Parents without it be by the fruitfull off-spring of Children; neither can there be any Masters, unless it be by the inferior Servitude of those that dwell under them, by a commanding enjoynment.... (pp. 52-53)

The monarchy became the model for both the parent-child relationship and the master-servant relationship. Alsop frequently alluded to the household as a domestic monarchy, and obedience to the master became synomonous with obedience to the king: "the Servant with a reverent and befitting obedience is as liable to this duty in a measurable performance to him whom he serves, as the loyalest of Subjects to his Prince" (p. 53). Scholars have too easily been taken in by Alsop's serious, even dogmatic, presentation of this idea without considering it in the context of the whole chapter and the whole work. John Van Der Zee, commenting on Alsop's "idyllic term of servitude," notes that "at no time in his discourse does Alsop attempt to explain or justify the practical reason for the existence of servitude in the colonies in the first place: as an essential source of replace- able cheap labor. Instead, it is presented as a part of the natural order of things, as obviously correct as the divine right of kings." Not a surprising fact when you consider that Alsop's primary goal was to persuade rather

228 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

than document. Van Der Zee points to the account of Bankers and Sluyter, two Labadist travelers in the province thirteen years later, as evidence of Alsop's misrepresentation of the treatment of servants and living conditions in Maryland. As the prefatory passages to A Character show, open reverence for law and order is frequently undercut and manipulated by the persona's self-interest and desire for personal gain.

While chapter three begins in seriousness, the treatment shifts, and the "Fiction of the Gods" becomes the target for ironic subversion and bur-

lesque. Rather than the master molding his relationship with the servant after his relationship with his own children, in Maryland "the Son works as well as the Servant (an excellent cure for untam'd youth), so that before they eat their bread, they are commonly taught how to earn it" (p. 50). And despite the warning that "there is no truer Emblem of Confusion either in Monarchy or Domestick Governments, then when either the Subject, or the Servant, strives for the upper hand of his Prince or Master" (p. 54), Alsop's persona advises that male servants, lacking the "natural preferment" of the women, must be "good Rhetoricians, and well vers'd in the Art of perswasion, then (probably) they may ryvet themselves in the time of their Servitude into the private and reserved favour of their Mistress, if Age speak their Master deficient" (p. 61).

Alsop was particularly sensitive to traditions regarding colonization and servitude. While his persona reveled in his witty innuendo and clever style, Alsop himself was well aware of the various arguments for and against indentured servitude, transportation, and the colonial enterprise. It is generally accepted that Alsop wrote A Character as an appeal to the under- privileged classes of London to emigrate as indentured servants to Maryland where labor (stillpredominantly white in the mid-seventeenth century) was in great demand. 1

Because of Alsop's diversity of voice, the issue of promotional appeal becomes particularly complicated in the tract. As Howard Mumford Jones points out, "sociological appeal" must be a consideration of all colonization literature: "the appeal being in some degree to all classes but principally to

22 the socially dispossessed and those under the threat of being uprooted." Hugh T. Lefler claims that Alsop's Character of the Province of Maryland is the only Southern promotional narrative written by an indentured ser-

2^ vant. Although little is really known of his education, Alsop was clearly more educated than his persona. As the prefatory passages show, Alsop's persona addressed a range of social and cultural affiliations from the aristocratic Lord Baltimore, to merchants, ship owners, and finally common London readers with consummate ease and slashing wit. Yet in formulating an appeal for lower-class emigration, Alsop faced a number of obstacles.

Indentured servants were frequently stigmatized as disreputable—if not genuinely criminal—vagrants or slothful unemployed laborers by promo-

George Alsop 's Indentured Servant 229

tion, anti-promotion, and popular ballad literature. The equation of colonial life with exile was as prevalent as the equation of colonial life with prosperity. Alsop capitalized on the stigmatization of indentured servants for the elements of vulgarity, brazenness, and most importantly, subtle craftiness, that he skillfully blended with learned wit in his persona. In focusing his appeal, Alsop's indentured servant, as a testimonial witness, brashly treated merchants and refined noblemen seeking to emigrate, and, instead, identified the lower classes as particularly suited to the task:

Now those whose abilities here In England are capable of maintaining themselves In any reasonable and handsome manner, they had best so to remain, lest the roughness of the Ocean, together with the staring visages of the wilde Animals which they may see after their arrival into the country, may alter the natural dispositions of their bodies, that the stay'd and solid part that kept its motion by Doctor Trigs purgationary operation, may run beyond the byas of the wheel in a violent and laxative confusion.

Now contrarywise, they who are low, and make bare shifts to buoy themselves up above the shabby center of beggarly and incident casualties, I heartily could wish the removal of some of them into Mary-Land, which would make much better for them that stay'd behind as well as it would advantage those that went, (pp. 55, 56-57)

While Alsop's satire of the middle and upper classes plays on the fear and cowardice of tradesmen, noblemen, and merchants to take up the task of colonization, his identification of the lower classes as suited for the job is not an entirely straightforward or necessarily appealing alternative. Alsop's

point that sending the poor and vagrant lower class to Maryland benefits England first and the emigrants second is ambiguous and plays off two traditions regarding the populating of colonies.

In "Of Plantations," one of the standards for form and convention of promotional writing, Francis Bacon, echoing Captain John Smith, deplored the use of unsavory elements for colonization: "it is a Shamefull and Unblessed Thing, to take the Scumme of People, and Wicked Condemned Men, to be the People with whom you Plant." Andrew White's Relation

ofMaryland (1635) advised the prospective adventurer in selecting servants "to furnish himselfe with as many as he can, of useful and necessary arts" with emphasis on the skilled labor of carpenters, brick-makers, mill-wrights, wheel-rights, millers, and smiths, but notes that "any lusty young able man.. .willing to labor.. .although he have no particular trade, will be benefl-

27 cial enough to his Master." As early as 1597, however, Parliament secured the way for magistrates to

exile certain undesirable elements of the population across the ocean, and in 1615 James I authorized pardons and banishment to the New World in

230 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

lieu of execution. John Donne, in 'A Sermon Preached to the Honourable Company of the Virginian Plantation" in 1622, echoing Hakluyt among others, said the plantation

shall redeeme many a wretch from the Jawes of death, from the hands of the Executioner, upon whom, perchaunce a small fault, or perchaunce a first fault, or perchaunce a fault heartily or sincerely repented, perchaunce no fault, but malice, had other -wise cast present, and ignominious death. It shall sweep your streets, and wash your dores, from idle persons, and the children of idle persons, and imploy them: and truely, if the whole Countrey were but such a Bridewell,

29 to force idle persons to work, it had good use.

Like Donne, whom Alsop had at least partly read, Alsop's persona proclaimed in chapter two the virtues of industry and servitude in Maryland in reforming common criminals: "those whose Lives and Conversations have had no other glory stampt on them in their own Country, but the stigmatization of baseness, were here...brought to detest and loathe their former actions" (p. 49).

Transportation benefited England by clearing the streets of beggars, whor*s, and vagrants; it benefited the colonies by increasing the supply of labor. Beggars were conspicuously absent in Maryland and did not appear "upon the penalty of almost a perpetual working in Imprisonment" near the "laborious" (rather than peaceful or comfortable) dwellings of the inhabitants (p. 43). The "perpetual working in Imprisonment" is servitude

itself since no real prisons existed in Maryland. Alsop's comments regarding the conspicuous lack of prisons become, in this context, less virtuous and more ambiguous:

Here's no Newgates for pilfering Felons, nor Ludgates for Debtors, nor any Bridewels to lash the soul of Concupiscence into a chast Repentance. For as there is none of these Prisons in Mary-land so the merits of the Country deserves none, but if any be foully vitious, he is so reserved in it, that he seldom or never becomes popular, (pp. 49-50)

Although the true character of both indentured servants and transported criminals was undoubtedly exaggerated by contemporary writers, that Maryland received a share of unsavory people is clear by the passage of an Act in the colony in 1676 regulating the importation of felons. Robert Wintour, a member of Governor Leonard Calvert's council, while maintaining that Maryland's servants were above average, noted that in general servants were "for the most part the scum of the people taken up promis- cuously as vagrants and runaways from their english masters, debauched, idle, lazy, squanderers, jailbirds, and the like." Consciously manipulating social stereotypes and biases, when Alsop claimed that he "could heartily wish the removal" of those "who are low, and make bare shifts to bouy

George Alsop's Indentured Servant 231

themselves above the shabby center of beggarly and incident casualities," he was as easily sponsoring transportation as a solution to London's crime problem as he was sponsoring Maryland as the land of opportunity for the indentured servant. Alsop's awareness of a range of social and economic issues surrounding indentured servitude—the conflicting attitudes regarding "transportation," the use of criminals as servants, and the lucrative "trade" of indentured servants by sea captains and merchants—is prevalent throughout A Character and is an important constituent of the personality of Alsop's persona.

The twelve "Historical Letters" appended to the end of A Character, dating from just before Alsop's departure from England to just before his return, are relatively straightforward. Though similar in tone and language to the rest of A Character, the letters offer clear statements of Alsop's personal motivations for leaving England and going to America. Little of the highly self-conscious style that appears in the preceding sections of the pamphlet is to be found in the "Historical Letters." The publication of supposedly real letters in a promotional tract was intended to guarantee its accuracy. Lemay claims that Alsop's letters were included "because of the happy picture they present of the condition of servitude in Maryland." While predominantly optimistic, the letters also show that Alsop held many of the same conceptions regarding the life of servitude across the sea that he later condemns in his work as "filthy dregs" and "damnable" lies (p. 58). The first letter (1658), to his friend "Mr.T.B.," signals Alsop's intent to leave England: "I have lived with sorrow to see the Anointed of the Lord tore from his Throne by the hands of Paricides, and in contempt haled, in the view of God, Angels and Men, upon a public Theatre, and there murthered" (p. 87). For Alsop, a furious, desperate Royalist suffering in a London where "Royalists in each street /Are scorn'd, and kick'd by most men that they meet," the choice was clear: "Who then can stay, or will, to see things of so great weight steer'd by such barbarous Llounds as these" (pp. 89, 87-88). Though Alsop's appeals to emigrate to Maryland in A Character proper were based upon the opportunity for material advancement and possible prosperity, the letters show that Alsop himself was as much a political as an economic refugee.

The majority of the letters were supposedly written while in Maryland, though it is likely they were revised prior to publication in A Character. Discussing in a loosely encapsulated form most of the sections of the pamphlet itself, Alsop briefly described, in the conventional pattern of promotional literature, the land and its animals, inhabitants, and government. In the next letter, to Mr. M.F. (1658/9), Alsop discussed the acuity of Maryland planters who "by their crafty and sure bargaining, do often over-reach the raw and unexperienced Merchant (p. 100). In a letter to his brother (1662), Alsop alluded to having "made a shift to unloose [his] Collar;" but he sees "small pleasure or profit" in his newfound freedom:

232 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

What the futurality of my dayes will bring forth I know not; For while I was Linckt with the Chain of a restraining Servitude, I had all things cared for, and now I have all things to care for my self, which makes me almost to wish myself in for the other four years, (p. 106)

His sentiments on regaining his liberty were much different from the optimistic view he gave in chapter three of A Character: "In short, touching the Servants of this Province, they live well in the time of their Service, and by their restrainment in that time, they are made capable of living much better when they come to be free" (p. 61). A subsequent long sickness and the return to monarchy in England prompted Alsop to return to his native soil.

One historian has said of George Alsop's Character of the Province of Maryland that it had three ingredients which might have made it a bestseller three centuries later: Sin, Sex, and the South. Unlike many of its counter- parts, A Character of the Province of Maryland freely manipulated many of the conventions of the promotional genre and presented more than simple promotional propaganda. Alsop scrutinized the entire promotional process, manipulating and undermining language and conventions to humorous and satirical ends. Sir Thomas Overbury defining "What a Character Is," in 1614 said that "it is a picture...quaintly drawn in various colours, all of them heightened by one shadowing...it is wit's descant on any plain song." Alsop's persona is both "wit's descant" on the "plain song" of one George Alsop and a diverse amalgam of learned and low attitudes on the people, classes, processes, opportunities, and pitfalls of colonization in general and indentured servitude in particular.

NOTES

1. For the most complete biographical information regarding George Alsop see J. A. Leo Lemay, Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972), pp. 48-69, and his appendix on "The Identity of George Alsop" pp. 343-45. I am indebted to Leo Lemay for his interest and assistance in the preparation of this article.

2. Lemay suggests that Alsop may have been either a secretary or an accountant for Stockett. His name appears as a witness on a patent recording Stockett's purchase of Bourne in 1661. See Lemay, Men of Letters, p. 50.

3. See John Van Der Zee, Bound Over: Indentured Servitude and American Conscience (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 100-107; David Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 10.

4. Robert J. Brugger, Maryland, A Middle Temperament: 1634-1980 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 26; Hugh T. Lefler, "Promotional Literature of the Southern Colonies," Journal of Southern History, 33 (1967): 14.

George Alsop's Indentured Servant 233

5. MontroseJ. Moses, The Literature of the South (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1910), p. 43.

6. Louis B. Wright, "The Writers of the South" in Robert Spiller et al., eds., The Literary History of the United States (4th ed., 2 vols.; New York: Macmillan, 1974), 1: 42-43; W Howland Kenney, Laughter in the Wilderness: Early American Humor to 1783 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1976), p. 73-

7. See George Alsop, A Character of the Province of Maryland, ed. Newton Mereness (1666, repr. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Company, 1902), pp. 10, 12, 58, 59 (hereafter Mereness, ed.. Character of the Province of Maryland); Van Der Zee, Bound Over, pp. 101, 103; Lefler, "Promotion Literature," p. 14.

8. J. A. Leo Lemay, the most extensive commentator on Alsop thus far, notes that Alsop "writes an extremely self-conscious, mannered prose that constantly asks the reader to consider the persona and his purposes. The style is so excessive that it is humorous purely as style." See J. A. Leo Lemay, An Early American Reader, (Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency, 1988), p. 544.

9. Mereness, ed., Character of the Province of Maryland, p. 8; Lemay, Men of Letters, p. 69.

10. Kenney, Laughter, p. 74. 11. Lemay, Men of Letters, p. 53. 12. Mereness, ed.. Character of the Province of Maryland, p. 19 All subsequent

references to Alsop will be within the body of the text. 13.JohnColwell, The Interpreter, ed. R. C.Alston (Menston, England: Scolar Press,

Ltd., 1972). 14. J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England: 1660-1800 (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 144. 15. Ibid., p. 451. 16. Leslie A. Wardenaar, "Humor in the Colonial Promotional Tract: Topics and

Techniques" Early American Literature, 9 (1975); 298. 17.io\\nYLA<c\e,Microcosmography, 1633 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1920), p. 18. 18. J. A. Leo Lemay, "The Beginnings" in Louis D. Rubin et al., eds.. The History of

Southern Literature (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), p. 19.

19. Van Der Zee, Bound Over, pp. 106, 107. 20. Ibid., pp. 103-4; Newton Mereness also uses Dankers and Sluyter's account

and Andrew White's Relation of Maryland to both corroborate and deny sections oiA Character. See the introduction and notes to the 1902 reprint.

21. See Michal J. Rozbicki, The Transformation of the English Cultural Ethos in Colonial America: Maryland, 1634-1720 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988), p. 134; A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 118; and Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 4.

22. Howard Mumford Jones, "The Colonial Impulse: An Analysis of the 'Promotion' Literature of Colonization," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 90 (1946): 146.

23. Lefler, "Promotional Literature," p. 14.

234 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

24. Ballads like "London's Lotterie" (1612) spell out the great incentive for fortune and fame in the New World: "Full many a man that lives full bare, / and knowes no joyes of Gold, /For one small Crowne may get a share, /of twice two thousand told." Bleaker ballads, like "the Trappan'd Maiden," were more predominant and depicted the servant's life as one of hardship and suffering: "Give ear unto a maid, that lately was betray'd / and sent into Virginny, O: / In brief I shall declare, what I have suffered there, / When that I was weary, weary, weary, weary, O." See Charles Harding Firth, An American Garland: Being a Collection of Ballads Relating to America, 1536- 1759 (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1969). For a contemporary popular account of the transported felon's experience in America see William Melville Jennings, "The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation at Virginia in America," Virginia Magazine of History and Biog- raphy, 56 (1948): 180-94; and T. H. Breen, James H. Lewis, and Keith Schlesinger, "Motive for Murder: A Servant's Life in Virginia, 1678," William and Mary Quarterly (3rdser.), 40 (1983): 106-20.

25. Harrison T Meserole, Walter Sutton, and Brom Weber claim that Alsop may have been "transported" to Maryland as punishment for speaking contemptuously about Cromwell, but the criminal innuendo in parts oi A Character are part of Alsop's persona, for Alsop claims in the letters that he came freely to Maryland. See Harrison T Meserole, Walter Sutton, and Brom Weber, eds., American Literature: Tradition and Innovation (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1969), p. 27.

26. Francis Bacon, "Of Plantations," The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, Michael Kiernan, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 106.

27. Andrew White, "A Relation of Maryland," 1635, Narratives of Early Maryland 1633-1684, ed. Clayton Colman Hall (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967), p. 99.

28. Ekirch, Bound for America, p. 1. The Crown's position regarding transportation of "rogues. Vagabonds, idle and dissolute persons" changed frequently during the seventeenth century. A royal proclamation of 1603 authorized banishment of "incorrigible or dangerous Rogues" to places "beyond the sea" including "the New-found land" [America], and the "East and West Indies." A 1617 proclamation proposes "to send the most notorious ill livers, and misbehaved persons...into Virginia, or to some other remote parts to serve in the Warres, or in Colonies, that they may no more infect the places where they abide within this our Realme." By 1637 the Crown issued a proclamation "Against the disorderly transporting of his majesties subjects to the plantations within the parts of America." In 1661, with the vagrancy problem continuing, a King's proclamation suppressing vagrancy reads that "any such Vagabonds, Beggers, or idle persons...found within the Cities of London and Westminster" are to be "apprehended, and openly whipped, and sent away (except such as are willing to go to the English Plantations)." Clarence Brigham, ed., British Royal Proclamations Relating to America, 1603-1783 (Wor- cester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1911), pp. 1, 7, 80, 110.

29. John Donne, "A Sermon Preached to the Honourable Company of the Virginian Plantation," The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (10 vols.; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959), 4:272.

George Alsop 's Indentured Servant 235

30. Robert Wintour quoted in Raphael Semmes, Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1938), p. 81. Not all indentured servants were convicts, but a definite portion were. David Souden argues that the conventional view of seventeenth-century emigrants has been stereotyped by the contemporary documents that survive. Manyofthese contemporary writers, according to Souden, were "engaged in arguments against colonial development and the consequent drain upon domestic resources of capital and labour." "According to the received stereotype," Souden writes, "indentured servants were commonly unemployed labourers, coming particularly from the criminal and vagrant classes, and many were so young as to have been easy victims of the unscrupulous recruiting agents who operated the trade." See Souden, '"Rogues, whor*s and Vagabonds'? Indentured Servant Emigrants to North America, and the Case of Mid-Seventeenth- Century Bristol," Social History, 3 (1978): 24. Anthony Salerno's study of the social background of seventeenth-century emigrants finds that "the typical emigrant.. .was male, relatively young, and unmarried, he was more often than not from an urban community, practiced a craft, and maintained—rather than abandoned—close kin- ship and neighborhood ties during the emigration process" (Salerno, "The Social Background of Seventeenth-Century Emigration to America," Journal of British Studies, 19 [1975]: 38)]. For further discussions of the relation between convicts and servitude see Eugene Irving McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland: 1634- 1820, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, No. 22 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1904); Ekirch, Bound for America; and Newton D. Meteness, Maryland as A Proprietary Province (London: Macmillan Company, 1901), pp. 133-34. For a discussion of the variety of skills and talents of indentured servants see Lorena S. Walsh, "Servitude and Opportunity in Charles County, Maryland, 1658-1705," in Aubrey C. Land, Lois Green Carr, and Edward C. Papen- fuse, eds.. Law, Society and Politics in Early Maryland (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 111-13

31- Lemay, Men of Letters, p. 65. 32. Years are not given in the original text of A Character. Harry H. Kunesch, Jr.,

has ascertained yearly dates for the letters from internal evidence, and J. A. Leo Lemay has clarified dates of four of the later letters. I follow Kunesch's dates and Lemay's corrected dates when necessary here. See Harry H. Kunesch, Jr., "George Alsop's A Character of the Province of Maryland: A Critical Edition" (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1971) and Lemay, Men of Letters, pp. 50-51.

33- Lefler, "Promotional Literature," pp. 14-15. 34. Sir Thomas Overbury, "Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters; or, Witty Descrip-

tions of the Properties of Sundry Persons," in Henry Morely, ed.. Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1891), p. 99.

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology, 1753-1762: A Prelude to Revolution in Maryland

JAMES HAW

iVlany American colonists viewed British policy after 1763 through the prism of English Commonwealth ideology, concluding that a conspiracy centered in the British ministry threatened English liberty throughout the empire. His Majesty's ministers, Americans repeated endlessly, employed the crown patronage systematically to corrupt Parliament, destroy the balance of the British constitution, and consolidate all power in their own hands. The assaults of ministerial power upon liberty became overt in the 1760s and 1770s, especially in British colonial policy of those years.

Colonial patriots often became convinced that prominent politicians in their own colonies were agents of ministerial power, working to subvert liberty in America. The colonial patronage placed ministerial favorites in positions of authority in America, where they could work to abet their patrons' designs and to undermine the constitutions of the colonies. It was natural that royal governors and other English-born crown officials should be seen in that light. But native colonists too could fall under suspicion. Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, for example, was denounced not simply as a tool of the ministry but as an instigator of some of its tyrannical policies.

Just why Commonwealth ideas, the ideology of only a small minority in Britain, came to have such wide currency in America is not yet entirely clear. Part of the answer has been found in the distinctive nature of colonial politics. The subordinate status of the colonial governments, dependent upon an uncontrollable authority in London; the wide powers of the colonial executives, coupled with their relatively constricted means of influence and patronage; a relatively new and fluid socioeconomic order that provided only imperfectly the traditional social bases of political authority: all of these circ*mstances made for a "troubled and contentious" politics and a heightened sensitivity to arbitrary power. Maryland fit this pattern. And, furthermore, Maryland's proprietary rulers did try to use patronage to undermine representative government and render the colonial

Professor Haw, co-author of Stormy Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase (Maryland Historical

Society, 1980), is a member of the history faculty at the Indiana University-Purdue University

campus at Fort Wayne.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 236

VOL. 85, NO. 3, FALL 1990

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 237

lower house subservient to Lord Baltimore and his "ministers." Common- wealth ideas could win acceptance as a satisfying explanation of apparent reality. This article explores the interaction of issues and patronage from 1753 to 1762 to clarify, at least implicitly, how the workings of the provincial patronage system contributed to the acceptance of Commonwealth ideology, and to the revolution grounded in that ideology.

Maryland's experience was similar to that of the other North American colonies yet unique because of its proprietary status. In Maryland only the officers of His Majesty's customs service were appointed directly by the crown. All other patronage positions in the province were at the disposal of the proprietor. Lord Baltimore. Hence the colonial government was not as closely linked to the British ministry as was the case in the royal colonies.

Lord Baltimore's patronage, however, was extensive. In the 1760s the proprietor as hereditaiy governor had at his disposal about ten major and seventy lesser offices of profit, including the administrators of the provincial and county governments and the proprietary revenue officers who collected Baltimore's sizeable personal income from the province. Collectively these offices returned some £12,000 to £14,000 a year to their occupants. In addition, the Lord Proprietor inducted Maryland's ministers of the established Church of England. By the end of the colonial period he controlled forty-four parishes worth more than £8,000 annually. Patronage was a mainstay of proprietary political power in Maryland.

Marylanders who aspired to proprietary office found the avenues to preferment more constricted than in the royal colonies. Appointments in the latter were ultimately controlled by the king's ministers of state. An American office-seeker's problem was to cultivate influential contacts who would plead his case to one or more of the leading ministers or to officials of the Board of Trade. The royal governor was one good possibility, but in the first half of the eighteenth century his influence declined as crown appointments in America were increasingly determined in London. Colonists aspiring to high office in the royal colonies needed English contacts—a friend or relative resident in the mother country, an influential merchant in the colonial trade, a minor bureaucrat or a member of Parlia- ment, the colony's agent in London, a religious organization—anyone with influence who could be induced to intercede on one's behalf. Some colonists even undertook personal missions to England to cultivate their contacts and further their prospects.

While royal colonists could plot approaches to any of several leading ministers, Marylanders seeking preferment had to reach one man. Frederick Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore, the proprietor from 1751 to 1773, was "a

238 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

dissolute young man, a traveling and horse-racing spendthrift" with little knowledge or interest in the province. Frederick viewed Maryland mainly as a valuable piece of income-producing property. He generally left the management of the province in the hands of his uncle Cecilius Calvert, the provincial secretary in London. Having served as personal secretary and adviser to his brother Charles, fifth Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert had

been in close touch with Maryland affairs since 1729- Frederick could be approached directly and did sometimes initiate appointments to office, but Baltimore's instructions on policy and patronage were often in reality those of his uncle.

Calvert's unique knowledge and influence in Maryland affairs produced a centralization of control over patronage in London comparable to that which had occurred in the royal colonies. Deputy Governor Horatio Sharpe (1753-1768) complained that his subordination in matters of patronage to Secretary Calvert, who "loves to have all Applications [for major appointments] made to himself," undermined his influence in Maryland. Few officers, he wrote, felt indebted to him for their advancement. Those who secured Calvert's recommendation became Sharpe's enemies if not immediately provided for, and the governor's "inability to provide for" his friends damaged his prestige. Sharpe was long frustrated, for example, in his desire to secure a major appointment for his personal secretary, John Ridout, who had accompanied him to Maryland. The governor did often exert a powerful influence in the disposal of the principal offices, and he could fill lesser ones himself if not otherwise directed. But, through prone to overestimate his difficulties, Sharpe found his control of patronage sharply circ*mscribed from above.

Even so, provincial office-seekers assiduously courted the governor as the most available and one of the most important conduits to Lord Baltimore. In addition, applicants for lesser offices could sometimes succeed by secur- ing the support of provincial magnates who had the ear of the governor or of the Calvert circle in London. In 1756, for example, Sharpe wrote that four of the seven current Eastern Shore sheriffs had been appointed upon the recommendation of Colonel Edward Lloyd III, who as agent and receiver general headed the proprietary revenue system. Colonel Benjamin Tasker and "other Gentlemen of the Council" had been gratified in selecting several more sheriffs. While seeking to influence the governor, some members of his council also went over his head by corresponding directly with Cecilius Calvert. If Calvert did not order the desired appointment, he might recommend it to the governor. And his recommendations carried the greatest weight with Sharpe. The governor resented the London influence of these councilors, which interfered with his freedom of action in making appoint-

9 ments.

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 239

Just as gentlemen in the royal colonies cultivated any English connections who might influence ministerial appointments, so Marylanders sought the intercession of anyone who could put in a good word with Lord Baltimore and Secretary Calvert. Sharpe himself probably owed his governorship to the fact that his brother John had been one of Baltimore's guardians during His Lordship's minority. Another brother, Gregory, was chaplain to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and to the future King George III. Sharpe's colonial military experience as an army officer in the West Indies was no doubt an important qualification for his appointment as governor on the eve of the French and Indian War, but his family's influence surely determined which qualified hopeful went to Maryland.

Native Marylanders, too, depended heavily on "their Correspondents in London" to support their interests. The most successful of these correspondents, and the most frequently employed, were Osgood and Capel Hanbury leading London merchants in the Maryland tobacco trade. The Hanburys also acted as trustees for the provincial government's stock in the Bank of England, which furnished the backing for Maryland's paper money. Bal- timore himself, his secretary, the governor, the Hanburys, and councilors like Tasker and Lloyd are the only names that appear regularly as avenues to preferment in the 1750s and 1760s. Occasionally Baltimore was swayed by relatives, by influential political figures such as Lord Dartmouth, or by well-placed friends. But in general, English politicians and merchants other than the Hanburys had little influence. In addition, ambitious Marylanders visiting London took the opportunity to make personal contact with Secretary Calvert. At least one colonial magnate, Daniel Dulany, successfully undertook a personal mission to London to promote his interest at home.

Family and influence, however important, were not the only considera- tions in the disposition of His Lordship's patronage. The proprietaiy leaders usually kept in mind that the granting of offices was their most important tool in building support for Lord Baltimore's government and his personal interests in Maryland. Judicious use of the patronage, they hoped, could win the loyalty of leading families throughout the province, who in turn would use their local influence on His Lordship's behalf. Patronage might secure for the governor a staunchly supportive council and upper house of the provincial assembly, and might build a strong court party of officeholders, office-seekers, their relatives and friends in the elected lower house as well.

A court party did in fact emerge, centered in Annapolis and the older counties of the Eastern and lower Western Shores, but it proved an imperfect instrument of proprietary rule. The number of offices at Baltimore's disposal was not sufficient to ensure control of the lower house. In the period 1753-1763, the number of court delegates in the lower chamber varied fromalowof six of the fifty-eight members in 1754-1756 to

240 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

a high of twenty-six in 1758-1761. Moreover, many court supporters in both houses found that a challenge to Lord Baltimore's revenues or prerogatives could pose a dilemma of conflicting loyalties. By accepting a patronage position a colonial gentleman did not cease to be a colonial, nor did he necessarily lose sympathy for his neighbors' grievances against the proprietor. If gratitude and self-interest dictated loyalty to his patron, community interests, personal reputation, and private conviction could recommend the opposite. As a result, the court party proved uncertain

defenders of His Lordship's prerogatives. A second limitation of patronage as an instrument of government was that

it produced opponents as well as supporters. The Reverend Jonathan Boucher remarked that "placemen and their dependants took the part of Government, but were always opposed by a faction, whose leaders were instigated merely with the view of turning others out that they themselves might come in." Charles Carroll of Carrollton agreed that factions in Maryland arose from the same source as those in England: "the want of a sufficient number of lucrative offices to gratify the avarice or the ambition of the Outs." Though far from a complete explanation of the opposition country party's motives, this generalization possessed substantial validity. Colonel Edward Tilghman's removal as rent roll keeper of the Eastern Shore in 1755, for example, led immediately to his emergence as a party leader in the lower house. Sharpe often emphasized the political impact of Tilghman's dismissal, which gave the opposition "a Leader who together with a numerous Family...spared no Pains to impose on the People and make them jealous of all that were concerned in the Administration." Tilghman and his brother Matthew became so prominent in opposition that one contemporary referred to the country party as the "Tilghmanian Fauc- tion [sic]."1'

Conflicts over patronage also divided the court party internally. Edward Tilghman attributed his removal to the London influence of his cousin and immediate superior, Edward Lloyd, with whom he had quarreled. Tilghman had "no interest at home to countervail the Colonel's] Influence," illustrating again the importance of an English connection.

The most important rift in the court party in the 1760s was between Governor Sharpe and the second most powerful figure in the proprietary camp in Maryland, Daniel Dulany. Son of an Irish immigrant who rose from indentured servitude to wealth and high proprietary office, Dulany trained in the law at the Middle Temple. Sharpe was at first favorably impressed with his character and ability. The governor repeatedly urged his appointment to the council, which came in 1757. Dulany's rise was rapid. He became commissary general in 1759, exchanging that post for the choice position of deputy secretary to Cecilius Calvert in 1761.

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 241

By that time Sharpe wondered whether he had helped to create a monster. Secure in the favor of Calvert and fortified in London by the influence of his father-in-law, Benjamin Tasker, and of the Hanburys, Dulany as secretary had the power to appoint the county clerks, giving him a small patronage system of his own. So successful was he in seeking offices of profit for his numerous kin that Sharpe became uneasy about Dulany's power. Moreover, Dulany, together with his father-in-law and brother-in-law, tended to dominate the council around 1760, and not only because of their ability. All three lived in Annapolis, while several other councilors were frequently absent because of distance or illness. That was a problem, since Dulany behaved like an independent-minded ally rather than a creature of the proprietor. Sharpe believed that his taste for popularity made Dulany's reliability ques-

20 tionable. Dulany's personality also contributed to a clash with the governor. Sharpe

became convinced in 1760-1761 that Dulany was spurning him socially in an open challenge to his influence. Given the growing coolness between them, Dulany's conduct towards Sharpe may have been more a natural reaction than an intentional affront. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, too, found Dulany careless of social obligations and considered him "impatient of contradiction, imperious, decisive and dogmatical," though "fluent and persuasive."

As the conflict developed, Sharpe moved to check Dulany's influence on the council. In 1760 he was able to secure a seat on that body for his protege, John Ridout. The governor also counted on help from Attorney General Stephen Bordley, Dulany's leading rival in the Maryland bar. So little love was lost between the two lawyers that a mutual friend commented when Dulany was named to the council in 1757 that he hoped Bordley would find Dulany's promotion "more tolerable than an Invasion both by Sea and Land." Unfortunately, Bordley was incapacitated by paralysis in 1763 and died the followingyear. In 1760-1761 Sharpe also put his prestige squarely on the line to block the preferment of Dulany's brother Walter. Further favor to that family, he told Calvert, would be seen as an affront to him. Under- standably, Daniel's elevation to secretary early in 1761 was a blow to Sharpe's morale.

The climax of the quarrel came when Daniel Dulany embarked on a two-year trip to England in the summer of 1761. The ostensible reason for the voyage—his health—was at least partially valid. But the trip also allowed Dulany to press his interest directly with Calvert and perhaps with Lord Baltimore in person. It was widely rumored that "the great Man" intended to return to Maryland as governor, a report that Sharpe himself half believed.

Dulany probably did not entertain such high expectations, but he did succeed in impressing Calvert and solidifying his position. Calvert now

242 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

began to support Walter Dulany's cause. Yet Daniel's disrespect toward the governor clouded his otherwise bright prospects in London. After Dulany's return to Maryland in 1764, he and Sharpe called a truce; their subsequent relations were proper but never warm. Thus strife among Lord Baltimore's administrators, as well as rivalries among aspirants to office, split the court party and circ*mscribed the usefulness of patronage as an

instrument of proprietary influence. A final limitation on the effectiveness of patronage in building support for

Baltimore's government was a structural feature of the political system. The intervention of proprietary authority meant that the dominant social and economic elite of Maryland could never really control their province's public affairs, nor could they fully enjoy the political influence to which, they assumed, their social position entitled them. The resulting gap between the political power wielded by the gentry and their economic and social primacy—or at least the imperfect coincidence of political position and personal status in a society that assumed the two should be unitary—was an underlying factor in Maryland's political conflicts. It was natural for able and prominent colonists to resent the fact that access to the highest offices depended so largely on favor. Resentment was especially keen when favor was bestowed on an outsider who lacked an established social position in Maryland. Successfully opposing John Ridout's appointment as commissary general in 1762, the Dulanys sought public support in Maryland by protest- ing that Ridout was "an Interloper." It should "have been an insuperable Objection to his Promotion" that "he had no Family Connections in the Country nor large Estate here" and therefore "no Inducement to consult or promote the welfare.. .of the Province." Ridout's marriage into a prominent Maryland family later invalidated this argument in his case, but the same objections were raised to the preferment of Upton Scott, another Briton who had accompanied Sharpe to Maryland. In the eyes of the provincial gentry, the patronage system represented a perversion of the natural political order. That, to be sure, did not make the system itself a major issue in normal times, nor did it prevent gentlemen from seeking office, but the underlying tension was nevertheless quite real.

In Maryland as in the other colonies, then, patronage proved useful but inadequate as a mainstay of proprietary or royal power when the interests or desires of the colonists clashed with those of their English superiors. Everywhere in North America when such clashes arose, generations of assemblymen fought for the interests of the "country" against the governors and their "court" factions. In Maryland the points of contention between court and country involved the personal revenues as well as the powers of

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 243

the proprietor. Those revenues arose from a variety of sources: quit rents and fees for land sales, customs duties, fines and forfeitures in the courts of law, various license fees, and other miscellaneous items. The annual gross proceeds from all these sources were never less than £10,600 sterling after 1753, and reached a high of £19,000 in 1761. About £2,000 of the gross went for the salaries of the governor and certain revenue officers; most of the rest represented net personal income to Lord Baltimore. By way of comparison, Marylanders paid some £20,000 to £22,000 a year to support the appointive officers of government and the Anglican clergy, and (in 1768) £18,321 for all other costs of government. Lord Baltimore's personal revenues thus amounted to about one fourth of the combined total, representing a real drain on the resources of the province and an object of colonial resentment. Payments to the proprietor, his officers, and the clergy combined accounted for a sum equal to one-sixth of the total annual value of Maryland's exports. The proprietor's own officers grumbled that taxes were higher in Maryland

27 than in any other colony. Disputes involving the proprietary lands and revenues furnished the

major legislative issues of the 1750s and early 1760s. One such issue involved the journal of accounts, the vehicle for payment of the ordinary expenses of government. The journal failed to pass the upper house for ten years after 1756 because the lower house refused to include the salary due to the clerk of the governor's council. The countiy party leaders insisted that the clerk should be paid instead from Lord Baltimore's personal revenues. While the deadlock persisted, the delegates and other public creditors were kept waiting for their money.

Two other controversies of the 1750s were of long standing. One involved the renewal of an act to license "hawkers, pedlars, and petty chapmen." The question was whether the license fees and fines collected under the act should continue to go to Lord Baltimore, who claimed a hotly contested right to all fines and forfeitures, or whether they should be used for public purposes. A similar situation existed in regard to the licensing of ordinaries or taverns. In 1746 the proprietor had allowed the assembly to use the ordinary license fees as part of a fund to pay the expenses of an expedition against Canada during King George's War. The license fees still went into this fund in 1753, but the proprietor had not abandoned his claim to them. In 1754 Governor Sharpe was ordered not to allow the assembly to continue to deprive Baltimore of the fees after the 1746 act expired. Through these two unresolved questions the contest between the proprietor and his colonists first became entangled with the military requirements of the French and Indian War.

French activity in the Ohio Valley brought prospects of imminent action in the early spring of 1754. Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia asked Maryland for troops to join a Virginia expedition to secure the upper Ohio,

244 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

and the Board of Trade requested the province's participation in a conference with the Indians to be held in Albany, New York. Two sessions of assembly followed in short order, but funds were appropriated for only one of these objects.

The lower house at first unanimously refused even to consider raising soldiers for service in the west, on the grounds that no "invasion or hostile Attempt" had yet taken place and that the crown did not desire their exertion unless attacked. The delegates professed their willingness to aid in ensuring the loyalty of the Indians, but their proposal to finance the province's participation at Albany by appropriating the peddler's licenses for that purpose showed that gaining concessions from Lord Baltimore was closer to their hearts. When the upper house substituted a different method of finance the bill was lost. Failure on both counts required another session later in the spring. This time the lower house resolved to provide money for both purposes in a single bill, with funds to come from a variety of taxes, including the peddlers' and ordinary licenses and a tax on the offices of profit held by all patronage appointees. When this bill likewise proved unacceptable to the upper house, the assembly found money for the Albany conference in the provincial treasury. But any hope of raising troops had to be abandoned. The delegates simply saw no urgency in the situation. According to Sharpe, "Our people...seemed to think the Occasion of the present Dispute was who should possess Lands the Lord knows where by the Determination of which they would reap no Benefit seeing the Lands were already granted by his Majesty to the Ohio Company." That company was largely composed of Virginia land speculators, and Maryland, with no western land claims of its own involved, had no interest in the aggrandize- ment of Virginians.

The Virginia expedition of 1754 ended in disaster with Washington's surrender at Fort Necessity. As the news spread, creating great alarm among the frontier settlers, Maryland was at last aroused to action. Governor Sharpe, who had already summoned the assembly to meet in July, was pleased to find many of the delegates ready to vote defense appropriations "in any manner that the Government should think proper." But "some of the Leading Patriots" saw in the emergency an opportunity to win some of the points at issue with the proprietor. The people's representatives prepared a bill appropriating £6,000 for the defense of the colonies and aid to the Indians. Included among a list of taxes to be levied until that sum was returned to the treasury were the peddlers' and ordinary licenses.

The country leaders' calculation that concessions could be obtained proved correct. Faced with an emergency and finding his council inclined to yield the point, Sharpe disregarded his instructions and signed the bill. More than that the governor was not prepared to concede. When in Decem-

ber 1754 the delegates proposed to raise an additional £7,000 by continuing

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 245

the taxes levied in the July act, the upper house rejected the bill. Never- theless another precedent had been set.

The question of military appropriations was focused squarely on the disposal of the ordinary licenses by 1755. Again in February the lower house insisted on raising £10,000 by the same means as at the last session. The upper house would not agree, and the delegates, having passed resolutions supporting their position and complained to the governor about the attitude of the upper chamber, asked to be sent home.

By late spring the money granted for defense the previous year had run out. At the same time. General Edward Braddock was calling on Maryland to support his projected expedition against Fort Duquesne. The assembly met in June, and while it sat Indian raids in Frederick County spread panic and caused many frontiersmen to flee eastward for safety. Even so the impasse between the two houses persisted, through Sharpe reported that several of the councilors were wavering on the question of the ordinary licenses. Sharpe's prediction that nothing would ever be done unless the ordinary licenses were surrendered was proving accurate.

Braddock's defeat in July left the Maryland and Pennsylvania frontier completely exposed to the ravages of the French and Indians. The situation in western Maryland rapidly deteriorated as Indian raiding parties penetrated to within thirty miles of Baltimore. By August 1756 the back settlements beyond the town of Frederick were virtually abandoned. The two years following Braddock's defeat were the most critical period of the war for Maryland.

With support from the assembly at least temporarily out of the question, Sharpe moved energetically on his own to meet the crisis. In late 1755 and 1756 he called out units of the militia and raised more than £1,000 by popular subscription to maintain rangers on the frontier. These decisive actions, however, only increased the governor's difficulties with his legislative opponents. Countiy party delegates, according to Sharpe, were especially incensed over his subscription plan, arguing "that if the Governor should raise Money by such Methods they must not hope to have any more Assemblies convened but that the people must expect and obey Orders of Council and Ordinances instead of Laws made by their Representatives." The assembly had been bypassed, and that fact was interpreted as a threat to liberty.

Despite the critical state of the back countiy, seven months elapsed between sessions of assembly. Sharpe considered summoning the delegates again as early as August 1755, but thought better of it upon receiving word from Pennsylvania that that province's assembly had failed to agree on measures for prosecuting the war. The governor explained that since Maryland's assembly was "fond of following such Precedents.. .there is little

room for me to expect any thing from them were they to be convened."

246 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

The influence of Pennsylvania's example on Maryland's country party was a regular theme of Sharpe's correspondence during the rest of the war.

By 1756 the legislative picture had improved considerably. The Pennsyl- vanians, prodded by a body of indignant frontiersmen, had at last produced "such a Bill as the Governor was impowered to pass." And Maryland's governor was not empowered to make a vital concession. Lord Baltimore, upon learning of Braddock's defeat, had issued new instructions consenting to the temporary surrender of the ordinary license fees for the defense of the province. Maryland politicians of all stripes could now look forward to a session in which, as Edward Tilghman's brother remarked hopefully, "there will be nothing to quarrel about.' y

Such optimism proved exaggerated. A sizeable war appropriation was indeed passed, but only after a long dispute. The act provided £40,000 to be spent for the construction of Fort Frederick and defense of the Maryland frontier, for a projected conference with the southern Indians, and for a possible expedition against Fort Duquesne, with the money to be raised within five years by a variety of taxes. The scope of the project invited the lower house to go far beyond the now uncontested matter of ordinary licenses and explore new fields of taxation. Two of their ideas were particularly objectionable to the proprietary element. First, the delegates proposed a double tax on the property of Catholics, who were objects of deep suspicion to many in this war with a Catholic power. Ever since 1753 the lower house had been alarmed about the alleged threat posed by

Maryland's Catholic minority, who were said to be brazen in worshipping openly and keeping schools. But Governor Sharpe and his councilors saw no such threat, and the proposed double tax would violate a proprietary instruction. In the end, though, the proprietary element accepted the double tax on Catholics in order to get funds and to avoid the public onus of identification with an unpopular minority.

The other objectionable feature of the bill was a land tax that included the proprietary manors and reserved lands, an idea also being proposed in Pennsylvania. Having secured an exemption from the tax for unleased (and hence undeveloped) reserves and satisfactory concessions on other points, the upper house concurred. Sharpe, despite a letter from Secretary Calvert admonishing against precisely such a tax, was prevailed upon to accept the act. Backed by the calculations of agent Edward Lloyd, the governor explained that the proprietary land tax (estimated at £80 a year) would cost Lord Baltimore far less than he was losing through the interruption of western land sales and quit rent collection caused by the fighting on the frontier. The proprietor's financial interest as well as "the preservation of his Province" required the passage of the bill.

The act of 1756 was destined to be the last new military appropriation passed by the Maryland legislature during the war. Four defense bills did

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 247

indeed become law in subsequent sessions, but in each case funding was provided from unspent balances of the 1756 appropriation. By the time new taxes again became absolutely necessary, the country delegates had con- solidated their gains and were contemplating a new effort against the proprietary revenues. In the interval they had also begun to claim the power to control military operations through their control of finance. At the April 1757 session the lower house refused to pay any Maryland troops sent to garrison Fort Cumberland under orders from the British commander. Lord Loudoun. Though within the borders of Maryland, this fort was well beyond the frontier settlements, and the delegates believed that it contributed little to the defense of the province. The lower house did raise five hundred men to serve on the frontier, but sought with partial success to specify their deployment in the act. 1

The delegates' interference in troop dispositions was a challenge both to the governor's powers as commander of provincial forces and to the authority of the British crown itself. The lower house persisted in its refusal to assume any responsibility for Fort Cumberland, "a Step," Loudoun charged, "that tended to Subvert all Government, and at once to throw off all Submission to the...Mother Country." When Sharpe again called militia to the frontier in the winter of 1757, the delegates indignantly challenged his right to do so in the absence of actual invasion and resolved that militiamen who refused to serve under such circ*mstances could not be punished.

Sharpe had resorted to using the militia because he was again running out of funds to pay the troops in the west. And no help from the legislature was in sight. At the September session of 1757 the lower house passed a bill proposing to raise funds to prosecute the war "by an equal Assessment on all Estates real and personal, and lucrative Offices, and Employments." The plan embodied in the assessment bill, as it was called, was reaffirmed in its essentials for nine successive sessions and nine times rejected in the upper house. From 1757 through 1762, when the end of the war removed the occasion of controversy, the country party insisted on concessions that the proprietor would not make.

First and foremost, the lower house wished to tax the proprietor's undeveloped reserved lands and his quit rents. Lord Baltimore, acceding in 1756 to the tax of that year on his manors, had strictly instructed Sharpe not to allow the imposition to be extended to his quit rent revenues. Another tax on the officers of government and the clergy was disliked by the proprietary element but not strongly contested. The upper house, however, did vigorously object to continuing the double tax on the property of Catholics. Nor could they accept taxes on merchandise imported into the province for sale and on the personal property of nonresidents, which contained an obvious potential for trouble with British merchants and the

248 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

crown authorities in London. Finally, the lower house asserted its right to appoint tax assessors under the bill, a privilege they claimed on the grounds "that it is a right indisputable in the House of Commons." The proprietary element replied that the charter gave Lord Baltimore the power to nominate officers and that British Parliamentary practice was irrelevant. These main points at issue were constant throughout the protracted dispute. Daniel Dulany, who wrote all the upper house's messages relative to the successive bills, testified that "those Passages of the original Assessment, against which

our strongest objections were pointed, the Lower House literally transcribed into every subsequent Assessment Bill to the last."

In the view of the upper house, the delegates were demanding "Conces- sions which could not be made without introducing a new System of Government, and vesting almost an unlimited Power in the Lower House." Such concessions they would never make. When the country majority proved equally unyielding, action became impossible. The proprietary delegates in the lower house tried repeatedly to introduce substitute measures but at first could not obtain leave to bring in their bills. Their best effort came in 1762, when a relatively small bill including continued appropriation of the ordinary licenses failed by the narrow margin of twenty- four to twenty-two. Earlier the upper house had tried to accomplish something by originating a bill itself, only to have the act returned without debate as a money bill. In the course of the dispute the lower house again passed resolutions equating itself with the House of Commons, whose rights in regard to money bills "of Course rest in this House." The upper house argued that "all the Power.. .that we have or can exercise flows from the Charter, and Power when granted should be exercised according to the Restrictions and Limitations imposed by the Grantor." And there, in a nutshell, was the dilemma of Maryland's (and other colonies') institutional politics.

Beyond the obvious statement that after 1757 Edward Tilghman and his cohorts were more interested in reaping political advantages than in prosecuting the war, it is difficult to ascertain precisely the intentions of the country leaders. Governor Sharpe suggested a variety of possibilities.

The simplest explanation was that "the Majority of the House were entirely averse to giving Money." In the early years of the war they were induced "to grant Supplies by no other motive than Fear (our Frontiers being then laid waste and depopulated by the Savages)." But by the time the assessment bill was first introduced in 1757 the worst was over. The fall of Fort Duquesne in 1758 and the conquest of Canada in 1760 made sacrifices seem ever less necessary. The delegates merely went through the motions of introducing a bill that could not pass in order to shift the blame for inactivity "on those that rejected and not on those that had offered a Bill for His Majesty's Service."

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 249

In other letters, though, Sharpe asserted that the country party did have more positive objectives in mind. Finding Baltimore "too tenacious" on the ordinary licenses, "they.. .were determined to strip him as far as should be found practicable." Edward Tilghman "commenced a most flaming Patriot" after his dismissal, supplying energetic leadership, and "all who had been in any manner baulked or disappointed immediately joined the cry." The people "in general being Levellers in their Principles and impatient of Rule" responded well to the opposition. "The violent Proceedings of the Pennsyl- vania Assembly countenanced and encouraged ours." The Pennsylvanians, too, sought to tax proprietary lands and quit rents, and when Governor William Denny violated his instructions and conceded the point, Maryland's country party was heartened to keep up the struggle. "The truth is," Sharpe wrote, "that their Minds are infected with the Disputes of the Pensilvanians and Nothing less will content them than to be invested with all Powers of Government both Legislative and Executive." Or perhaps, as Sharpe also suspected, the lower house sought to "bring things into such Confusion as would render it absolutely necessary and expedient for the Crown to assume the Government."

In the absence of any testimony from the country leaders, it is difficult to determine how accurate Sharpe's evaluations were. Certainly there was no overt movement for a royal government. The assessment bill probably was first introduced as a serious effort to tap the proprietary revenues and gain power for the lower house. Aversion to taxation and the fact that Maryland with its fixed western boundary could gain no lands in the war helped suppress the rise of any strong war spirit and gave the lower house room to maneuver. But when the proprietor continued to stand firm and the war in America drew toward a close, the delegates surely realized that their opportunity might be slipping away. Yet there was no apparent attempt to compromise some points in order to win others. The bill as a device to avoid taxation and also escape censure becomes an entirely plausible idea. Per- haps the countiy party simply felt they could not lose by persistence: continued deadlock would avoid taxation without incurring effective retaliation; passage of the bill would bring concessions well worth the tax money involved.

Maryland's conspicuous failure to support the war effort, added to the country party's continuing assault on His Lordship's prerogatives, posed a serious problem for the proprietary leaders. In 1760 Cecilius Calvert, complaining that "scarce any one End of Government is answered" in Maryland, proposed a remedy to Sharpe: an elaborate scheme to use His

250 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Lordship's patronage more systematically to buy a majority in the lower house.

Calvert's plan rested on the assumption that Maryland's practical politics were similar enough to England's to be managed in the same way. The country party delegates in Annapolis, he believed, played by the same ground rules as the opposition in Parliament. "Whatever Noise and clamour may be raised under the appearance of consulting and promoting the Welfare and happiness of the people, by their Representatives, 19 in 20 of these in fact only consult and intend their own private interest; and therefore by throwing out a Sop in a proper manner to these Noisy animals it will render them not only silent, but tame enough.. .to follow any directions that may be.. .given them."

Calvert did not propose to win over the leaders of the opposition; the price would be too high, the probability of the turncoats'immediately losing their seats too great, and the example to others who might seek reward by making trouble too obvious. Rather, "I would take off their followers and leave the Leaders to Explain either alone or with so slender a Train as to prevent their doing any Mischief."

Getting down to specifics, Calvert proposed that the "Baits" for each county's four delegates should be the county offices of sheriff, farmer of the quit rents, deputy commissaiy, and deputy surveyor. "All these places," Calvert reasoned, "are considerable to the Middling sort of people, of whom the Lower House is composed, and might gain a great Majority of that House

by being properly applyed amongst them, their Brothers and Sons; besides Military commissions and those of Justice of the Peace without number, for others who may be lead by their vanity and fondness of making a figure and being vested with Power amongst their Neighbours." Sheriffs and farmers of the quit rents generally served for three years, the same term as the customary maximum between assembly elections. What could be simpler than to suggest quietly to a newly elected assemblyman that one of these plums would be waiting for him after three years of faithful service, and perhaps a deputy commissary or surveyorship for someone close to him as well?

By this means they.. .will be brought to Act as they ought, without any great apprehension of lossing [sic] the People's favour on another Election since as soon as they cease to be Assembly Men, they commence Sheriffs Farmers, etcetera And thus they will be made to Earn these Commissions before they have them, and they will be executing these commissions for three years, while others are in that House Earning the succession....By three years of this course of proceeding, it would be generally understood to be the Resolution of the Government (without its being mentioned, which it might not be proper to do) to bestow those places amongst the most deserving of that House, and when it once comes to be found that getting into that House and behaving there with

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 251

prudence and Moderation, is a certain and the only introduction to those Commissions, you will have People pushing to be chose with this very view.

Calvert's scheme of systematic corruption exposes the substance behind English Commonwealthmen's fears of a conspiracy against liberty on the part of the king's ministers. For that, in a Maryland context, is exactly what Calvert proposed. Fortunately for the proprietary government, his scheme did not become public knowledge. But everyone could see that patronage was the most important device used by British and proprietary ministers to organize and manage Parliament and the colonial assembly. With Parliament it worked, but the colonial lower houses remained unmanageable, and British Americans, far from the seats of imperial power and sometimes viewing the intrusion of crown or proprietary influence as an alien force, were naturally attracted to Commonwealth ideas as an explanation of apparent reality. The ideological groundwork for the imperial conflicts of the 1760s and 1770s was thus established.

Calvert's scheme was never implemented. Sharpe replied tactfully but firmly that it would not work. "I do not think," he wrote, "that all the offices which are in the Gift or Disposal of the Lord Proprietary.. .are sufficient to secure a Majority in the Lower House." The posts of deputy commissary and deputy surveyor were not lucrative enough to be attractive to most of the delegates, the latter required special skills, and these offices were at the disposal not of the governor but of the commissary general and surveyor general respectively. The job of farming the quit rents, at that time performed by the sheriffs, was so unattractive as to constitute "a Burthen rather than a Benefit." As for the sheveralties, most men would rather vote with the country party, stay in the assembly, and be poplar than vote with the court faction for three years, be sheriff for three years only, and be unpopular. Besides, any attempt to put the plan into execution would inevitab- ly provoke new cries of outrage from the opposition and the people in general.

The only Way then in my Opinion for His Lordship to obtain a solid and lasting Influence.. .is to appear steady and resolute, to reward as tar and as often as it is in his Power those who behave themselves well, but never bribe any of those who endeavour to carry their Points [of preferment] by Violence [in opposition] to desist or forbear; Let His Lordship and those in Authority under him pursue such Measures as they will always be able to justify and in the End I will engage that a vast Majority of the Upper Class of People will become Friends to His Lordship and well wishers to his Government

There was no final solution to the problem of popular opposition, but a

combination of firmness, justice, and the judicious use of the patronage was the best hope for Lord Baltimore.

252 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Though he believed Calvert's scheme impractical, Sharpe himself had been casting about for ways to deal with the country party. One suggestion, which was not adopted, was to extend the terms of the delegates beyond the customary three-year maximum. Longer terms, Sharpe hoped, would encourage more gentlemen to run for office by reducing "the Drudgery of Electioneering," resulting in fewer "Men of small fortunes no Souls and very mean Capacities appearing as Representatives." Another rule, already implemented, was to prevent the creation of any more new counties "because

every Division [of a county] by increasing the Number of Delegates, in- creases the number of opponents to the Goverment [sic]."

In 1757 and 1758, Sharpe proposed another solution to the immediate problem of wartime appropriations. Parliament should tax the colonies (a poll tax, he believed, would be best) or at least compel the colonial legislatures to raise a specified sum. Should that be done, he claimed, "the Upper Class of People among us and indeed all but a very few who desire to see every thing in Confusion would be veiy well satisfied."

Sharpe was not alone in recommending Parliamentary taxation of the colonies. The Board of Trade had suggested the idea several times. So had Governors Dinwiddie of Virginia and Robert Hunter Morris of Pennsylvania. For a time in the 1750s, Governors Sharpe, Dinwiddie, Morris, William Shirley of Massachusetts, George Clinton of New York, and Arthur Dobbs of North Carolina formed a loose network of friends and correspondents who cooperated with one another in local and trans-atlantic politics. Their connections in London were with the Duke of Bedford's faction and with the Earl of Halifax, head of the Board of Trade. Their alignment did not endure, and their policy suggestions bore no immediate fruit. But Sharpe's suggestion of Parliamentary taxation paralleled the thinking of an increasing number of British politicians. Implementation of that and other ideas for imperial reform injected a new and unsettling element into the familiar status quo of Maryland's late colonial politics, gave a new validity and immediacy to Commonwealth fears of ministerial tyranny, and put the province unknowingly on the road to revolution.

Thus the imperial crisis of the 1760s grew in part out of attempts to solve long-standing problems in Britain's colonial system. The French and Indian War dramatically exposed those difficulties and moved them to the fore in the eyes of the empire's administrators. Maryland's experience was part of the pattern. Clashes of interest and perspective between representatives of the proprietor and representatives of the people, the use of the patronage to bolster proprietary influence, and the impact of both issues and patronage in lending apparent validity to the theoiy of a conspiracy against liberty—all contributed to the explosions of the 1760s.

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 253

NOTES

1. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1967).

2. Ibid., pp. 121-22; Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1974), pp. 238-53-

3. Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1968), pp. 59-105. For a deeper social analysis of some relevance to Maryland, see T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985)

4. Donnell MacClure Owings, His lordship's Patronage: Offices of Profit in Colonial Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1953); Charles Albro Barker, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 148.

5. James Henretta, "Salutary Neglect": Colonial Administration under the Duke of Netvcastle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 142-43, 310; Stanley Nider Katz, Newcastle's New York: Anglo-American Politics, 1732-1753 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1968), pp. 50-54.

6. Barker, Background of Revolution, pp. 256-57. 7. Horatio Sharpe (hereafter Sharpe) to William Sharpe, 2 May 1756, to Cecilius

Calvert, 13 July 1776, and to W Sharpe, 13 July 1759; William Hand Browne et al, eds., Archives of Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883- ), 6:400-401, 454; 9:352.

8. Sharpe to Lord Baltimore, 13 July 1756, and to Calvert, 12 March 1755, 7 July 1760; ibid., 6:451, 184; 9:426.

9. Sharpe to W Sharpe, 13 July 1759; ibid., 9:352. 10. Ibid., 6:5; Lady Edgar [Matilda Ridout], A Colonial Governor in Maryland:

Horatio Sharpe and His Times, 1753-1773 (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912), pp. 2, 114,

11. Sharpe to Calvert, 26 October 1755, [December 1753], 12 March 1754, 1 July 1757, and to Baltimore, 30 June 1757; Hugh Hamersley to Sharpe, 20 July 1767, Archives, 6:302, 15. 184; 9:38, 35; 14:405, 407.

12. See, for example, Calvert to Sharpe, 16 December 1756; Sharpe to Hamersley, 28 May 1766; Hamersley to Sharpe, 12 March 1766, 28 March and 1 April 1768, ibid., 6:514; 14:307, 277, 475, 482.

13. Sharpe to Calvert, 1 July 1757, ibid., 9:40. 14. Aubrey C. Land, The Dulanys of Maryland . . . (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1955), pp. 236-43. 15. Archives, 55:xxxii; Alison Gilbert Olson, Anglo-American Politics 1660-1775;

The Relationship Between Parties in England and Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p- 110 n.8.

16. Jonathan Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist, ed. Jonathan Boucher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), pp. 68-69; Charles Carroll of Carrollton to [Edmund?] Jenings, 23 November 1765, Thomas Meagher Field, ed.. Unpublished

254 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Letters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of His Father, Charles Carroll of Doughoregan (New York: U.S. Catholic Historical Society, 1902), pp. 98-99

17. Baltimore, instructions to Sharpe, 22 August 1755, Black Books, 11:31, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis; Calvert to Sharpe, 13 May 1755; Sharpe to Baltimore, 13 July 1756, to Calvert 16 October 1756, and to W Sharpe, 8 July 1760, Archives, 6:206, 449-50, 499; 9:440; Alexander Williamson to Upton Scott, 5 April 1762, Howard Papers, MS 469, Maryland Historical Society Baltimore (hereafter MdHS).

18. Edward Tilghman to Stephen Bordley 12 and 22 December 1753, 13 January 1754, and James Tilghman to Bordley 13 January 1754, Bordley-Calvert Papers, MS 82, MdHS.

19. Sharpe to Calvert, 20 and 26 October 1755, Archives, 6:296-97, 302; Calvert to Daniel Dulany (hereafter Dulany), 17 April 1754, Dulany Papers, MS 1265, MdHS.

20. Sharpe to Calvert, 27 March 1760, 19 April 176\, Archives, 9:389, 499; Calvert to Sharpe, 16 January 1765, The Calvert Papers, Number Two (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1894), pp. 249-50.

21. Sharpe to Calvert, 4 May 1760, 19 April 176\, Archives, 9:401, 498-99; Carroll of Carrollton to Charles Carroll of Annapolis, 14 November, and 26 April 1762, 31 January 1763, Carroll Papers, MS 206, MdHS.

22. Sharpe to Calvert, 27 March and 7 July \760, Archives, 9:389, 426; J. Tilghman to Bordley, 23 July 1757, Bordley-Calvert Papers, MS 82, MdHS; Owings, His Lordship's Patronage, p. 132.

23. Sharpe to Calvert, 4 May 1760, 19 April 1761, Archives, 9:401, 498-99. 24. Sharpe to W Sharpe, 4 August 1761, ibid., 533; Edmund Key to Upton Scott, 8

August, 1761, Howard Papers, MS 469, MdHS; Carroll of Annapolis to Carroll of Carrollton, 17 September 1761, Carroll-McTavish Papers, MS 220, MdHS.

25. Land, Dulanys of Maryland, pp. 238-41; Dulany to Calvert, 10 September 1764, Calvert Papers No. 2, pp. 228-30.

26. Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), pp. 75-80, 145; Sharpe to Calvert, 15 February 1762, 8 May 1764, and Calvert to Sharpe, 10 March 1764, Archives, 14:22-23, 159, 143. 27. Barker, Background of Revolution, pp. 140-44, 148, 150; Aubrey C. Land,

Colonial Maryland: A History (Millwood, N.Y: KTO Press, 1981), p. 222; Dulany to Calvert, 10 September 1764, Calvert Papers No. 2, pp. 240-41.

28. Newton D. Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietary Province (New York: Mac- millan, 1901), pp. 362-69.

29. Baltimore, instructions to Sharpe, 17 April 1754, Calvert Papers, MS 174, MdHS. The lower house estimated the ordinary license fees at £640 per annum, taut Secretary Calvert revealed in 1756 that they actually brought in nearly twice as much; Calvert to Sharpe, 9 March \75<3, Archives, 6:368.

30. Proceedings of the Lower House of Assembly (hereafter Proc. LHA), 26 Februaiy \754, Archives, 50:408-12. 31. Proc. LHA, 28 February, 5 and 7 March 1754, Proceedings of the Upper House

of Assembly (hereafter Proc. UHA), 7 March 1754, ibid., pp. 415, 418, 425-26, 403. 32. Proc. LHA, 14-16, 27 May 1754; Proc. UHA, 29-30 May 1754, ibid., pp. 478-83,

503-5, 462-63, 465-67; Sharpe to John Sharpe, 19 April 1755, ibid., 6:197-98.

Patronage, Politics, and Ideology 255

33. Sharpe toj. Sharpe, 19 April 1755, to Calvert, 8 August 1754, 12 January 1755, and to Baltimore 12 January 1755, ibid., 6:199, 88-89, 162, 158.

34. Proc. UHA, 10, 19, and 24 March 1755; Proc. LHA, 14, 21, 25, and 26 March 1755, ibid., 52:12-13, 34-35, 42, 77-80, 94-96, 101-3. 35. Sharpe to Robert Dinwiddie, 8June 1755, ibid., 52:121-22, 149-50; Sharpe to

J. Sharpe, 28June, 19 April 1755, ibid., 6:235, 202. 36. John T. Schad, History of Western Maryland (Philadelphia: L. H. Evarts, 1882),

1:92-98. 37. Sharpe to Calvert, 11 August and 15 July \775, Archives, 6:262, 251- 38. Sharpe to Dinwiddie, 23 August, 1755, ibid., p. 271. 39. Sharpe to Calvert, 5 January 1756, ibid., p. 336; Baltimore, instructions to

Sharpe, [September?] 1755, Calvert Papers, MS 174, MdHS; J. Tilghman to Bordley, 28 January 1756, Bordley-Calvert Papers, MS 82, MdHS.

40. Sharpe to W Sharpe, 2 May 1756, and to Calvert, 27 May 1756, Archives, 6:399, Aiy-ll-^Tiiker, Background of Revolution, pp. 240-41, Land, Dulanys of Maryland, pp. 224-25.

41. Proc. LHA, 2 May 1757, ibid., pp. 55-85. 42. Lord Loudoun to Sharpe, 3 November 1757, ibid., 9:98-99, Proc. LHA, 8 May

1758, ibid., 55:671-72; Mereness, Maryland as Proprietary, p. 101. 43. Baltimore, instructions to Sharpe, 16 December 1756, Black Books, 11:40, Md.

Hall of Records. 44. Texts of three of the assessment bills are available: Archives, 55:707-50,

56:263-305, 58:523-72. The best exposition of the points at issue is found in the assembly proc. March session 1758: Proc. UHA, 18 April, 4 May, and Proc. LHA, 26 April, Archives, 55:480-91, 499-519, 621-33- On the debt question, see also Andrew Burnaby, Travels through North America (London: T. Payne, 1775), pp. 39-40.

45. Dulany to Calvert, 10 September 1764, Calvert Papers No. 2, p. 232. 46. Proc. UHA, 4 and 13 May 1758; proc. LHA, 19 April 1762, Archives, 55:501,

543-45; 58:146-47. 47. Proc. LHA, 9 May 1758; Proc. UHA, 4 May 1758, ibid., 55:674-77, 501. 48. Sharpe to Baltimore, 10 March 1758, 4 May 1760, and to Jeffrey Amherst, 10

April 1760, ibid., 9:147, 397, 393. 49. Sharpe to W Sharpe, 8 July 1760, to Calvert, 18 April 1759, 14 May 1758, and

to Baltimore, 14 May, 3 November 1758, ibid., pp. 440, 328-31, 179, 177-78, 295. 50. Mereness, Maryland as Proprietary, p. 317. 51. Calvert to Sharpe, 17 March \160, Archives, 9:375-87. 52. Sharpe to Calvert, 7 July 1760, ibid., pp. 423-35. 53. Sharpe to Baltimore, 6 June 1754; Calvert to Sharpe, 17 March 1760, ibid.,

6:68, 9:381. 54. Sharpe to Loudoun, 15 November 1757, and to Calvert, 9 November 1757, 10

July 1758, ibid., 9:105, 100, 232. 55. Olson, Anglo-American Politics, pp. 148-53.

Allen C. Redwood and Sophie Bledsoe Herrick: The Discoveiy of a Secret, Significant

Relationship

STEPHEN DAVIS AND ROBERT POLLARD III

One of the most important illustrators of the Civil War, Allen Christian Redwood, was born 19 June 1844 at his grandfather's plantation in Lan- caster County, Virginia. He was educated at several Baltimore academies and a polytechnic institute in Brooklyn. There his studies, which may have included some training in art, were cut short by the outbreak of war. In July 1861, having just turned seventeen, Redwood enlisted in a local company, the "Middlesex Southrons," which became a part of the 55th Virginia Infantry. He fought with Lee's army during its campaigns of 1862-63, suffered slight wounds at Mechanicsville, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and was briefly a prisoner after Second Manassas. Transferred to the 1st Maryland Cavalry in January 1864, Redwood ended the war as a clerk on the staff of Confederate Maj. Gen. Lunsford Lomax.

After the war Redwood opened an art studio in Baltimore, gave lessons, and illustrated books. Probably his first published work appeared in Isaac W. K. Handy's United States Bonds, a prison memoir printed in Baltimore in 1874. Redwood's big break, however, came from Scribner's Monthly, which published an illustrated article by him in 1878. More writing and illustrating followed for the magazine, which changed its name to Century in 1881. A few years later, between 1884 and 1887, Century's enormously popular series, "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," established Redwood as a major national illustrator. He contributed over fifty drawings for the series—work that is well known to this day through its wide republication.

Students of Civil War art have been unable to explain how a young artist in Baltimore, without connections outside his city's artistic community, made the important leap to the team of talented illustrators Scribner's-Cen- tury employed in New York. Redwood's work was certainly good, but then as now success and advancement hinged at least in part upon "connections"—especially for an ex-Confederate soldier trying to win fevor among

Mr. Davis, a book review editor for Blue & Gray magazine, completed a doctorate in history

at Emory University. He has collaborated with Mr. Pollard of Atlanta on other articles.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 256

VOL. 85, NO. 3, FALL 1990

A Secret, Significant Relationship 257

This photograph of Allen C. Redwood, taken during his service with the 55th Virginia In- fantry, from which he transferred in January 1864, was used to identify the self-portrait in the print, "Don't Turn That Thing Loose, Hit's Dangeous." Review of Reviews, 44

N C. Rl HI " S

New York editors in the years following the war. Who was Allen Redwood's "connection?"

In August 1983 the authors discovered the possible answer while explor- ing a group of letters in the possession of the Rev. Robert Pollard III, great-nephew of the artist. For years the correspondence, stored in a wooden box, remained in the attic of A. C. Redwood's niece, Gladys Redwood Pollard of Asheville, North Carolina. Family members generally referred to the letters addressed to Redwood as those from "Uncle Allen's sweetheart," but apparently they made no serious attempt to identify the woman who had written them.

Our examination led to the discoveiy that Allen Redwood's "sweetheart" during the 1870s in Baltimore was Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, daughter of the prominent Southern editor Albert Taylor Bledsoe. Born 26 March 1837, Sophie received her education at schools in Ohio, where her father at various times served as an Episcopal minister, mathematics teacher, attorney, and journal editor. In I860 she married the Rev. James B. Herrick, but the relationship ended in separation. In 1868 she moved with her two children, Louise and Albert, to live with her father in Baltimore. There she began writing scientific and literaiy articles for various magazines, especially the Southern Review, which her father had founded injanuaiy 1867 as a literaiy champion of the South. Mrs. Herrick became its associate editor in 1874. During the 1870s she also contributed regularly to Scribner's Monthly, particularly to a column of advice for women, "Home and Society." After her father's death in December 1877, Sophie carried on the editorship of

258 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Southern Review until early 1879, when she relinquished it and moved to New York to join the sta.ii ot Scribner's. She eventually became an assistant editor for the magazine, winning a reputation as a skillful judge of manuscripts.

Sophie Herrick thus was well placed to assist a budding young artist in Baltimore during the 1870s. Her voluminous correspondence with Red- wood, extending throughout the decade, suggested an intriguing relationship. Most letters were unsigned or closed with an initial. Perusing them for

two nights in August 1983, we came upon the occasional signature of "Sophie" and "Sophie B. Herrick"; we found references to Baltimore, "father," and "the Review." One of her letters was on Southern Review stationery with Albert T. Bledsoe's printed name.

Sophie met Redwood in the summer of 1870, apparently while Allen instructed her in art. (In a letter dated 17 August 1870, she referred to her "next lesson.") A brotherly-sisterly fondness was quite apparent in the earlier letters—she signed one missive, "Your loving sister Sophie." But judging from Sophie's fervid expressions of love and her references to Allen's equally intimate conversations and letters, their relationship developed into strong romantic love. "I give you the best love I have to give," Sophie wrote Allen in January 1872, "not because you want it, or need it, or ask for it, but because you command it, by what I see in you." "I love you dearly," she wrote in July 1873- "You seem like a very dear brother to me. The belief in your affection for me is one of the loveliest consolations I can feel."

They apparently visited each other, but they did so either infrequently or somewhat surreptitiously. On 9 December 1870, Sophie wrote: "Do you remember saying last summer in a very delicate way 'that it behooved' you to be on your guard or your friendship for me might place me in a very painful position. There are plenty of people in the world who rejoice in saying ill-natured things against a woman....! am ashamed to think, after your innumerable kindnesses, and the delicate unobtrusive way in which they were offered, (in such a way that I felt free to accept or not as seemed wisest) that I now have to say I must resign what has been almost the sole pleasure in a very weary life. 1 think you would better not come to give me any more lessons, or come here very often to see me...." In another note she cautioned him: "For fear you did not notice the few words on the piece of paper wrapped around the letter sent you Sunday I will repeat them. Come on Thursday evening. Come, however, in from Ross St. and if there should be a light directly in my window—a drop light standing on the sill—do not ring—it is barely possible I may be prevented from seeing you...." At one point Sophie even worried about writing Allen so frequently, lest someone should find out: "Does it create any remark, my writing to you, or does any one know it? 1 know how common it is in many families for letters to pass under inspection I mean the outside of them of course, before

A Secret, Significant Relationship 259

"Johnny, when inwinterquarters, was sometimes afflicted with ennui, and, in default of other antagonist [sic], was forced into systematic devices for the killing of time. Snow-ball battles, between whole brigades, arrayed in line, and with colors flying, were frequent." This Allen C. Redwood print illustrated his Scribner's Monthly 17 (1878) article (p. 33), "Johnny Reb at Play." (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.)

being delivered to their respective owners. I thought of sending this by Albert but did not know which was best."

Why did Sophie feel compelled to restrict or hide the relationship? We found the answer in a highly significant undated letter.

I received yesterday a letter from my brother-in-law, informing me that Mr. H. my husband, wished to communicate with me. He declined signing the papers submitted to him because he said he had something better to propose. He wrote me in full & I received the letter containing the proposition this morning. He wishes me to get a divorce. My reasons for not doing so before have been various. At first, when I took my separation papers in preference to a divorce, I was still feeling too keenly to endure the thought of publicity. Then 1 always had a horror of the very word divorce, it has been so associated with painful things that I could not bear the thought. Even now, the prejudice is so strong in my mind, that if I know a woman is divorced, I feel an instinctive shrinking from her. I thought my papers had secured to me all that a divorce would, except the privilege of marrying again....

It has strangely upset me, this miserable raking among the ashes of what was my life once, and now that it has all been stirred up again and I have faced the

260 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Redwood drew "Don't Turn That Thing Loose, Hit's Dangerous" from his recollection of an incident that occurred during his service in the 1st Maryland Infantry. The figure on the horse is believed to be a sell-portrait; it closely resembles a photograph of Redwood taken during the Civil War. Fi-om"}ohnnyRebMViay,"Sc>-ihner'sMonthlv, 17 (1878):35. (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.)

situation I feel that I should be glad to cast off this mockery which I have held to with a sort of superstition. I know why I am held to it—just because a vow is an awful, solemn thing to me—I made the most solemn vow before God, in the most perfect good faith, thinking that to "love, honor, and obey" would be more than easy. Under the severest stress, I do not think I can forget the pledge I had taken And this now holds me still in one sense "until death do us part" means just one thing to me, I made no provisos.

Mrs. Herrick, then, had preferred legal separation from her husband, rather than divorce. Having taken the holy vow of matrimony "until death do us part," Sophie felt she could neither remarry nor even entertain an open relationship with another man. Under the strain of these prohibitions, Sophie's and Allen's love for one another cooled. While there is evidence that the two remained as friends after Sophie moved to New York, it is clear that their strong feeling for one another had ended well before the late 1870s.5

A Secret, Significant Relationship 261

It is nonetheless equally clear that Sophie helped Allen considerably in his early literary efforts. When they met in 1870, he had already won local recognition as an artist, as evidenced by his membership on the board of directors of the Maryland Academy of Art—a group that included noted illustrator Adalbert Volck, poet Innes Randolph, and engraver John W Torsch. Redwood, however, sought recognition as a writer, as well as illustrator, and in his literary endeavors he was counseled by Mrs. Herrick. After Allen received a rejection from Harper's for an article that she may

have forwarded herself to New York, Sophie wrote, "The enclosed note from the Harper's will not be a greater disappointment to you than it was to me. I am very, very, very, sorry. You can write if you will—if you will be terse, you can be graphic, and pathetic, when you recount anything you have seen or heard. I want you so very much to succeed, and I believe you can."

Sophie went so far as to critique Allen's drafts, and encouraged him to submit pieces to Scribner's. About one of his manuscripts she wrote:

I have just finished reading your article for the first time. I want to read it again to mark those places where it seems to me changes might be made....I think there are places where you could condense with advantage and wherever you can it would be well to do so. This article as it stands would make ten pages of Scribner apart from the sketches and they do not like articles so long as that... .1 have many MSS. to read, and many to prepare for the press, and very few indeed seem to me so good as this. I think your style is very much better than my own, but you write empirically, and perhaps are not quite so sure of the why & the wherefore as I must be to criticize so I do not mean to assume anything in criticizing tho' that's what you gave it to me for and 1 do not need to apologize. Do you know how happy it would make me if I could help you?

Help she did. Mrs. Herrick's role at Scribner's unquestionably gained a more cordial evaluation for Redwood's initial submissions than they would otherwise have received. Thus A. C. Redwood broke into print in the November 1878 Scribner's Monthly with "Johnny Reb at Play," based on the author's reminiscence of Confederate service and accompanied by some of his drawings. Four more articles of the same format followed during 1879-81 in an informal series Scribner's called the "Johnny Reb Papers." National publication of his work secured Redwood's reputation as Con- federate illustrator. Commissions from authors and publishers soon followed, including the famed "Battles and Leaders" series.

Might Allen Redwood have won acceptance in New York, especially as soon as he did, without Sophie Herrick as his "contact" with Scribner's? We cannot be certain; the impact on Redwood's career of his relationship with Sophie remains somewhat in question. But the evidence of their romantic involvement with one another does not.

262 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

NOTES

1. Stephen Davis, "A. C. Redwood and the Confederate Image," Civil War Times Illustrated, 23 (October 1984): 30-36. Information on Redwood is sketchy and must be gathered from a variety of sources. Most authoritative is Redwood's obituary in the Asheville Citizen, 26 December 1922, which was written by his brother Henry. Also helpful is Richard Walsh and C. A. Porter Hopkins, "Cover Picture: Allen C.

Redwood, Confederate Illustrator," Maryland Historical Magazine, 54 (1959): 293-94, for which the artist's nephew; John Redwood, Jr., of Baltimore served as corroborator. Frederic Ray, "Forgotten Artist of the Confederacy," Civil War Times

Illustrated, 3 (June 1964): 41-43, relies mainly on Walsh and Hopkins. See also Redwood's obituary in Confederate Veteran, 31 (1923): 67.

2. Isaac W K. Handy, United States Bonds; or Duress by Federal Authority: A Journal of Current Events During an Imprisonment of Fifteen Months, at Fort Delaware (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874). The Maryland Historical Society possesses fifteen of the Redwood drawings that eventually appeared in United States Bonds. On the Century series, with particular mention of Redwood's art for it, see Stephen Davis, "'A Matter of Sensational Interest': The Ceniury Battles and

Leaders Series," Civil War History, 27 (1981): 338-49- 3- Mrs. S. Bledsoe Herrick, "Personal Recollections of My Father and Mr. Lincoln

and Mr. Davis," Methodist Review, 64 (1915). 679n.; Harry E. Pratt, "Albert Taylor Bledsoe: Critic of Lincoln" (undated typescript, Emory University Library); Arthur John, The Best Years of the Century: Richard Watson Gilder, Scribner's Monthly,

and Century Magazine, 1870-1909 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), pp. 20, 116. Robert Underwood Johnson, famous for his role in editing the "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War" series for Century, termed Mrs. Herrick "one of the wisest and best women I ever knew" and "an intellectual woman of keen literary percep- tions and of scientific training and cast of mind" (Johnson, Remembered Yesterdays

[Boston:.Little, Brown & Co., 1923], pp. 121, 126). 4. Sophie Bledsoe Herrick to Allen C. Redwood, 12 January 1872; 22 July 1873; 9

December [1870]; 5 September 187]?]; and undated, in the possession of Robert Pollard III of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire.

5 • Throughout his long and illustrious career Allen Redwood remained a bachelor; Sophie Herrick never remarried. The story of their furtive relationship, long un- disclosed, was made public in Davis's article on Redwood for Civil War Times

Illustrated in October 1984. Since then. Redwood's relationship with Mrs. Herrick has been accepted and publicized by more recent scholarship. Mark E. Neely, Jr., Harold Holzer and Gabor S. Boritt, The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), speaks of Redwood's "well-documented romantic interest" with Sophie Herrick (p. 214). Save for the Herrick-Redwood correspondence reprinted here, the documentation has never been published.

6. Among the Redwood-Herrick letters is Redwood's invitation, dated 26 April 1870, to a meeting of the academy board. Dr. Adalbert Volck, a Baltimore dentist, rendered a number of anti-Northern political cartoons during the war. Innes

A Secret, Significant Relationship 263

Randolph, an ex-Confederate major in Stuart's cavalry, wrote "I'm a Good Old Rebel," a bitter but humorous postwar poem about Southern defeat. John W Torsch had served as Confederate captain, and commanded the 2d Maryland Infantry at the time of Appomattox. He was apparently an engraver, as woodcuts of figures in the first edition of William Goldsborough's The Maryland Line (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet and Co., 1869) show "Torsch and Rea."

7. Sophie Herrick to Allen Redwood, lOApril 187[?]; 2 February 18[?]. The second letter appears to have been written after Mrs. Herrick moved to New York to join the Scribner's staff. A colleague, Frank Tooker, recalled, "prose articles and stories were sent to Mrs. Sophie Bledsoe Herrick and on their return from her, with criticisms attached to each, these also came to my desk" (L. Frank Tooker, The Joys and Tribulations of an Editor [New York: Century Co., 1923], p- 62).

8. Besides "Johnny Reb at Play" in5cr?fenc?r'i-Mo«^/7/y, 17 (November 1878): 33-37, Redwood's four other articles for the series are "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Co. 'C,'" 17 (February 1879): 528-36; "With Stonewall Jackson," 18 (June 1879): 22-23; "The Cook of the Confederate Army," 18 (August 1879): 560-68; and "A Boy in Gray," 22 (September 1881): 641-50. An example of a writer's request for Redwood's illustrations is William M. Owen's correspondence with the artist in 1884. Owen, a former Confederate officer, was preparing a book on the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. "I am still desirous to have you aid me with your pencil," he wrote Redwood, "for it will have great weight...If I could put the MS in your possession, you could find plenty of subjects" (Owen to Redwood, 17 August 1884 and 6 November 1884, Allen Christian Redwood Papers, Museum of the Con- federacy, Richmond). Redwood's illustrations may be found in Owen's work. In Camp and Battle with the Washington Artillery of New Orleans (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1885).

Bookplates in Baltimore

MADELEINE DOYLE

When books were in manuscript form their uniqueness assured the owner's identity. The introduction of the printing press in the fifteenth century multiplied the number of books and also stimulated borrowing among the literate. Book owners soon discovered the necessity of identifying their volumes. Though simple at first, soon plates became status symbols, bearing coats of arms and images of war and valor unconnected to the book's value. Working in various genres, artists like Dtirer and Holbein designed remarkable bookplates.

Early settlers brought the overly-ornate standard to America with them, but soon the prevailing spirit of freedom modified the format with variations never seen in Europe. Paul Revere and Nathaniel Hurd pioneered American bookplates. Designed between 1765 and 1775 with the motto "Exitus Acta Probat," George Washington's plate of unknown origin could have been a gift, in which case the patriot, fully occupied with military affairs, probably had little choice in the design of an armorial shield surmounted by a laurel wreath, a coronet, and a dove—symbols of British royalty already in popular disfavor. This plate eventually attracted wide interest not only because of the eminence of the man but because of its scarcity. It became the only American bookplate worth counterfeiting. Later American plates demonstrated the development of theme and style as well as the decline of interest in lineage. Theme-bearing designs spoke to the value of the book as an instrument in man's reach toward infinity. One of the finest American plates, that of Oliver Wendell Holmes, bore a simple drawing of a chambered nautilus and Holmes's motto, "Per ampliora ad altiora" through growth toward enlightenment.

A 1909 article in the Baltimore Sun stated that "Baltimore artists who are conspicuous just now in bookplate designing are J. Carroll Lucas, Alfred J. Groot, [and] Howard Sill, though James Doyle, Jr. has done some good work.... Doyle's Mencken plate shows a modern trend." The phrase, "has done some good work" implies that Doyle had executed more than one plate by 1909, but only the Mencken specimen seems to have survived from

Sister Madeleine Doyle recently published a book of her father's complete drawings,

bookplates, and other art work. The illustrations in this article are bookplates from the Doyle

family collection.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 264

VOL. 85, NO. 3, FALL 1990

Bookplates in Baltimore 265

H. L. Mencken bookplate. Doyle's work for Mencken reflects the Baltimore news- paperman's lifelong affair with the written word.

Jstm Martin Hammsnd]

John Martin Hammond Bookplate, n.d. Hammond (1886-1939), a chemist and pioneer in the development of color photography, had an interest in history and authored Colonial Mansions of Maryland

and Delaware.

George A. Colston bookplate, n.d. Colston (1876-1935), a graduate of Yale, was a prominent Baltimore banker and invest- ment broker who lived in the prosperous Baltimore neighborhood of Guilford. His professional interests are reflected in the lower left-hand corner of Doyle's print.

g^^gg^g %

Warren Wilmer Brown bookplate, n.d. Brown (1884-1946), a strong supporter of the arts and founder and editor of The Roland Park Company's , Gardens, Houses and People, spent eighteen years on the staff of the Baltimore News, his tenure there overlapping with Doyle's.

266 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

W S. Galloway bookplate, 1924. Galloway (n.d.-1948) was a long-term resident of Gibson Island and a purchasing agent for the B & O Railroad, whose obituary referred to him as an ardent yachtsman. This maritime interest is reflected in Doyle's work for him.

the first decade of the century. Doyle designed it in 1901 when he and Mencken worked together for the Baltimore Morning Herald. Additional evidence that Doyle designed the Mencken plate (signed "J.D.") turned up in the Edith Rossiter Bevan collection of bookplates, an album containing about 3,500 plates, many from Baltimore. They typically focus on the theme of a journey or a search into widening realms of thought through reading— the best simply expressed by an open door or window, a bend in a road or river, or a distant vista attracting the reader's approach. Doyle's contem-

Bookplates in Baltimore 267

poraries employed this theme; they included John McGrath, painter and etcher; Howard Sill, architect; Rachel Hawkes and Grace Turnbull, sculptresses; and Alfred Grootand Carroll Lucas, newspaper artists. Doyle's own work, prominent in the Bevan collection, compares well with that of his colleagues. Though not harnessed by a format, American as well as Baltimore bookplates seemed to argue for "an expression of a genuine, worthy idea in a suitable form."

In 1908 Doyle became a member of the Baltimore A'eM'.s art staff, and after instruction in etching under the guidance of Gabrielle Clements began in 1910 to free-lance, producing etched compositions of landscapes, portraits, and bookplates.

A market existed for bookplates because reading in the early twentieth century offered an important form of home entertainment. With economic prosperity, home libraries expanded. So did the embellishment of books, which brought leather bindings, gilt-edged pages, embossed titles, and uniquely designed bookplates. As Doyle's talent matured, his work acquired a gem-like, luminous quality expressed appropriately in bookplates—miniature art expressing through symbols man's quest for understanding.

NOTES

1. Fridoffjohnson, "The Art of the Bookplate," i4/wer?c«wAm'sf, 29 (1965): 48-53 2. F. S. Mathews, The Writing Table of the Ttventieth Century (New York;

Brentano's, 1900), p. 111. 3- Charles Dexter Allen, American Bookplates and a Guide to Their Study (New

York: Hacker Art Books, 1968), pp. 92-97. 4. Ibid., pp. 98-99. 5. William Stump, "Sudden Interest in Bookplates," Baltimore Sun, 28 March 1909- 6. Edith Rossiter Bevan Collection of Bookplates (1939), Maryland Department,

Enoch Pratt Free Library. 7. Allen, American Bookplates, p. 358.

The Charcoal Club of Baltimore—^A Retrospect

BARCLAY BROWNE

When the Charcoal Club of Baltimore celebrated its one hundredth an- niversary in 1983, it probably bore a closer resemblance to the club when it was founded than it had in the whole of the intervening period.

In the winter of 1883-84 a group of young Baltimore artists who wished to draw from the nude, but had found it impossible to do so in the existing

art schools, formed a group for this purpose. They established a studio on Fayette Street, east of Charles Street, in a decaying residential area of the city where they met once a week.

Before long the artists began inviting guests and providing refreshments, and the meetings took on a social as well as a professional function. Among the founders was Adalbert J. Volck, the dentist, artist, and sculptor who is perhaps best known for his savage caricatures of Lincoln during the Civil War. (One frequently reproduced cartoon depicted the President-elect peering apprehensively from the door of a railway car on his way through Baltimore in April 1861, when there were rumors of a plot to assassinate him.) Volck's thirst—as well as his sense of whimsy—led to an important early tradition. Dissatisfied with the pitchers the members used to fetch their beer from nearby taverns, he designed a beer growler of hammered brass, lined with silver, with a nude girl modeled in silver perched on the rim. The growler was then crafted by William F. Jacobi, the silversmith. When Volck presented the growler to the group, it was immediately filled with beer from a nearby saloon, and everybody took a drink. Members of the club have done so at their annual dinners ever since, except that nowadays they fill the growler from bottles.

The growler, one of the club's most cherished possessions, has a history of its own. During a party at the club sometime during the twenties, the growler disappeared. "Club members and the police searched for months for the pitcher, without results. Two years later, a clerk at the Hotel Belvedere found the pitcher in a hotel safe. The growler was returned to the club amidst much jubilation, but the mystery of its travels was never solved."

The single room on Fayette Street quickly proved too small, and in 1884 the group, which had originally called itself The Sketch Club, moved to new

Mr. Browne, secretary of the Charcoal Club, has been a member for more than twenty years.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 268

VOL. 85, NO. 3, FALL 1990

The Charcoal Club 269

The Charcoal Club's prized beer growler designed by versatile founding member and Confederate sympathizer Adalbert J. Volck. This photograph of the growler is from an invitation to the Club's 1967 April Bacchanal. (The Charcoal Club Collec- tion.)

quarters in Hazazers Hall on Mulberry Street near Charles. In 1885 they moved again, to 42 North Charles Street, where the members decided to call themselves The Charcoal Club, and incorporated. The club soon expanded its membership to include writers, architects, businessmen, and patrons of the arts of all sorts, and eventually instituted a school of art which attained some notoriety in the late nineties when the noted French illustrator, Andre Castaigne, was brought over from Paris to conduct classes.

In 1890 the expanding club moved to Howard and Franklin, taking up quarters over the United Railway Terminal. By this time the club had begun to exert a considerable influence on the arts in Baltimore. In the view of one acute observer of the scene: "In the early nineties an art and artists' atmosphere existed in Baltimore that I knew well. It was, indeed, a golden period in Baltimore. The Charcoal Club was largely the source and origin, as well as the heart and soul, of this renaissance."

Honorary memberships were offered to many prominent laymen of the city, who were, no doubt, less interested in art as such than in the good- humored revelry that the club provided. In the public's mind at that time there was a glamour attached to the lives of artists which is almost wholly absent nowadays, a glamour reflected in the literature of the times. George DuMaurier's Trilby, a popular novel of artistic life in the Latin Quarter of Paris, for example, appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1894 and was later dramatized. At any rate, by the turn of the century, the Charcoal Club membership numbered close to two hundred men.

Not until 1916 did the club acquire a building of its own. In that year Mr. and Mrs. Henry P. Gilpin bequeathed to the club their splendid, marble-

270 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

faced, four-story home on the northeast corner of Preston and St. Paul streets, where the club remained for the next seventeen years. The upper rooms of the Gilpin home were transformed into galleries and studios, some of them rented to artists, and the members began meeting in rooms on the lower floors.

During this period the club reached its greatest social eminence. The Bal des Arts, the club's annual ball which had begun rather modestly in 1907, had gradually become more and more elaborate until in 1924 it attracted as

many as fifteen hundred guests. These balls, which a secretary of the club, William H. Chaffe, Jr., originated, were held in Lehman's Hall and eventually involved weeks of elaborate preparation. Each ball had its theme, and the club offered prizes for the most imaginative or original costume. The affair of 1929, for instance, took the gods of Mt. Olympus as its theme, enabling the members and their guests to dress variously as Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Vulcan, Minerva, Venus, Bacchus, Pan, and assorted muses and nymphs.

Some of those who attended these affairs still retain fond memories of them after all these years. Robin P. Harriss, formerly an editor of the New York Herald-Tribune in Paris and later an associate editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun magazine, attended several of the Bal des Arts affairs during the thirties. His wife Margery remembers one in particular, called "Davy Jones's Locker," which featured, among other things, a partial replica of a full-rigged ship. That evening she won the prize for the most imaginative costume, which had been designed for her by Norman Burnette, head of the art department at City College. Some of these balls, particularly those held during Prohibition, to judge from contemporary newspaper accounts, were rather wild affairs. They frequently lasted from dusk to dawn and even beyond; it was said of one guest that he left the ball one morning and did not return to his wife until nearly six months later.

The club disassociated itself from these balls in 1931, following a disagree- ment with the Bal des Arts corporation, which had been set up to run them. The members were particularly irked at their inability to secure from the corporation the sort of itemized financial statements that they wanted. They finally decided not to allow the club's name to be used in connection with any balls unless the ball was directed by a committee appointed by the board of governors of the club, to whom it should be directly responsible, a proposal which the Bal des Arts corporation evidently found distasteful. Two years later the club instituted a series of balls known as the Carnival des Artistes, which were also held at Lehman's Hall and which were known for their Bacchanalian revelry. These balls did not endure—the hard times may have had something to do with it.

The club had its more serious side. For some years, in association with the Peabody Institute, it sponsored shows on contemporary American art at the Peabody Galleries, featuring artists from all over the country as well as

The Charcoal Club 271

THE p^VUSTS OF THE

TO SUBSCRIBETOTHE

>SAl- des ARTS>^^^«ft -'>» -" ^ & t-.'.i '* i--iak" '•; M

TO BE GIVEN AT THE LVRIC-

MONOAY EVENING JANUARY 5.I920

AT 9 O'CLOCK

The creative energies of the Charcoal Club's members are still evident in the Club's activities. This can be seen in the invitation to the Charcoal Club's 1920 Bal des Arts designed by member and artist James Doyle, Jr. (Prints and Photographs, Library, Maryland Historical Society.)

Baltimore. The show held in 1913 contained works by, among others, George Bellows, Thomas C. Corner, Robert Henri, Albert Rosenthal, Hans Schuler, and Edward Beige.

The club's art school had also become quite elaborate. In 1933 this school offered instruction in portraiture and still-life painting, composition and

272 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Cover art designed by Richard Q. Yardley for the 1933 Carnival des Artistes. "Where, for a night we may mingle with the great and colorful characters of history and Romance..." (The Charcoal Club Collection.)

sketching; it even had its own etching shop. The catalogue included a Sunday afternoon businessmen's class in painting.

The Depression had its effect on the club, as it did on so many other institutions of the times. The club was in such desperate financial straits in June 1932 that someone suggested it issue bonds to each subscriber, coupled with a promise that they never be redeemed—"a franker statement," another member promptly remarked, "than any bank would ever make." These worthless bonds were actually issued with a face value of ten dollars and a design by Richard "Moco" Yardley, the cartoonist, and have since become collectors' items. The club also found it difficult to collect rents from its artist-tenants. The building cost nine hundred dollars a year

The Charcoal Club 273

to heat, and there were constant demands on the treasury for upkeep and maintenance. In 1933 the members found it impossible to meet the interest on their mortgage of $2,500, and the building was sold at public auction to the Young Republican League. Fortunately, the league permitted the club to continue holding its meetings in the Cypress Room—a sumptuous lounge containing a large, open fireplace, its walls paneled with cypress wood that had originally encased slabs of marble shipped from Italy.

Over the years the club included among its members many names familiar to Baltimoreans: Louis Rosenthal, famous for his miniature sculptures; Hans Schuler, whose statue of Martin Luther stands near Lake Montebello; Ed- ward Berge, whose statue of Mayor Latrobe stands at the foot of Broadway; Henry Berge, his son, whose figure of a little girl standing in the shell of a sea urchin (from a work by his father) stands in Mt. Vernon Place; McGil Mackall, whose murals can be seen in the War Memorial Building and in the Maryland National Bank Building; Richard "Moco" Yardley, the political cartoonist for the Sun; Aubrey Bodine, the photographer; and the writers Donald Kirkley and Lee McCardle.

Among the artists one must mention John McGrath, who was president of the club from 1931 until his death in 1942, during which period the club underwent profound change. When McGrath assumed the presidency, the club still occupied its quarters at St. Paul and Preston streets, but a split that took place in 1937 (over what issue the records do not say), and wartime stress took their toll. When he died, the club had been reduced to fifteen members and was meeting in his studio at the rear of 1312 Eutaw Place. McGrath, who worked in every medium and even prepared his own etchings, was also a successful businessman, and yet, as Richard Medford of the Peale Museum once remarked, "Some of his genius went into his work, but probably more of it went into his life." Louis Azrael, a club member who contributed a column to the Baltimore AfewAS-Amerzc^m, wrote on McGrath's death that he had "never known a man in whom life flowed more joyously."

McGrath created the celebrated artist Ignatius Loyola Glutz, whose works surfaced at the 1935 Flower Mart in Mount Vernon Place. The Glutz show featured a number of crudely, although powerfully, executed paintings; among them "Love's Embrace," depicting two interlocking bologna sausages, "Heigh-ho the Artichoke," and "Sunday Dinner," which showed the desperate-looking artist seated before a table loaded with pig's head and cabbage. Nearly all of Glutz's paintings dealt with food because—as McGrath explained—the artist was so unsuccessful that he never got enough to eat. McGrath and his friend Lawrence W Sagle, a longtime secretary of the club, produced additional Glutzes over the years, some of them certainly not meant for public exhibition.

McGrath and Sagle's ruse extended from painting to biography. In 1929, when the artist "died," they wrote a memorial pamphlet that described

274 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

MEMORIAL EXHIBITION bv the

CHARCOAL ClUB OF BALTIMORE

of the work of

JOHN McGRATH (PRESIDENT OF THE CLUB- 1931-1942)

AND IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION Of

ELISABETH McGRATH DECEASED DECEMBER 6. 1987

at the CHARCOAL CLUB 107 EAST 25th STREET MARCH 10-17, 1968

Announcement for the 1968 John McGrath (1880-1942) memorial exhibition held shortly after the death of his wife, Elisabeth. Over 70 pieces of the former Charcoal Club president's work were shown. One Baltimore newspaper columnist is quoted in the announcement as stating "that the Charcoal Club still lives and plays a part in our community life is due, I am convinced, more to John McGrath and his spirit than to any other single factor or person." The same could be said of Elisabeth, who supported the Club for another 2 5 years after John's death. (The Charcoal Club Collection.)

Glutz's birth on April Fool's Day 1865, in a house on South Poppleton Street near Hollins Market, and his entry into the world "with a paint brush clutched in his hand." He began to paint at a very early age, the pamphlet stated. He would "filch a length of chalk from his father's shop and, roaming the alley behind his house, festoon fences and garbage cans impartially with his surrealistic designs." After repeating the fourth grade for the fourth time, Glutz reportedly left school and devoted himself to art for the remainder of his wretched life. His creed was simple: "If it looks like what it isn't, then it is." It is understandable why he seldom sold anything. In 1927, disgusted with his repeated failures in America, Glutz allegedly took a cattle boat to France. There he was appreciated by his fellow artists and his models, but not by the dealers. He died of starvation in Paris while engaged in painting a mammoth canvas of fruits, vegetables, meat, cheese, flowers, and sausages. Glutz became so well known in Baltimore that Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin

The Charcoal Club 275

issued a proclamation designating 1 April 1965 as "Ignatius Glutz Centen- nial" in Baltimore.

Although never officially a member of the Charcoal Club, Glutz eventually became the club's patron saint. New members frequently took some time grasping the fact that this celebrated artist, whose surviving paintings are treated so reverently by the members, was the figment of fertile imagination. Over the years the club held dinners honoring Glutz and his "newly discovered" paintings. Mock-serious accounts of forgotten or overlooked incidents of his life were read to waves of laughter.

McGrath, as the foregoing indicates, had no fondness for "modern art." He for many years carried on a feud of sorts with the Baltimore Museum of Art, whose curators continued to accept for display pictures he considered worthless while rejecting many works, mostly by his fellow artists of Bal- timore, which he admired. In 1933, when ninety Baltimore artists received rejection slips from the Baltimore Museum for works submitted to the first annual Maryland Artists exhibition, they asked the Charcoal Club to exhibit them, and the club gladly did so. Known as the Salon des Refuses, the show was hugely successful from the club's point of view, at least, and similar exhibitions were held for a number of years.

After McGrath's death the club was inactive until 1944, when it revived under Harry G. Pouder. That year, through arrangements with McGrath's widow, Elizabeth McGrath, the club again began meeting in the studio behind 1312 Eutaw Place. Mrs. McGrath graciously provided the club with a home for the next nineteen years, for members continued to meet at her house when she moved to 1622 Park Avenue and later on to 1605 Bolton Street. By this time the club consisted in the main of older men, few of whom were practicing artists. During the latter part of this period, in the late 1950s, younger members, mostly artists, were brought into the club, and it underwent another profound change. The club moved again, to 103 East Twenty- fifth Street, and the members began holding numerous exhibits of their own work, both at club quarters and elsewhere. The club also occasionally sponsored exhibits by artists who were not members. Together with his friend Lawrence Sagle, who handled public relations for the B&O Railroad, Prouder as president sustained the club with perseverance and good humor. He had served in France at the American base hospital in Bordeaux during World War I, afterward reporting for the Baltimore Sun. Later on he began writing book reviews for the Sun, a charge he carried out for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was named director of the Import and Export Bureau of the Association of Commerce. Less than four years later he was named vice- president of the association, a position he held for thirty-one years. He was particularly interested in port activities and throughout his life battled for legislation and appropriations to benefit Baltimore's commerce and port. For a time he was president of the Vagabonds, the country's oldest little-

276 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

theater group. He "corrected an error in the text of Poe's 'The Raven' on the city's monument to Edgar Allan Poe, collected maritime paintings, rare books and objects from around the globe, worked with the Playhouse at Hopkins, and wrote two plays that have been produced in little theaters."

Pouder continued as Charcoal Club president until 1967, when a series of strokes forced him to resign (he continued to attend meetings for some time thereafter). He was an entertaining president who made a fascinating ritual of reading the club's mail. Donning a red fez for the occasion and wielding the club's gavel, which was made of wood from the original White House, he could transform the dullest bit of advertising matter or an inappropriate solicitation for funds into a source of hilarity. Mail he deemed of no importance he immediately consigned to a committee named after a certain member who faithfully paid his dues year after year but who rarely showed up at meetings.

In 1983, when the club celebrated its centennial. Mayor William Donald Schaefer issued a proclamation designating September as "Charcoal Club Month" in Baltimore. At that time—consisting of about forty members, mostly artists—the club occupied rooms above Love's Restaurant, at Charles and Twenty-fifth streets. It met once a month and its activities were for the most part social, although a sketch class was held every Tuesday night. The club continued to hold exhibits of members' works in its rooms and elsewhere and sometimes sponsored shows by other artists. The growler, filled to the brim, continued to make its rounds on festive occasions at least once a year, as it had for the past century.

NOTES

1. Baltimore 5MM, 10 October 1944. 2. Henry W Wiegand, "The Charcoal Club of Baltimore," in a brochure advertising

the Bal des Arts for 1929; see also unpublished histories of the club by various officers of the years.

3. Meredith Janvier, Baltimore in the Eighties and Nineties (Baltimore: H. G. Roebuck and Son, 1933).

4. Baltimore Sun, 10 October 1944. 5. Lawrence Sagle, The Palette, Charcoal Club newsletter, 15 February 1933 6. Charcoal Club School of Art catalogue, 1933-34. 7. R. B. Adams, law firm of Adams and Meid, to John McGrath, 31 March 1939 8. Baltimore 5«M, 10 March 1968. 9. The Palette, May-June 1935. 10. "In Memoriam; I. L. Glutz (1865-1929)," Charcoal Club archives. 11. The Palette, 15 April 1933. 12. Kaitimore Evening Sun, 7 July 1971.

Research Notes & Maryland Miscellany

Dr. William Gwynn Coe of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church

CARL ROBERT COE

It proved a fateful meeting. Going from the courthouse to his home, Alexander Benson Coe, clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore County, met the city's noted Methodist preacher John Hersey. After a brief conversation, Coe invited the minister to his home to share a meal; something quite unusual for the ardent Catholic. The year was 1834.

The clerk was fascinated by the preacher. Hersey had become somewhat of a local legend, the last of an apostolic breed. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1786, Hersey spent much of his later life ministering in Baltimore and on the Eastern Shore. He was ordained as an elder in 1829- He was a man said to never smile, always focusing his attentions on the ether regions. Most of the young "modern" ministers of the Methodist church thought him a colorful oddity, an ancient curiosity left over from a long forgotten age. Many people, both in and out of the church, however, held the aging patriarch in revered awe. Some of the laity felt him to be perhaps a divine saint alive in the 1800s. His sermons were so interlaced with spirituality that hardened men were said to burst into tears at the sound of his voice. His was a rare insightfulness that transcended religious denomina- tion. What an honor it was for the sincerely religious court clerk to entertain one so esteemed.

At the conclusion of their dinner, Coe requested his wife, the former Margaret Thompson, to bring in their young son for Reverend Hersey's inspection. Obviously pleased at seeing the infant in the arms of the cleric, Coe shocked his Methodist mate by saying, "Suppose we let 'Father' Hersey baptize the baby?" Though startled—she being a devout Methodist and religion being a sensitive subject in their home—she gladly consented. That

Mr. Coe lives in Marysville, Ohio. He began researching his Maryland Coe roots several years

ago and then decided to put the Reverend Coe's story to paper.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 277

VOL. 85, NO. 3 FALL 1990

278 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

child, William Gwynn Coe, was later said to be one of the greatest preachers the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church ever produced.

The Coe family had lived in Maryland since at least 1752. The birth of William G. Coe's grandfather, also William, was recorded at Christ Church, Port Republic, Calvert County, 9 November 1757. The elder William was the only known son of Samuel and Elizabeth Coe of "Goldens Folley," Calvert County. The elder William Coe served honorably as a corporal of artillery during the Revolution. He enlisted at Leonardtown, St. Mary's County, 1 February 1776, and served with Captain John Allen Thomas's Fifth Inde- pendent Company, Colonel William Smallwood's battalion of Maryland infantry. With this company, William Coe participated as a matross (an artilleryman responsible for sponging, firing, and cleaning the guns) in the Battle of Long Island, where the Maryland Line covered the retreat of American forces. He was discharged 11 August 1779 after furnishing two men to serve in his place until the close of the war.

After the Revolution William Coe moved from countiy to city, first to Annapolis, where he operated a tailor shop, not far from the waterfront. He employed at least fifteen black slaves in his business, as well as indentured white servants. On 5 September 1797 he was commissioned an artillery officer in the Annapolis militia. About 1830 he moved his family and business to 62 South Charles Street, Baltimore. He died there 30 December 1833, leaving a widow and eight children. His youngest surviving son, Alexander Benson Coe, born in Annapolis 19 April 1806, was clerk of the Court of

Common Pleas for some fifteen years (1834-1849). Born in Baltimore on 15 April 1832, William Gwynn Coe was educated at

St. Mary's College, graduating magna cum laude in July 1851 and receiving both A.B. and A.M. degrees. Shortly after graduation he was selected as clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore County, a position previously held by his father. Coe eagerly accepted his new responsibilities and used his good fortune to continue his law studies, with perhaps an eye toward future political goals. He was said to have studied under the tutelage of an old and honored lawyer of Baltimore, who had every intention of one day turning his entire practice over to his student, a pleasant prospect indeed for the young man. Coe's son, the Rev. Henry Slicer Coe, later claimed that at one point the aging counselor had actually offered his father some $5,000 a year for five years, after which time he promised to turn over his entire practice of $25,000 annual income—a tremendous sum in those days.

During his days in the courthouse William Coe won wide admiration. His ability and ambition quickly impressed all who knew him, including a fellow courthouse employee, William Pinkney Whyte, later governor and a U.S. senator. Many years later Dr. Coe's son Hemy witnessed a meeting of the two former colleagues on the steps of the B&O Railroad Station in Washington and noted the contrast between the senator, who had received

Dr. William Gtvynn Coe 279

great honor as a formidable politician, and his father, who had chosen the honorable yet less materially rewarding life of an itinerant Methodist minister. In their youth it was perhaps Coe who was thought better off. Records remain of him being referred to as a "best dresser."

A career in the law appeared imminent for young Coe, and he well might have gone on to make a name for himself in the growing city had it not been for a twist of fate. On New Years Eve 1851, Coe's sister Emily extended to him an invitation to a watchnight service at Eutaw Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore. Although Coe had been raised a Catholic, his early life had been tenderly influenced by his Methodist mother who had been converted to that faith in Annapolis at age thirteen. Coe later admitted that his college training had rendered him "very prejudicial to any favorable inclination towards the church of his mother." Somewhat attracted to his sister's friend Annie Armstrong (who would also attend the service), he nonetheless accepted the invitation. The speaker for the service was guest preacher Dr. Edmund Dorsey, whose words seemed to lay on young Coe's ears and ring in his heart. Coe listened closely to all that was said during the service and left that evening strangely fascinated. He struggled with the words of God's messenger for three full months. On 21 March 1851 he returned to the parsonage, where the eloquent pastor of the church the Rev. Henry Slicer lived, and knelt in prayer as he yielded his life to the will of Christ.

Coe's conversion so affected him that all he had once held sacred he forfeited for his new calling. He cheerfully abandoned his study of the law, and its promise of a bright future, for the uncertainty of the ministry. Coe's friends at the courthouse judged him the greatest fool that ever lived. In October 1852 Coe received a license to exhort, and in January of the next year the Methodist Quarterly Conference of Baltimore City Station, sitting in the old conference room in the rear of the Light Street Church (where Bishop Asbury had presided), granted him a license to preach. Five months later he preached his first sermon from the pulpit of Eutaw Church, where two and a half years earlier Reverend Dorsey had spoken the words that had pierced his worldly soul. Coe's message was "Except Your Righteousness Shall Exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, Ye Shall in No Case Enter the Kingdom of Heaven," using Matthew 5:20 as his text. On 4 May 1853 William Coe and Annie Maria Armstrong were married by the Rev. Bernard Harrison Nadal at the First Methodist Church in Baltimore. They made their first home at 169 Mulberry Street.

Coe's bride was born 8 August 1834 in Baltimore, daughter of James Lamb and Mary Jane (Smith) Armstrong, both active Methodists. Annie Maria's father was successively a carver, collector, assessor, justice of the peace, life insurance broker, millinery goods dealer, dress trimmings dealer, president of the American Fire Insurance Company of Baltimore, and an insurance

280 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Wedding portrait of William Gwynn Coe and Annie Maria Armstrong, 4 May 1853. (Courtesy of James and Gail Ewin, Holmdel, NJ.)

adjuster. Mrs. Coe's mother was the daughter of Samuel and Phillipa (Martin) Smith. The home of Mrs. Coe's maternal great-grandparents, Ed- ward and Jane John Martin, of Cornwall, England, was a favorite stopping place of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church. As a child Phillipa often sat on the knee of the famous preacher and later passed on favorite stories of his visits to her children and grandchildren.9

Dr. William Gwynn Coe 281

In session at the Light Street Church in March 1854, the Baltimore Annual Conference received the Rev. William G. Coe on trial. His first assignment was as junior preacher of the Severn circuit, under Rev. James Sanks. After a year Coe was placed in charge of Warm Springs circuit, Warm Springs, Virginia, where he remained for two years. This assignment was followed by two years each on Stafford and Fairfax circuits in northern Virginia. Coe attended a memorable session of the conference in Staunton, Virginia, in March 1861, -where he received orders to a church he considered unable to support him and his family even in a meager living. He resigned from the conference.

In January 1861 the Methodists of Onanco*ck, on the Virginia Eastern Shore, dissolved their affiliation with the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church and invited the ministry and laity of surrounding areas to a convention for the purpose of forming a separate body to be known as the Central Methodist church. After the convention they refused to receive the preacher sent them by their conference and applied for and secured the Reverend Coe as their pastor. In early April 1861, the Coe family traveled by boat to Onanco*ck and lived in the parsonage next to co*kesbury Chapel, which at the time was a new church, just seven years old. Joining with these Eastern Shore Methodists, the Reverend Coe assisted in organiz- ing the Convention of Accomack, an independent church convention consisting of Methodist congregations in Onanco*ck, Drummondtown, Hadlock, Ayers, Ebenezer, and Garrison.

He preached his first sermon at Onanco*ck 28 April 1861, eleven days after Virginia seceded from the Union. Having been raised in a home where slavery was an ordinary custom, Coe found his sentiments in comfortable surroundings on the Shore, with the exception of occasional harassment by Union soldiers. In June 1861 he called a "Day of Fasting and Prayer for the Southern Confederacy." Union officers later arrested him and attempted to secure his signature on an oath of allegiance that Benjamin F. Butler, head of the Union military department at Fort Monroe, had demanded of all officials and church leaders. Finding Coe steadfast in his refusal to take the oath. Col. Frank J. White, a former New York lawyer who commanded Shore troops, several times placed him under house arrest, during which he was not allowed to preach. One period lasted from 30 April to 19 May 1863. Col. White finally threatened to have Coe imprisoned. A boy living at Onanco*ck later recalled how "a small Federal force sat down on the town, made barracks or stables of the churches, and seemed to find pleasure in vexing all citizens who appeared on the streets." During those difficult times Coe ran the Union blockade of the Shore in a small fishing sloop, journeying up the bay to Baltimore to secure supplies for family and friends. Reflecting on the trips, Coe's son Henry related that the family would wait

282 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

in great uneasiness until the sloop slipped into port with "rich supplies of flour, sugar, butter, etc."

Coe eventually fell victim to "scalawags." George C. Tyler was a member of the co*kesbury Chapel and had served as the original secretary of the Convention ofAccomack when it formed in 1861. His views slowly changed, and by 1863 he was the leader of a group who favored accommodation with Union forces on the Shore and of returning to the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church. That same year, Tyler was named tax collector for the Union, and soon afterward he was named as one of four civilian supervisors of labor on the Shore. The struggle between Tyler's party and Coe's came to a head at the quarterly meeting of the convention held in March 1864. Tyler's forces convinced the co*kesbury congregation to rejoin the Philadelphia Conference. A new pastor arrived 1 April 1864, when Pastor Coe wrote in his journal, "Well, well, the Philadelphia preacher is come. Long looked for, come at last! He has come on Fools day, and I am thinking his errand is no better than the day—and so the result will prove unless I am mistaken."

Coe remained on the Eastern Shore for the next two years as head of the independent convention of Methodist churches. From co*kesbury he moved to Belle Haven and then to a remote farm house at Ames Ridge. He continued serving the remaining churches of the young conference and found other preaching opportunities among both Methodist and Baptist congregations. Those in Ayers and Garrison left the conference, but Coe siiccessfully continued preaching there using school buildings, a temperance hall, and churches of other denominations. The convention managed to recover from the loss of some of its churches and indeed showed signs of growing. It established a congregation in the old Universalist church in Belle Haven and another in the vicinity of Ayers. Coe also preached regularly at Holmes Presbyterian Church in Bay View, near the southern tip of Northampton County.

As soon as the Accomack Convention was back on its feet, the army stepped up its pressure. Late in 1864 Colonel White ordered all of its churches closed. Pastor Coe and his congregations ignored the order and continued conducting services. Coe and White eventually reached a compromise at a personal meeting at Eastville. Coe reported that the colonel was "very polite." "My visit to him was on the subject of our Church difficulties," he wrote. "From what he says (and he is now the supreme power here, although I doubt if he is 25 years old), I think our Church will get along without any trouble." Coe fasted that night and prayed that his churches would be spared further harassment. Though he never signed the required oath, he did somehow manage to convince White of his loyalty to the United States. White, in turn, lifted the order to close the Accomack Convention churches and on 25 August 1864 issued Special Order No. 43:

Dr. William Gtvynn Coe 283

The Independent Methodist Congregations at Belle Haven, Onanco*ck, Hadlock- town, Drummondtown and in the vicinity of Ayres Chapel and on Ames Ridge, under the charge of Reverend W G. Coe, having passed resolutions prescribed by Circular from this office and having acknowledged themselves loyal, will be permitted to assemble at such times or places as they desire for public worship.

In April 1866 the Independent Convention of Accomack disbanded and rejoined the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Coe left the Eastern Shore in February 1866. Three years earlier he had gained readmission to the Baltimore Conference at its session in Churchville, Virginia, but not until he left the Shore did he attend a meeting. His fellow ministers welcomed him back by naming him secretary of the Methodist Annual Conference. They also appointed him to the circuit of Front Royal, Virginia, where he remained until 1867. From Front Royal he went to Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

At Shepherdstown in 1867 a controversy arose between the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and its Northern counterpart over an issue of title to the comfortable brick church and parsonage there. A federal court ordered Coe to allow the portly Rev. J. M. Green, the Northern pastor, and his wife to occupy a part of the parsonage. The Green family took the front part of the house, with Coe holding the keys to the doors which separated the two sections of the building. The court finally forced Coe from both the church and the parsonage. He then began holding service in the town hall, where he conducted the most profitable meetings of his ministry, while the fine structure now belonging to the M.E. Church sat practically idle on Sunday mornings. Meanwhile, during Rev. Coe's second year at Shepherdstown, a local ladies-aid society began a yearly contest to name the "best preacher of the town" (there were six churches). Coe won and was presented with a gold-headed ebony cane. The next year he received a new suit of clothes. Coe's congregation built a two-story brick church in the heart of the city; in his last year there, some sixty members joined his congregation.

In March 1870 Coe was unexpectedly appointed presiding elder of Lexi- ngton district in Virginia. The prospects were not promising. It was an area almost entirely in the mountains, without organization, without house, or visage of furniture. But he had counted all worldly gain a spiritual loss. Here was the calling he had so resolutely determined to follow after his encounter with Henry Slicer some nineteen years before, when he bought a Bible, a hymn book, and a Methodist discipline—all he needed, he later testified, to know the word of God and the government of the Methodist church. Coe's commitment radiated in his sermons during that period. Mrs. German O. Homan, who first heard him preach at Lexington, wrote that:

284 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

When Dr. Coe was Presiding Elder living at Lexington, Va., we were teaching at Green Bank, Pocahontas County, W Va., which was his district. We heard many praise him as a very superior preacher, but not knowing him we thought, possibly they were over zealous. He came to town to hold a quarterly meeting beginning on Saturday. We first saw him as he entered the church and then the pulpit. He announced his text, James 1:27, saying he would confine himself to two words of that verse—"pure religion." He then preached on the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit, and we went out of that church an ardent admirer of Dr. Coe. We became acquainted, heard him preach many times with the same effect. His sermons convinced his hearers that a man inspired of God delivered the message.

In Lexington Coe moved into a house too small for his growing family. After a year in cramped quarters, he purchased a larger one outside the city. It had plenty of room but few conveniences. It was sold after a year. The family then rented a house in the center of town. The new home was located directly across the street from the residence of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who lived in Lexington after accepting the presidency of Washington College (renamed Washington and Lee in 1871).

Most members of the Baltimore Conference assumed that Reverend Coe, though small and slight of build, was in good health. Such was not the case. Though he never complained, his diary later revealed that he was far from healthy. His new parish proved the ultimate test of his physical senses. He found himself frequently traveling at unreasonable hours of the night, on rough wagons or on foot for twenty miles or more, often drenched with rain, dinnerless and supperless, wading streams. Llis district covered such an area that he was away from his family for as long as six weeks at a time. Coe's brethren in the ministry showed their appreciation by electing him one of their delegates to the last general Methodist Conference. In 1875 the faculty of Washington and Lee awarded him an honorary degree.

Completing his mission at Lexington district, Coe spent the last three years of his life as presiding elder of Lewisburg, West Virginia, district. Revival influence prevailed throughout the district. The camp meeting Coe held at Greenbrier, West Virginia, in August of 1876 was the crowning

-1 Q

achievement of his ministiy. One of his sons later testified that "his voice, without apparent strain, would carry his message to a company of 10,000 in the tented grove." Coe's "love feast" at the Lewisburg quarterly meeting in January 1877 was a memorable occasion. He told a layman who attended,

20 "I hope it may be a good one, for it may be the last." A good one it was. "Oh, melting power of God's love," he exclaimed after its close. "Oh, season long to be remembered."

At Lexington, 17 March, preaching on "The Revelation of Jesus Christ," 22

Coe used Revelation 1:1 as his text: "God gave me liberty and enjoyment."

Dr. William Gtvynn Coe 285

After solemnizing the wedding of his son Henry that same day, Coe returned to Lewisburg. On 20 March he became desperately ill. He died nine days later. Burial was at Old Stone Presbyterian Church Cemetery. Coe's grave marker was inscribed, "For he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of Faith and much people was added unto the Lord."

At the death of her husband, Annie (Armstrong) Coe was left with children ranging in age from two months to nineteen years. The Baltimore Con- ference came to her aid, providing her and the family with a home for a year

and a small allowance. Afterward, she and the eight younger children made their home with her son Henry and his wife at the Lewisburg parsonage. In the spring of 1878 Mrs. Coe and her family returned to Baltimore, where Mrs. Coe died in March 1903.

The Coes had nine sons and four daughters. Though their home was not filled with material goods, the lives of their children suggest that it did abound with love and sound direction. Four sons graduated from Washington and Lee University; two sons, Henry Slicer Coe and Walker Peyton Conway Coe, followed their father as ministers in the Baltimore Conference. William Gwynn Coe, Jr., was a physician and surgeon in Talcott, West Virginia, served as government physician at the Yakima Indian Reser- vation in Washington Territory and was coroner of Yakima, Washington. Bernard Harrison Nadal Coe became a pharmacist and drug store owner in the same state. James Richard Garrison Coe was a newspaper publisher in Bandera, Texas, and Yakima, Washington. Francis Asbuiy Coe was a Bal- timore photographer who traveled to Mexico and Venezuela. Turner Poul- son Coe was a postal employee in Catonsville, Maryland, and Buck Armstrong Coe a Washington, D.C. appliance retailer. One of the daughters died while the family lived in Accomack County, Virginia. The other three never married, spending their later years together in Washington, D.C. A grandson, Samuel Gwynn Coe, taught history at Florida Southern College and Conway Peyton Coe served as U.S. Commissioner of Patents (1933- 1945) and vice president of RCA (1945-1957).24

NOTES

1. Kirk Mariner, Revival's Children, A Religious History of Virginia's Eastern Shore (Salisbury, Md.: Peninsula Press, 1979), p. 81.

2. Rev. Henry Slicer Coe, "William Gwynn Coe," typescript ms., n.d., Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. Rev. Henry Slicer Coe, "Autobiography of Henry Slicer Coe," handwritten ms., 1930, pp. 2-3, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. 3-John Hazel!, "Parish Records of Christ Church at Port Republic, Calvert County,

1688-1847," p. 49, enclosed with Mrs. Henry Clay Smith, Millington, Md., to John Edwin Coe, Chicago, n.d., Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS "Estate Settlement of John Cough," Calvert County, Md., Chauncers Depositions, WK., no. 1, ff. 241, 279;

286 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

see also Ailene W Hutchins, "estate Settlement of John Gough of Calvert County," The Maryland-Delaware Genealogist, 14 (1973):206-7. Charles Francis Stein, His- tory of Calvert County, Maryland, (Baltimore: Schneiderieth & Sons, I960), pp. 360, 404. Revolutionary Pension File of William Coe (N. S8227), Revolutionary War, Military Service Records, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Kenneth Sewell Coe, "William Coe, Revolutionary Soldier," typescript ms., 9 November 1957, p. 3, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS.

4. 1800 U.S. Census, Anne Arundel County, Md., p. 64, in Jeanne Polumsky Coe, "Maryland 1800 Census," Coe Chronicles, 3 (1988):35. Anne Arundel County, Md., Deed Book WSG #1, pp. 290, 358, in Coe, "William Coe, Revolutionaiy Soldier," p. 3- Anne Arundel County Manumissions, 1797-1807, f. 49, no. 906, in Anne Arundel County Freedom Records, Index to Owners, 1785-1867, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis. Maryland Military Records, Militia Appointments #2, p. 62, (location not cited), in Coe, "William Coe, Revolutionary Soldier," p. 3- Baltimore Gazette, 31 December 1833 Revolutionaiy Pension File of William Coe (N. S8227). Register of Cathedral Records, 2 (1814-1832): 311, in Coe, "William Coe, Revolutionary Sol- dier," p. 2. Kate W Buchanan, Genealogical Miscellany (Maplewood, N.J.: Watchtower Chapter DAR, 1939), p 13.

5. Coe, "William Gwynn Coe," pp. 1-2. 6. See ibid., pp. 2-3, for the family's apparently comfortable circ*mstances until

the trials of the Civil War. 7. James E. Armstrong, "Biographical Sketch of Dr. Coe," Baltimore Episcopal

Methodist, 11 (5 May 1877): 1. 8. Rev. William Gwynn Coe, D.D., "A Written Testimony," handwritten ms., 17 April

1852, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. The article appeared as Dr. W Gwynn Coe, 'A Written Testimony.. .Of Eighty Years Ago," in the Baltimore Southern Methodist, 25 December 1930; see also James E. Armstrong, "William Gwynn Coe," in the Baltimore Conference Journal (1878), p. 49.

9. James E. Armstrong, History of the Old Baltimore Conference from the Planting of Methodism in 1779 to the Division of the Conference in 1857 (Baltimore: King Bros., 1907), p. 496. Gail Ewin, "Annie Maria Armstrong Coe," typescript ms., 31 August 1987, p. 1, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS.

10. Charles B. Cfork, Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia (2 vols.; New York: Lewis Pub. Co., 1950), 2:569-70.

11. See Mariner, Revival's Children, p. 125- 12. Coe, "William Gwynn Coe," p. 6. 13. Ibid. 14. William Gwynn Coe, "Sermonbook" (unpublished), currently owned by Sallie

Frances Smith, Edinburg, Va. 15. William Gwynn Coe, "Journal" (unpublished), currently owned by Sallie

Frances Smith. 16. Mariner, Revival's Children, p. 132. 17. Mrs. G.O. Homan, "Dr. William Gwynn Coe," Baltimore Southern Methodist,

29January 1931 18. Armstrong, "Biographical Sketch of Dr. Coe," p. 1. 19. Henry Slicer Coe, "Autobiography of Henry Slicer Coe," p. 3- 20. Armstrong, "Biographical Sketch of Dr. Coe," p. 1.

Dr. William Gtvynn Coe 287

21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 4. 23- Gail Ewin, "William Gwynn Coe, Sr., Grave Location," typescript ms., 24. June

1987, p. 1, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. 24. Mrs. Annie M. Coe, Baltimore, Md., to Ella Tanquary, Handera, Texas, 19

February 1884, in Ewin, 'Annie Maria Armstrong Coe," p. 3- Baltimore City direc- tories, in Ewin, "Annie Maria Armstrong Coe," pp. 4-5- Frank A. Tyler, "Henry Slicer Coe," Baltimore Conference Journal (1936), pp. 98-101. H.M. Canter, "Walker Peyton Conway Coe," ibid. (1937), pp. 101-3. "Death of Dr. William G. Coe," Yakima Herald, 10 August 1893- Gary L. Jackson, Remembering Yakima By Those Who Were There (Yakima, Wash.: Golden West, 1975), p. 81. "Grandview looses Pioneer Mer- chant," 18 March 1940, a Grandview, Wash., newspaper clipping (name of publication not given), in Gail Ewin, "Biographical Notes on Bernard Harrison Nadal Coe," typescript ms., 31 August 1987, p. 3, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. Bandera Enterprise, 25 March 1886, p. 1. Shirley Swart, Index to Family Records of Washington Pioneers Prior to 1891 (52 vols.; Spokane; Eastern Washington State Historical Society and Esther Reed Chapter DAR, 1931-1980), 9:227-8. Nancy Baily, "Biography of Francis A. Coe, Sr.," typescript ms., June 1987, pp. 1-6, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. "Obituary of Francis Asbury Coe," (clipping from an unnamed newspaper), n.d., enclosed with John W Coe (d. 1986) to author, 6 June 1983 "Turner P. Coe Retires Following 33 Years Service as Mail Carrier in Catonsville," Catonsville Herald-Argus, 7 September 1932. "T. P. Coe, 89, Retired Postman, Succumbs," 5 September 1956, ibid. "B. A. Coe, 92, Founder of Appliance Co.," Washington Post, 5 June 1964. "B. A. Coe Dies at 92, Ran Georgetown Firm," Washington Evening Star, 5 June 1964. Jean Merrit Mihalyka and Faye Downing Wilson, Graven Stones of Lower Accomack County, Virginia (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1986), p. 52. Gail Ewin, "Biographical Notes on Mary Ellen Coe," typescript ms., 9 September 1987, pp. 1-2, Coe Papers, filing case A, MdHS. Florida Historical Quarterly, 36 (1957-58): 73-4. Who's Who in America (Chicago: A. N. Marquis Co., 1934), 1934-35:564. "Conway P. Coe, 85," Washington Post, 25 October 1982.

A First for Baltimore: The 5". 5". Maverick

DAVID L. FISHER

1 his is the story of the first successful American-built steel tanker, the Maverick, constructed in 1890 by the Columbian Iron Works, located at Locust Point in Baltimore.

In the last third of the nineteenth century the demand for petroleum and petroleum products in the United States grew almost exponentially, and this growth in demand was matched by increased American production. In 1860 the United States produced 500,000 barrels of crude oil. In thirty years production had increased approximately 56 times, making it necessaiy to improve the means of shipping crude oil and its by-products. Exports were growing as well. Only bulk transportation could accommodate the demand, and three methods were used: railroad, pipeline, and ship. The Maverick, and the tankers built thereafter, improved maritime transportation and thus helped meet the demands of the rapidly expanding American

petroleum industry. Oil and oil products had been carried in barrels and boxed tins, but as the

demand grew, packaged transportation proved inefficient. The first bulk carriers were wind-propelled vessels, whose designs were modifications of those used for carrying other bulk cargoes such as grain and coal; in some cases tanks were installed within converted vessels. Because of the increased danger from fumes, these approaches were unsatisfactory. The loss rate due to fire and explosion was veiy high. In 1882 it was reported "that no less than fifty-eight sailing vessels, with cargoes of refined petroleum, have been lost within the last four months." To use steam vessels and to carry bulk oil cargo presented design problems. Boilers greatly increased the danger of fire. Among the first tankers was the Ferguson, developed by Ludwig Nobel in 1885 for one of the companies controlled by the family of Alfred Nobel of Nobel Prize fame. The Ferguson, a steam cargo vessel, was converted for bulk use by installing tanks. Home ported on the Caspian Sea (the Russians were the major oil producers and exporters at that time, and the Nobels had extensive business interests in the area), the Ferguson carried oil from Russia to Antwerp until 1889, when she was destroyed in an explosion. In general, this vessel and others built shortly thereafter proved

Mr. Fisher served as a staff officer aboard a merchant vessel in 1915-16. An amateur maritime

historian, he retired not long ago as a school administrator.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 288

VOL. 85, NO. 3 FALL 1990

The Maverick 289

iZp

^ -/

J^ ,-«5

• ,"•, y ^ • .'„^,~ A^

^fc. -^ /ff^ •'-vr

-J^ts

\ 1

_J_3 iuJLwr- ow W ? 7 2.

S T i - r" ^I ^r r rr

^E~

r #-

•if

o r r

i . i

W^~vt^^^wtt~i :r)'

ili

[

TTi if r1!

n i i

i • I I I

94.24.7 CUU!,

>-=Hi

i;T ^ T' |] !}| !f T T1 ^i -| 'f • -U Ilc-J-: 1 ii

Section of the plans for the Maverick illustrating its single hull construction. The oil was contained by the plates of the ship itself, only a fraction of an inch from the sea. (Courtesy of the Hart Nautical Galleries, MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

290 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

to be too dangerous because they employed tanks constructed within the hull. The spaces between the tanks and the hull frequently filled with escaping oil and gases, and it was difficult to clear and clean these spaces. Fires and explosions continued to be common events.

While the construction of the first tanker built in Baltimore is of historic interest, her steel construction was indicative of important shipbuilding developments in the United States and worldwide. When the Maverick was built most vessels were still made of wood, of iron, or a composite of iron and wood. The American Shipmasters' Association (now known as the American Bureau of Shipping) publishes a list of all registered American and foreign shipping. The Maverick was first noted in 1891. Of the twenty-three vessels listed on the same page with her, only the Maverick was constructed of steel; all the others were of wooden, composite, or iron construction.

The need for more economical cargo space dictated that ships be built in ever greater lengths; in turn they became increasingly prone to physical distortion. Most successful wooden ships had a practical length of little more than two hundred feet. The search for improved methods of construction and the use of better materials was an ongoing activity. The keel, which served as the major supporting member of the ship, could not maintain the stability of an overly long wooden vessel. Efforts were made to reinforce the hull with diagonal supports along the interior sides of the vessel and by various other means. Improvements, that added weight and took up cargo space, were economically unsound. Some moderately successful vessels combined an iron keel and frames with wooden planking. In them, iron typically replaced wood members with no change in general shape or function. Yet iron, besides being more brittle than wood, was heavier than the part it replaced, and the added weight decreased cargo-carrying capacity. Many engineers then designing ships realized that steel would be a highly suitable construction material. To perform the same function, steel required 20 percent less weight than iron, allowing a steel- strengthened vessel to carry proportionally more cargo.

Though steel was available in the 1870s, its adoption in nautical design came slowly—even in Europe, where many shipyards were far in advance of those in America. The first successful ocean-going steam tanker, built of steel to what could be considered modern design, was the German-designed and British-built Gluckauf constructed in 1885-1886. Given the frequency of fires aboard previously built tankers, the Gluckauf or "Good Luck" was quickly nicknamed Feigauf meaning "Blow Up." Within several years similar ships nonetheless prospered in trade with the United States.

Americans quickly responded. The Standard Oil Company of New York contracted for the first American-designed and built steel vessels—the Standard followed by the Maverick. (There is some dispute as to which of the two should be considered the first; although the Standard predated the

The Maverick 291

Maverick, she proved to be unsuccessful as a steamer and was converted into a towing barge. ) 'Yhe Maverick was designed by John Haug of Philadel- phia, partner in a firm that had close connections with Standard Oil. As there were no training programs for marine architects, he was of necessity self-trained. He assisted actively in supervising construction of the ship, a task that went to the Columbian Iron Works perhaps because in 1888 the yard had built the first all-steel vessel built in Baltimore, the U.S. Gunboat Petrel, and was present for the launching. On 26 January the Baltimore American reported that:

The new tank steamer Maverick.. .was successfully launched yesterday morning in the presence of a good number of people... The work of drawing the wedges from under the keel had begun a few minutes after eleven under the supervision of William T. Malster, the president of the iron works... Just as the steamer began to move from the wharf Mrs H. C. Velt, wife of manager Velt of the Standard Oil Company walked bravely up to the bow and there clasped a bottle of Veure Cliquot, at the same time saying: "I christen thee Maverick." The name is given in honor of the Maverick Oil Company of Boston... On board the Maverick were Messrs William Rockefeller, president of the Standard Oil Company, Mr. Flagler, also of the same corporation; manager R. C. Veit, of New York, and John Haug, of Philadelphia, who superintended the construction of the vessel. The Maverick was begun last May and will be thoroughly completed some time during March. She is without doubt the largest vessel ever built in this city, and the finest in construction being adapted entirely for the Atlantic Traffic of the Standard Oil Company. She is the first steel merchant ship that has ever been constructed in this city. There have been two steel ships built at this port—the gunboat Petrel and the one that was launched yesterday—both of which were built by the Columbian Iron Works....

The Maverick sailed on her "trial trip" on 17 May 1890. The test was considered "very satisfactory," and she sailed for New York on the following day. When she departed on her maiden voyage, she was the Standard Oil Company's largest American flag vessel: 240 feet in length, with a beam of 36 feet and a depth of hold of 26 feet, a very small vessel by today's standards. She could carry 500,000 gallons of oil and had additional deck space along each side for dry cargo. The newspaper account of her launch carried a detailed description of her engines, boilers, accommodations, machinery, and her rig. She carried three masts, which were rigged for auxiliary sail, and used electricity for lighting. The engine room was abaft the mizzen mast (back of the third mast). Placing the engine room of tankers in the after part of the ship is a practice that has continued. An early photograph shows theMaverick with furled sails on each mast though later photographs indicate that this practice was not continued.

292 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

This photograph of the Maverick, under way with furled sails, was taken in 1894. The ship was launched in 1890 and rebuilt in 1899- (Photograph by N. L. Stebbins. Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Boston, Massachusetts. Neg. 5062- NS.)

The Maverick went into service on the East Coast, primarily between Philadelphia refineries and New England ports. She was involved in a number of unfortunate events, the most serious occurring in Halifax Har- bour on 17 June 1899- While oil was being pumped ashore the pumping main burst, releasing a flood of oil into the engine room. Flames quickly engulfed the vessel, and the crew was forced to abandon ship. After cased oil (which was also being carried) exploded, the ship sank at the dock. Thousands viewed the event. Raising the Maverick, proved much more difficult than was at first believed (it took almost a year), and salvaging and rebuilding at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, where rebuilding took over five months to complete, proved to be an expensive affair. Raising the vessel cost $55,830 and rebuilding $88,194. The original cost of building had been $223,159. The Maverick returned to service in November 1900. In the next six years the Maverick was involved in at least eight more incidences of accident or damage—grounding, collision, and the loss of a mast and rigging in a thunderstorm.

The Maverick 293

The5. S. Maverick and the Standard Oil Company's Barge 91 near Astoria, Oregon. (Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum.)

According to information gleaned from her certificates of registry and enrollment, the Maverick seems to have been converted from coal to oil burning in 1902. While on the East Coast, Maverick called at Galveston, Havana, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, and New York as well as a number of New England ports. Her certificate of registry, issued in 1906, describes her as having two instead of three masts. It is not known if this change was made when she was rebuilt in 1899- Between 1890 and 1906, the Maverick was captained by at least seven different men: William Evans, John B. Allen, S. G. Chase, W W Dobell, T. N. Fossett, E. C. Rood, and Thomas Fenlon.

On 17 October 1906 under Fenlon's command, she departed New York with a barge of freight in tow, destined for San Francisco. The voyage via Cape Horn took eighty-one days, with no intermediate ports. Maverick arrived in San Francisco on 2 January 1907. There the Maverick had her capacity increased by converting water tanks to cargo space. She remained in West Coast service owned by Standard Oil Company of California, typically steaming between southern California and Port Angeles in Washington. From 1907 through 1912 she was captained by only two men, John McKellam and W F. Daniels, who alternated aboard her. For the period 1912 to 1914 Captain Daniels was replaced by a Mr. Spenser.

294 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

In 1915, the Maverick was sold to a company identified as the Maverick Steam Ship Company (believed to be an intermediary for German interests) and registered in Los Angeles, where she was assigned the radio call letters KHBS. Her crew was increased from twenty-five to twenty-eight, and her new captain was N. C. Nelson. After leading a typical "ship's life" (except for relatively frequent damage and accidents), the Maverick next became involved in a probable case of gun running.

In 1915, following a severe storm, the stricken schooner Emma drifted near an island off the coast of Baja California, where a mysterious vessel, the Annie Larsen lay at anchor. Her captain said that he was waiting for the Maverick. The vessel, later proven a gunrunner, soon departed. Several weeks later the Maverick arrived, but left upon learning that the Annie Larsen had sailed. William Langdon, one of the Emma's crew, later came across magazine reports confirming his suspicion that both the Annie Larsen and the Maverick were involved in a gunrunning episode as a part of what was known as "the German-Hindu conspiracy." This was an alleged plan by the German government to supply arms to dissident groups in British India with the intent of fermenting revolt, or, at the very least, causing problems for the British. After sailing to the East Indies the Maverick was interned by the Dutch "on general principles" but then released. She was listed as departing Manila on 14 August 1916 for New Orleans. There were rumors that she was involved in assisting the German raider Emden. The last official record consists of the following notation on her Certificate

of Registry. "Surrendered Los Angeles, 12/31/17. vessel sailed from Manila P.I. Aug. 15, 1917 [i.e., 1918] for Cienfuegos, Cuba and has not since reported."1

The Maverick was a significant vessel in several ways. While the use of steel for ship construction was probably inevitable, she served as a successful early demonstration, and Baltimore continued to be a major shipbuilding port until after World War 11. A large number of tankers, as well as many other types of steel vessels—wartime Liberty Ships among them—were built

20 in Baltimore. Lastly, theMaverick is of interest because of the role, though sometimes minor, she played in the events of her time.

It is still not known when and how the Maverick was lost.

NOTES

1. Harold F. Wil 1 iamson, et al., The American Petroleum Industry (2 vols.; Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1959), pp- 594, 631.

2. Ibid., p. 329. 3- Hugo P. Frear, "History of Tankers," Historical Transactions 1893-1943 (New

York: Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers), 1945, (hereinafter//7), pp. 135-139.

The Maverick 295

4. Record of American and Foreign Shipping (New York: American Shipmasters' Association, 1891).

5 A. W Carmichael, Practical Ship Construction (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1919), p. 51.

6. H. Paasch, Illustrated Marine Encyclopedia (London: Hill Publishing Co., 1919, repr. Watford, England: Argus Books, 1977), p. 2. 7./fr(1945),p. 136. 8.//r (1945), p. 137. 9- Baltimore ylwen'can, 26 January 1890. 10. Baltimore 5?/«, 18 May 1890. 11. It is worth noting how much is revealed concerning the interests and concerns

of the day by the details provided in contemporaiy newspaper accounts. Single screw-driven, steam-propelled vessels of the period carried auxiliary sail because of frequent engine breakdowns and the essential conservatism of ship owners and sailors. Even naval vessels were so assisted. Fire aboard ships was (and still is) a major hazard. This would have been particularly worrisome aboard a petroleum carrier. Thus, the interest in the electric lights for reasons of safety as well as novelty.

Steam propulsion was in the forefront of technology in the 1890s thus the interest in the details of cylinders, boilers, and other machineiy. The engine in the: Maverick, a triple expansion engine, was a design later used in the Liberty Ships of World War II. Its capacity, 500,000 gallons, is approximately l/400th that of the largest present- day supertankers, which are more than four times longer than the Maverick.

12. Baltimore/Iwencan, 18 May 1890. 1$. New York Times, 18 July 1899 14. Betty L. Hale, archivist, Mobil Oil Corporation. Letter to the author, 21 June

1978. 15. J. H. Morrison, "Development of American Tankers," International Marine

Engineering, 22 (1917), 22:105-107. 16. Marilyn R. Pukkila, assistant to the archivist, Mobil Oil Corporation. Letter to

the author, 1 August 1978. 17. See Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in

America, 1914-1917 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books. 1989), pp. 79-80. 18. The following account draws upon Winston Langdon, "Emma, Annie Larsen

and Maverick.,'" Annual Dog Watch [publ. by the Melbourne, Australia Shiplovers' Society of Victoria], 13 (1956): 62-79.

19. Jerry MacMullen, "Tanker Maverick's End A Mystery,".?«« ZWego Union, 23 July 1972. 20. L. A. Sawyer and W H. Mitchell, Victory Ships and Tankers, (Cambridge, Md.:

Cornell Maritime Press, 1974), pp. 88-99-

Book Reviews

Maryland, Unity in Diversity: Essays on Maryland Life and Culture. Edited by A. Franklin Parks and John B. Wiseman. (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 1990. Pp. Ix, 195. Notes, illustrations, index. »16.95.)

This volume is an outgrowth of a 1987 conference at Frostburg State University which explored the underlying reasons for Maryland's unique quality of achieving unity despite apparently irreconcilable diversity. A. Franklin Parks, who teaches English at Frostburg State, and John B. Wiseman, professor of American and Maryland history at the same institution, have collected fifteen essays by writers distinguished for their scholarship on the topic they develop. Grouped into seven divisions, the book provides a skillfully laid out, easily digested smorgasbord of Maryland's history and characteristics. No essay exceeds ten pages, and this brevity, rather than detracting from the treatment of its topic, serves to tempt the reader into further research on that specific facet of Maryland's charm.

Any book to which various authors have contributed is open to the criticism that the scholarship and writing are uneven. This text does not escape that criticism, but its chief purpose—to identify Maryland as a state with unity in diversity—has been accomplished.

Many essays bring together long-forgotten events or fascinating bits of information seldom found in other texts and often difficult to locate. Subjects include the wits of the Tuesday Club of colonial Annapolis—the social, literary, and musical center for the entire Chesapeake Bay region; the role of Afro-Americans in the movement for racial change and progress in Baltimore, 1904-1925; the effects of urbanization and industrialization on Quaker identity; the rise of anti-Catholicism in the 1850s; and the "drudgers," the oystermen of Somerset County. Here, too, are topics familiar to most of us: Maryland canals, turnpikes, the oyster industry, and Maryland signers of the Constitution (the contribution in this area comes from a recipient of the Young Scholars Award, a Yale undergraduate). These essays, however, are neither hackneyed nor trite and provide a new view of familiar scenes.

Of particular interest to the reader is the essay by Robert J. Brugger, who contributes the first article on "Maryland's History and Culture: Some Thoughts on Putting the Pieces Together." The opening paragraphs of his essay set the tone for the whole volume. Using Father Andrew White's early account of his explorations in Maryland, Brugger suggests that Maryland has always exhibited a peculiar "betweenness"—an absence of extremes, a "healthy pragmatism," a reputation for "blending cultural and philosophical differences," and a sensibility that combines "profit and pleasure" (p. 5).

In a thoughtful essay, "Heritage and Identity," George H. Callcott helps us to understand how the past has enriched our present, asking what in our heritage provides us with identity. He makes clear that this identity flows from three Maryland

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE 296

VOL. 85, NO. 3, FALL 1990

Book Reviews 297

characteristics: the centrality by which all diverse areas are enriched by all; the progressivism shown in the early manumission of many slaves, leadership in commerce and technology, and Maryland's erection of the first American research university; and lastly a lack of provincialism that has meant both religious toleration and literary sophistication. As Calcott remarks aptly, "the wonder is only that this literary distinctiveness has not been noted more" (pp. 20-21).

The section called "Quintessential Marylanders" may disappoint a reader. The life of the nineteenth-century Maryland fugitive slave Frederick Douglass is well told by Dickson J. Preston, but he only discusses Douglass's younger years, leaving the reader with many questions about his contribution to this state. In Vincent Fitzpatrick's delightful essay, "The Bourgeois Baltimorean; The Case of H.L. Mencken," a reader is transported back in twentieth-century Maryland history to rethink the contributions of a journalist and American humanist "ranked second only to Mark Twain" (p. 184). A champion of middle-class values, personal freedom, and the right of private property, Mencken differed from many contemporary Americans in his disdain for universal suffrage and mass education and in his outspoken agnosticism. A paradox to most, irreverent "about nearly everything" (p. 192), his pen dipped in acid, Mencken spoke of Baltimore as a "Perfect Lady" (p. 185). Mencken gave little attention to the less fortunate, and his cynicism seemed to have spared no one. While Fitzpatrick argues that Mencken maintained friendships with "those whom he castigated in print" (p. 191), it must be remembered that this essay predates the current, highly publicized diary of H. L. Mencken and the new light it casts on the controversial author.

This book is a solid contribution to the history of Maryland. Many readers will welcome its short essays not only as entertaining and enjoyable reading but, perhaps more importantly, as beacons to further research into the economic, political, and social history of Maryland, the concept of "America in Miniature," and the "Unity in Diversity" theme. This reviewer hopes that such is the case.

VIRGINIA GEIGER, S.S.N.D. College of Notre Dame of Maryland

The Administration of Justice in Colonial Maryland, 1632-1689 • By Marilyn L. Geiger. (Outstanding Dissertations in Early American Legal and Constitutional History. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1987. Pp. iii, 349- Bibliog- raphy. $40)

Thanks to the efforts of the Maryland State Archives and the Maryland Historical Society, the state has one of the oldest and most complete collections of colonial court records in America. Most of the provincial court and chancery court records, plus selected years of some county court papers, have been published in the Archives of Maryland, and the originals for the remaining years have been preserved at the Hall of Records at Annapolis.

Although these records are in remarkably good condition, they are so immense that it is often difficult to see the forest for the trees. Marilyn L. Geiger is to be

298 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

commended for her efforts in tapping this valuable resource and giving us a glimpse of seventeenth-century society from the lives and struggles in these documents.

This book is "a study of the evolution of the courts, the administration of justice, and the role of law in colonial Maryland between 1632 and 1689" (p- iii) Chapter one, "The First Five Decades of Settlement in Colonial Maryland," is a general discussion of the first proprietary period with emphasis on the foundations of the province's legal machinery. This introductory chapter is enhanced by a particularly interesting discussion concerning the status of the English common law in the colonies. Geiger develops and then evaluates the prevailing theories of common law transplantation against evidence obtained from the Maryland experience, concluding that the "[c]ommon law was in force in colonial Maryland whenever applicable except where it extended to loss of freehold, member, or life which could not be taken except under the laws of the province" (p. 13)-

Chapter two, "Early Courts and Judicial Officers," traces the foundation of colonial law in Maryland to the charter Charles I granted Cecil Calvert. The king vested Calvert with "free, full and absolute Power" to provide for the administration of justice. In turn, the proprietor ordained his brother Leonard Calvert as governor, chancellor, chief justice, and chief magistrate. Thus responsibility for the administration of justice lay with the provincial governor.

In 1638 the governor and his council held Maryland's first court at St. Mary's. This court was at first called the county court, but after 1642 it became known as the provincial court. As the province grew and more county courts were added, the provincial court assumed jurisdiction over appeals from them, in addition to its own nisi prius jurisdiction. The appellate function of the provincial court had already begun to eclipse its trial function when in 1692 the new royal governor reorganized the provincial court as a separate body, reserving for himself and the council all appeals from the lower courts. About 1695 this panel became known as the court of appeals, today Maryland's highest court.

Forming the core of the book, chapters three through six focus on the prerogative court, the court of chancery, the provincial court, and the county courts, respectively. In presenting the provincial court after the prerogative court and the chancery court, Geiger diminishes the importance of this court, which during the first proprietary period was the focal point of most judicial activity.

On occasion she departs from the original records and accepts uncritically erroneous generalizations made by earlier researchers. Citing Newton Mereness's Maryland as a Proprietary Province (New York, 1901), she writes, "Admiralty cases were heard in the regular courts of law until a Vice-Admiralty Court was given an entity separate from the Provincial Court in 1684. Until that date the Governor or his deputy, who was usually the Vice-Admiral of Maryland, with or without other Provincial Court justices held the Vice-Admiralty Court" (p. 57). This general statement does not describe accurately the colonial courts of admiralty in Maryland. Admiralty matters came before the governor and council, which on these occasions called itself a "Court of Admiralty," not a court of vice-admiralty. And the records clearly indicate that 1694 was the year a separate, autonomous court of vice-ad-

Book Reviews 299

miralty, commissioned by the high court of admiralty in England, was established in Maryland. In 1684 Governor Charles Calvert established a court of admiralty, but its jurisdiction and features were at odds with the true courts of vice-admiralty in the other British colonies. In addition, admiralty cases continued to be recorded in the proceedings of the provincial court as they had been since 1663- Governor Nicholson established the first true vice-admiralty courts in Maryland. On 27 July 1694 he produced his commission as vice admiral from the high court of admiralty to the council and later that year established courts of vice-admiralty on the Eastern and Western Shores of Maryland. These courts exhibited all the characteristics Geiger and others mistakenly assumed the 1684 court to have had.

Though she treats the prerogative, chancery, provincial, and county courts separately, Geiger's analysis is held together by her theme of centralization. For example, after comparing the prerogative court with the English ecclesiastical courts on which it was modeled, she shows how the evolution in Maryland of courts which handle testamen- tary matters was toward increased "formalization of procedure" and "centralization" (p. 73). The observation of the same phenomenon in the other courts tends to support her central thesis that during the first five decades the "Proprietor used the administration of justice in Maryland as a vehicle for the centralization of power" (p. 6).

This is a very substantial finding, supporting theories on how legal systems and procedures become entrenched in society. In addition, it implies a view of society and informs a practice of politics which is no less true today than it was in colonial Maryland. In the last two chapters Geiger sets out to discover just what this view of society is.

In chapter seven, "indentured Servants, Negroes, and Indians" and chapter eight, "Marital Relationships and Moral Offenses as Reflected in the Courts," Geiger tries to discover the nature of seventeenth-century society through extant court records. Her attempt to discern the nature of society as reflected in the judiciary's treatment of women, indentured servants, slaves, and Indians is a very ambitious project. She makes a number of inroads, such as her documentation of the effect of the common law of "coverture" on the legal status of colonial women. But I fear the landscape she wants to paint has more hues than those which can be mixed from the colors on her palette. Since legal relationships form but one part of seventeenth-century society, a more realistic depiction would mean going beyond the court records and taking full advantage of other historical sources.

This is a very important work on the colonial court system in Maryland, reminis- cent of the scholarship found in Carroll T Bond's The Court of Appeals of Maryland (Baltimore, 1928). The generalist seeking a glimpse of life in the 1600s will find a number of important insights into the relationship between men and women, free and slave labor, and colonist and native. For the specialist interested in the colonial antecedents of our present legal forms, it is a comprehensive and well documented account.

MICHAEL C. TOLLEY

Northeastern University

300 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Dear Lizzie: The Papers of John Marsh Smith, 1849-1857.(Portland, Ore.: National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1987. Pp. 194. Illustrations, notes, index. $24.95.)

History textbooks have often been characterized as bland and dull. Historical accounts written by participants, on the other hand, bring the events alive by the subjective comments of the writers. Dear Lizzie is one of the latter and provides an interesting account of the California and (perhaps less well known) Oregon gold rushes.

John Marsh Smith was a Baltimore Quaker who went to California to search for gold. His letters to his wife, Elizabeth Brooke Tyson Smith, and to other relatives and friends describe his adventures in San Francisco and Oregon, giving a first-hand account of the search for gold and the living conditions in California and Oregon. Accounts of snowstorms, rain, illness, and the writer's various economic activities (he kept a store as well as panning for gold) all make for fascinating reading.

Genealogical charts help to explain the relationships of people mentioned in the letters, and the notes, illustrations, and occasional explanatory narrative by the editor enhance the interest of the book, but the letters themselves are the feature that makes the book interesting.

ROBERT BARNES

Perry Hall

The Spirit of the Times: Amusem*nts in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore, Norfolk, and Richmond. By Patricia C. Click. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989- Pp. x, 153- Illustrations, notes, select bibliography, index. $25.00.)

In the latter part of the nineteenth century Baltimore's parks board suggested that the city zoo do away with the monkeys, stating that "by their filthy habits [they] do not present an edifying spectacle to the women and children who watch them." It seems that public amusem*nts have forever been treading a delicate line between edification and appeals to baser natures—the women and children did not, after all, turn away from the monkeys. In The Spirit of the Times Patricia Click sheds light on the several nineteenth century tensions that influenced the parameters of amusem*nt in three Southern cities and thus fueled debates such as the one over the fate of the filthy monkeys. Between 1800 and 1870, according to Click, amusem*nts became more widely defined, more readily accepted without pretense of educational value, but also subject to greater class stratification. The author further contends that the nineteenth century bred a unique amusem*nt spirit, one that the Civil War failed to disrupt and one shared with few variations by all three urban centers.

Click has selected some interesting examples of contemporary amusem*nts:exhibitions, museums, lectures, theaters, horse races, clubs and organizations, and resorts. Her strength lies in her willingness to explore the issue of class stratification. She makes a convincing case while discussing public behavior in theaters, illustrat-

Book Reviews 301

ing through many incidents how class behaviors varied and pointing out finally how audience composition was controlled through theater production choices and standards. Additionally, she recognizes that shifting definitions of amusem*nt were symptomatic of changing attitudes. Elsewhere Click's arguments stand on evidence spread a bit too thinly (the text runs to only 104 pages). A great deal of material has been compressed into arguments that are stated briefly and with little support. Rather than discussing class mobility, for example. Click asserts that "Movement between the social classes, particularly from lower to middle, was fairly easy" (p. 15). The book focuses, in fact, on those for whom the most readily available sources exist—the upper and aspiring that upper-class ways were the goal of all and that lower-class adoption of an amusem*nt would drive the upper class to new or more restricted forms. Some recent works show the lower classes to have been mindful of separate interests and aggressive in their pursuit.

There are additional problems, nearly all, it seems, stemming from trying to interpret so much material in so little space. Taking the place of a look at what defined social sensibilities is the author's judgment that human and animal freaks were the "really disgusting exhibits" (p. 26). Terms often go unexplained: "bullbait- ing" and "betting a glove," for example (pp. 58, 59). Examples from the three cities are mixed randomly and sometimes presented in perplexing chronological order. In a two-page sequence of theater incidents, the evidence moves from 1805 to 1803 to 1826 to 1832 to 1807 to 1837 to 1847 and finally to 1815. Inafifteen-page chapter Click mixes quoit clubs with singing societies, fire companies, and benevolent and fraternal organizations. While she is correct that all were important means to self-definition, she loses the thread of amusem*nt here, particularly in the five pages devoted to temperance societies.

Click asks good questions about the meaning of amusem*nts in American life, and in trying to answer them, she has uncovered many interesting tales. Unfor- tunately, trying to address a multitude of questions for a wide array of amusem*nts in three cities across seventy busy years is perhaps too large a task for a book this size. Her arguments for a new and unique amusem*nt spirit, for emerging emphasis upon entertainment at the expense of education, and for increased class stratification are perhaps correct, but unconvincing by the weight of evidence presented here. She has perhaps tamed her material too well.

DAVID ZANG

Department of Physical Education University of Maryland, College Park

Antietani: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign. Gary W. Gallagher, ed. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989- Pp. ix, 94. Bibliographic notes, index. »17.50 cloth, $8.95 paper.)

This slender volume, edited by Civil War historian Gary Gallagher, offers a stimulating collection of essays dealing with the greatest military action ever fought in Maryland. Featuring thought-provoking summations from four well known

302 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

authorities on the Civil War in the East, the book presents five perspectives on the

Maryland campaign of 1862. Most prominently discussed is the climactic battle of

Antietam, or Sharpsburg as it was known in the South. Gallagher's introduction to

the book establishes the relative importance of the Maryland campaign of 1862,

perhaps the most important campaign of the Civil War. Written in an informal and

engaging style, the essays cover various aspects of the campaign and offer some

points of view that will, no doubt, enliven debates between armchair historians and

experts alike.

"Season of Opportunity," by the editor, describes the issues that were at stake in

the fall of 1862. His essay deals almost exclusively with Lee and his army, although

there is some mention of the Union situation. Gallagher persuasively argues that

this campaign may well have been the most decisive of the war due to the national

and international implications of the first Confederate invasion of Northern soil.

In "Drama Between the Rivers," National Park Service historian Dennis Fiye ably

narrates the siege and capture of Harpers Ferry by Stonewall Jackson. Frye's lively

description deflates some of the "traitorous surrender conspiracy" theories that

have cropped up in recent years. He also suggests that the burden of failure should

rest with a number of individuals and not just the Union garrison commander. Col.

Dixon S. Miles.

Another well known Park Service historian, Robert K. Krick, describes Lee's army

in September 1862. His point is that Lee's tattered veterans had nothing to gain and

everything to lose by risking battle on the banks of Antietam Creek. Krick further

asserts that Lee should not have fought the battle of Antietam but offers no

suggestions as to what he should have done instead. By this standard then, stripped

of any hope of strategic victory, the tactical draw that Lee's army achieved was the

best they could hope for. Thus the whole battle served only to allow Lee selectively

to prune his army's command system.

Wilson A. Greene, yet another Park Service historian, takes on the study of the

controversial conduct of Union commander George B. McClellan. His essay, "I

Fought the Battle Splendidly," examines McClellan's conduct of the campaign,

highlighting the many missed opportunities and errors that prevented his superior

numbers from overwhelming Lee's army. Greene competently conveys the theme

that the most dangerous enemy McClellan faced was his own imagination. Ultimate-

ly he was unable to vanquish this illusive foe and was thus doomed to failure.

Gallagher, in "The Maryland Campaign in Perspective," returns to sum up the

significance of the Maryland campaign in a global context of the war. Though Lee

fought his army as well as any commander could be expected to do, the military

and political victory went to the Union forces.

Essays on the Maryland Campaign is enjoyable reading. Its focus on several

crucial issues will entertain the veteran Civil War enthusiast, but it is also clear and

understandable for the average reader. Well written, and offering several points of

departure for armchair generals to argue, the book will serve as a tasty appetizer

for weightier texts. As the largest military operation ever to take place in the Old

Book Reviews 303

Line State, the Maryland campaign of 1862 continues to draw scholarly attention, and this collection showcases that attention in its best and most readable form.

TOM CLEMENS

Hagerstown Junior College

The Arabbers of Baltimore. By Roland J. Freeman. (Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1989- Pp- xiii, 176. Illustrations, bibliography. $19 95 paper.)

In his preface to The Arabbers of Baltimore, Roland Freeman comments that "the camera has always been a major means for me to communicate directly and powerfully with people" (p. ix). I imagine that few who see his photographs in this book will fail to be moved by their intimate, in ways compelling, glimpses of the world of Baltimore's African-American street vendors who work from horse-drawn carts—the so-called 'Arabbers" of Baltimore.

The photographs—there are over 130—are grouped into four sections: The Stables, Buying Produce and Loading Wagons, Serving the Community, and Friends, Family, and Community. Visually arresting, they reveal Freeman's fine eye for detail as well as his empathy; his subjects are clearly at ease with him and he with them. Many photographs are captioned—not merely for place and time but also to provide context, adding to their strength as ethnographic record. Freeman has recorded stables (some now razed) and their interiors and yards; arabbers young and old; the old Camden Street market; selling and delivering produce; a family reunion; an annual boat ride and Appreciation Day. The camera is strikingly intimate but never intrusive, and through Freeman one can share two brothers' affection for their favorite pony, one man's struggle to continue to arab despite the encumbrance of a colostomy bag, familiarity on the dance floor, sorrow at a funeral, the social context of arabber vending, and much else.

The reasons for Freeman's success become clear in "My Roots in Arabbing," the thirty-five page introductory essay. Freeman himself in 1936 was born into a family in which, on both his mother's and father's sides, arabbing was an occupation preferred to others because of the greater measure of independence and freedom it gave to the vendors. When he was still a boy, he worked for several arabbers, and many of his impressions of arabbing come from these years of first-hand experience in the mid and late 1940s.

Although engagingly written, Freeman's essay is highly impressionistic and leaves much untold. But this book does not pretend to be either a history or an ethnog- raphy of arabbers, and to suggest that the subjective nature of the essay might be a detriment would be to miss its significance. What is valuable is that this is history by an insider who also actively guided its production. This text will itself become of great importance to the historian or anthropologist who, one day, might—one hopes, will—focus in depth on arabbing; the success of the enterprise will be in large measure dependent on eliciting data from participants like Freeman and the men and women he mentions. There are rich possibilities.

304 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Only five arabbing stables remain today in Baltimore. Many were razed—in at least one case despite the protest of historic preservationists—in the name of gentrification, sanitation, and urban renewal. The arabbers themselves may be in decline or changing from horse-drawn to mechanical transport, but thanks to Freeman, they will not be forgotten.

SHEPARD KRECH III Department of Anthropology

Brown University

Catonsville, 1880 to 1940: Front Village to Suburb. By Edward W. Orser and Joseph L. Arnold in association with the Catonsville Historical Society. (Norfolk, Va.: Donning Co., 1989. Pp. 176. Illustrations, index. $2995.)

Edward Orser and Joseph Arnold, history professors at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, with the help of their students, have produced a very handsome pictorial history of Catonsville in its heyday from 1880 to 1940. Catonsville grew from a village of three hundred households surrounded by scattered farms and summer estates along Frederick Pike (Route 40) in 1880 to a middle-class Baltimore suburb of more than 5,000 households on the eve of World War II. It is a story typical of countless American rural communities relentlessly absorbed into an expanding urban metropolis in the halt-century between Grover Cleveland and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The photographs, maps, and text are harmoniously blended to give the reader (or rather the viewer) an insightful image not only of streets and stores, buggies and trolleys, porches and lawns, but also of the Catonsvilleans—real people stopping for a moment in their daily routine to be recorded by the camera. The authors have skillfully arranged the photographs to trace the evolution of what was the summer retreat of an elite of "rich and well-born" families—the Garys, the Glenns, the Lurmans—to the tree-lined streets of one-family residences of the white American middle-class—the Harmons, the Heidelbachs, the Mohlers, the Maisels. The African-American population is less evident, not because it was small—blacks represented 20 percent of the population in 1910—but because no one thought about photographing them. We have only a glimpse of the African-Americans from the photos of the Coe family of Winters Lane, a rare example of upward social mobility—relative to be sure—from "domestic help" to elementary school teachers. After World War I Winters Lane would be surrounded by ever-expanding white neighborhoods.

The massive development of single-unit housing in the 1920s and 1940s carved up the remains of the old estates. Under the entrepreneurial hand of Emile and Donald I. Mohler, the 64-acre Gary Estate became Summit Park with 156 lots of frame houses and bungalows advertised in the Catonsville Argus in 1921 as "Home Sites of the Better Kind." Gustav Lurman's mansion "Bloomsbury" was bought by the Rolling Road Golf Club in 1916; the avenue that bears his mansion's name is better known by our generation as the site of Catonsville High School, built of shiny

Book Reviews 305

new red bricks in 1925. And in the same decade J.W Holloway moved west across Rolling Road to develop Oak Forest Park with homes on "large and spacious lots" peering over wide well-cropped lawns and tennis courts to Montrose Avenue, broad and without sidewalks—the height of Catonsvillean genteel living.

But there was a "middling" Catonsville too. What our parents still called "the village" in the 1930s and 40s is well depicted in the street scenes and store fronts we remember so vividly—Harmon's florist shop, Grimm's bakery, Stagmer's drug store, Wilson's lumber yard. Odd Fellow's Hall, Joe Dalfonso's "Real Art" barber shop, the firehouse and police station, and especially the Alpha movie theater—in 1940 a completely self-contained community, or so it seemed to us then. Beyond the developer's map and federal census, beyond the store front and shady porch, even beyond home furnishings and shop inventories are the laces of the people. Here is John Harmon, equally earnest whether in World War I uniform or loading his delivery trucks with flowers; a somewhat wary John Pergoy, seated in his grocery store surrounded by boxes from the National Biscuit Company; Donald Mohler, prosperous, well-scrubbed, and a trifle smug in front of his new house on Forest Drive; young Mae Esther Coe, a melancholy face peering out over a homemade overcoat, perhaps thinking of that long daily trolley ride to the black high school in "the City." What thoughts and feelings lie behind these faces? How one would like to match these camera flashes with personal encounters.

We, the reviewers, were children in Catonsville in the 1940s. These well chosen photographs touch a special chord in us. We relate them to our personal memories of those days—a snowball stand on Magruder Avenue in July, a cherry phosphate at the drug store after school. Boy Scout meetings at the Presbyterian Church, "Westerns" at the Alpha theater on Wednesday afternoons, buying flowers at Harmon's for the high school prom, and, the height of adventure, borrowing Dad's car for a date. We cheered the annual Fourth of July parade down Frederick Avenue to its end—Catonsville High School, where we drank co*kes and listened to patriotic speeches. We roller skated on Friday evenings in the big cement basem*nt of the Methodist Church on Melvin Avenue, we rode the trolley to the teen canteen at the Catonsville Junction to dance to "Chatanooga Choo Choo," and "String of Pearls," and on summer afternoons we played backyard badminton on Stanley Drive and cooled off afterward at the Five Oaks swimming pool.

By no stretch of the imagination could the Catonsville we knew be called radical, eccentric, or even adventurous. Politically conservative, socially conformist, Catonsville was also hard working, neighborly, somewhat "clubby," and above all, innocent. In 1940 Catonsville was very much the mainstream small-town America of Norman Rockwell. Perhaps it still is, despite the invasion of beltways and shopping malls, three wars, and the rise and fall of European Communism.

ROBHRT FORSTl-R AND FUZABETH S. HUGHES

Johns Hopkins University

306 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America. By John Mack Faragher. (New York; Facts on File, 1989. Pp. x, 496. Illustrations, index. $50.00.)

The early years of European settlement of North America make up one of the most interesting periods of our history, yet, while there is a large body of literature on this topic, there have been relatively few reference tools produced. Publishers have concentrated on the Revolutionary War; Mark Boatner Ill's Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (New York: D. McKay, 1974) and Gregory Palmer's Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (Westport, Conn.: Meckler Publishing, 1984) are just two examples of their efforts. This new encyclopedia fills the need for a general source for quick reference.

The sixty-one contributors have written some 1,500 articles on various aspects of American history, economics, and culture for the period from the 1600s to the end of the Revolutionary War. The writing is clear and easy to understand; numerous cross references are provided, and there are over 150 illustrations scattered throughout this well-constructed book. Most of the entries are only a paragraph or two in length, while the more important topics frequently extend beyond one page. The subject matter is interesting enough that one can enjoy just browsing through the book.

Although Maryland sits in the center of the eastern seaboard, most of the important events of the era occurred in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. The Old Line State is allocated four pages of text; articles on the other colonies are approximately the same length. There are separate entries for Annapolis, Baltimore, and the Calverts. Fuller accounts of Maryland during this period can be found in Lois Green Carr et al., eds.. Colonial Chesapeake Society (North Carolina, 1988), Aubrey C. Land's Colonial Maryland: A History (KTO, 1981), and Charles Albro Barker's The Background of the Revolution in Maryland (Yale, 1940).

The work does contain many maps, but this reviewer feels that not enough details are included, and the book lacks a map of the whole continent. The absence of any chronologies should also be noted; separate listings for each colony as well as one for the entire period covered would have been useful. Finally, texts of important documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Paris would have been appropriate for an appendix.

Much of the information contained within this encyclopedia can of course be found in other reference sources, such as xhe Dictionary of American History (Rev. ed., Scribner's, 1976). However, it is so much easier to use one compact source. The item under review is suitable for all libraries and historical collections.

DANIEL K. BLEWETT

Milton S. Eisenhower Library Johns Hopkins University

Book Reviews 307

The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation. By Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups. (Baltimore, Md. and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989- Pp. xiii, 340. Notes, bibliography, index. 836.00.)

This excellent book is a detailed analysis of the origins of the backwoods, forest-colonization culture that rapidly spread across the forested regions of North America, especially during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The essence of this backwoods culture consisted of "steel ax, rifle, log construction, corn, hog, worm fence, scattered settlement, mobility, and shifting cultivation" (p. 248). Strongly interlinked, these characteristics led to the development of a transcontinental rather than a littoral nation. The book, therefore, also concerns itself with the processes of cultural adaptation and diffusion. In clear prose and with an abundance of maps, charts, diagrams, photographs, and drawings, Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, two cultural geographers, present a revisionist study based upon archival material and architectural evidence.

Jordan and Kaups trace the origins of what they call "the Midland backwoods culture" (p. 92) back to the first European settlers in the Middle Colonies, back to the colony of New Sweden founded in 1638 in the lower Delaware Valley. New Sweden settlers exhibited a way of life that "closely resembled later backwoods pioneers" (pp. 92-93). At least one third of the colony, however, were Finns with roots in the Savo-Karelian region of what today is Finland but which during the seventeenth century constituted an integral part of Sweden. Almost a century earlier the Swedish king had recruited these "forest Finns" to colonize the uninhabited forested province of Varmland on the Norwegian border.

By way of Varmland, these Finns brought to the Delaware Valley their practices of forest clearance, log construction, shifting cultivation, and dispersed farmsteads, as well as their individualism, disrespect for authority, mobility, and irreligiosity. The Finns and the Swedes, the only North American colonists to come from heavily forested land, easily adapted to their new environment.

Jordan and Kaups offer "as a secondary thesis, that after the Finns, the next most significant contributors to the backwoods pioneer adaptive system were the eastern woodland Indians...in particular the Delaware tribe" (p. 36). Of all European groups, the Finns established the closest relationship with Indians, in part because of the Finns' long history of interaction with the aboriginal Lapps. The backwoods system of hunting and gathering owed much of its existence to this Finnish-Indian interaction.

In 1655 the Dutch conquered New Sweden only to lose the colony to England in 1664. These changes, plus borrowings from the Indians, contributed to the ethnic mixing and intermarriage that facilitated the spread of backwoods culture beyond the Delaware River area. When large numbers of Germans and Scotch-Irish began to arrive about 1720 the latter quickly adopted the backwoods culture and moved into western Pennsylvania and then south through the Great Valley. Others pushed through the Cumberland Gap into the trans-Appalachian region. Unlike the Scotch- Irish, who originated on England's hardscrabble fringe, the Germans found the

308 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

backwoods culture alien and remained to enlarge the core area by replicating the settled way of life they had known in Europe.

As a prototype culture, New Sweden left an impact of major proportions. Jordan and Kaups make such a conclusion seem like common sense although their findings challenge the academic consensus regarding the colony's lasting influence. Yet their research, which took them to Finland, Sweden, and Norway, as well as to the Rocky Mountains and other parts of the United States, is convincing. Their discussions of such subjects as log architecture, hunting techniques, and crop selection, moreover, should appeal to general readers as well as to specialists. This book adds a new dimension to an understanding of the settlement of North America.

KEITH W. OLSON

University of Marydand

Crime and Society in North Carolina, 1663-1776. By Donna J. Spindel. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Pp. xvii, 171. Bibliog- raphy, notes, index. $25)

Colonial North Carolina has long been viewed as undeveloped, ignorant, and poor. It has also been largely ignored by historians of that period, who have preferred to concentrate on presumably more fruitful areas, such as the Chesapeake, the middle colonies, or aristocratic South Carolina. Thus, this well researched and carefully organized book is especially welcomed. Spindel, a professor of history at Marshall University, studies the judicial system of the colony in an attempt to analyze the stereotype of colonial North Carolina. She focuses her research on the extant North Carolina colonial criminal court records, some 4,000 in all, ranging from county court to supreme court. Spindel supplements this research with an assortment of other government records, colonial assembly records, and some published journals and personal papers. She does not, however, use any unpublished papers of colonial North Carolinians.

Spindel's research covers a variety of subjects, including the nature and evolution of North Carolina courts, types of crimes and criminals, disposition of cases, and the nature of punishments. She pays special attention to such variables as race, gender, class, and geographical region, in particular the ongoing evolution of a separate legal code for slaves. Spindel delineates a judicial system that operated under severe handicaps. The colonial assembly routinely restructured the courts, factionalism and disruptions "stretched legal institutions nearly to the breaking point" (p. 140), judges had virtually no legal training, jurors and witnesses failed to appear for trials with appalling regularity, and the colony's few jails were hopelessly inadequate. Yet North Carolinians blended their English legal heritage with such pragmatic solutions as substituting corporal punishment or monetary fines for jail sentences. The result was an increasingly efficient and sophisticated legal system, that not only provided legal safeguards but also acted as a crucial preserver of social order. This structure, Spindel maintains, is evidence that colonial North Carolina was in fact a complex, sophisticated, and stable society.

Book Reviews 309

Despite the evidence Spindel offers, her conclusions have a tentative quality. With a conviction rate of less than one third and a recidivism rate so high that it demonstrated that "adequate deterrents to crime do not exist" (p. 145), the reader can easily conclude that Spindel has overstated the efficiency of North Carolina's judicial system. Indeed, Spindel frequently undercuts her authority with such qualified conclusions as "The hint, however tenuous, is of the courts' growing ability to do their job" (pp. 114-115), or that North Carolina produced a "relatively sturdy legal structure that, for much of the time, held fast" (p. 140). Certainly, one of the problems is the source material. Although 4,000 case records sounds impressive, many contain only the most cursory information, a fact that the author points out on several occasions. At times, however, Spindel appears to contradict herself. For example, it is hard to reconcile "evidence gleaned from the Carolina records does not present a convincing picture of harsher treatment for the female defendant population" (p. 86) with "gender also perceptibly influenced decision making... .Women received overall harsher treatment than did male defendants" (pp. 141-142).

Spindel's relatively sanguine view of colonial Carolina society presents a contrast to the bleaker picture painted in 1981 by A. Roger Ekirch'sPoor Carolina: Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729-1776 (North Carolina, 1981). Ekrich used politics as a lens to view Carolina society and produced a study which emphasized the social unrest and domestic turmoil of the county. The differences between the two studies promise to fuel further research. Crime and Society is a valuable book, both for the depth of Spindel's research and the probing nature of her questions. It merits reading by anyone interested in the nature of colonial life in the South.

JIM L. SUMNER

North Carolina Division of Archives and History

Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty. By Harry M. Ward. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989. Pp. xi, 314. Notes, index, maps, plates. 82950.)

Harry M. Ward's Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty is a workmanlike biography of a secondary figure in the era of the American Revolution. On its own terms the book is unobjectionable, but taken overall it does raise some questions about biography and the task of the biographer.

Adam Stephen (d.1791) seems to have embodied a certain restless European personality that sought opportunities for fortune and fame in America. Born in Scotland, Stephen studied medicine at Edinburgh (he apparently outshined fellow student Benjamin Rush) and after a stint as a medical officer in the British navy emigrated to Virginia in 1748. Stephen quickly abandoned a medical practice (probably for reasons of temperament as much as for the dearth of opportunities for a physician) and began a chequered career as a soldier and public figure. Stephen served creditably with the Crown's forces in the French and Indian war and in

310 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

military posts on the frontier. At the end of the war, he turned to making money and carving out a political career in colonial Virginia. A fairly successful local politician and minor office holder, Stephen played a role during the burgeoning independence movement. While he may have had ideological or political reasons to support independence, Stephen mostly looked on the conflict with Britain as providing the opportunity for personal advancement and fame.

In this expectation Stephen was to be disappointed, as his military career in the Revolutionary War can only be described as disastrous. At best, Stephen was a prickly character who had continual difficulty in his relations with others, not the least of whom was George Washington. At worst, Stephen was a prideful incompetent whose reach for glory exceeded his grasp and who, in his overreaching, undermined the colonial military effort against the British. The low points in a career which had few high moments included Stephen's nearly botching the surprise attack on Trenton by failing to follow orders and prematurely deploying his command. The nadir came when Stephen mishandled his troops at the Battle of Germantown (he may have been drunk) thereby contributing to the rout of Continental forces. For his leading role in the fiasco at Germantown, Stephen was court-martialed, con- victed, and dismissed from service. Like a lot of colonial officers, he was in over his head when confronted with the demands of commanding troops against British regulars. However, it is difficult to be charitable to Stephen since he compensated for his inadequacies as a soldier with a vainglorious personality that took credit when none was due him, inflated and indeed fabricated achievements, and shirked responsibility for his own actions.

Why, then, a biography of such a secondary, even minor, figure? It is a professional piety that there is no such thing as a bad topic but it is, nonetheless, necessary for the author to establish the importance of what he or she is writing about. Unfor- tunately, Ward has not done this in the case of Adam Stephen. It cannot be argued (and Ward doesn't) that Stephen's career was singular enough or so intrinsically important as to justify a biography. Compounding the problem, Stephen left few personal papers, so it cannot be said that examining his life provides a new perspective or fresh information on the revolutionary era. In the absence of papers, Stephen frequently is submerged in Ward's descriptions—which are generally handled quite well—of the various events in which he participated. More troubling, it is impossible really to discern Stephen's motivations or reasons for acting as he did. For example, Ward concludes that Stephen's training in Edinburgh, seat of the Scottish Enlightenment, predisposed him to support the cause of liberty. Maybe so, but also maybe not, and this connection has to be shown, not merely assumed. Lacking personal papers. Ward has to rely on official documents and the papers of Stephen's contemporaries. In these records Stephen usually appears as the subject or object of a dispute of some kind. It is extremely doubtful that there is any historical value in rehashing the details of Stephen's confrontations, ranging from his court-martial down to petty points of military precedence, with authority. In sum, one comes away from Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty with a sense of sympathy for misplaced energy—and the convic-

Book Reviews 311

tion that just because someone existed and participated in great events does not

mean that he or she deserves a full-length scholarly biography.

DAVID C. WARD

Smithsonian Institution

The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution. Rev. Ed. By Sidney

Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,

1989. Pp. vii, 305. Sources, index. $40.00 cloth; $14.95 paper.)

The bicentennial celebration of the American Revolution witnessed the ap-

pearance of a wide variety of writings that dealt with various aspects of that

momentous event. One work in particular, by Sidney Kaplan, stood out from the

rest in terms of its subject matter, for it stressed the little-known role of the

African-American in the revolutionary era. Its favorable reception encouraged the

authors several years later to come forth with a second and revised edition.

In both its original and present form the work is a compilation of photostatic

excerpts taken from newspapers, journals, letters, diaries, and various works of art

which involved African-Americans in that late eighteenth-century period. To make

this collection meaningful, the authors have arranged their material into chapters

that follow a chronological development, beginning on the eve of the Revolution

and carrying it through to the early years of the nineteenth century.

Within this framework the lives and exploits of many African-Americans, both

slave and free, are brought out. The themes include nearly every facet of late

eighteenth-century life (economics, religion, etc.). Most importantly, both the

themes and the nearly two hundred individual photocopy reproductions are tied

together by the authors' well written commentary. Although all of colonial is

included, Maryland readers might note that the Old Line State has more than its

prorata share of coverage—especially for figures such as Benjamin Bannecker and

Yarrow Mamount.

Of the seven chapters that comprise the monograph, two in particular are quite

well done. The first covers the exploits of those African-Americans who took part

in the Revolutionary War. Although the evidence concerning the activities of many

of the participants is meager, the reader is pleasantly surprised at the sheer number

of nonwhite soldiers and sailors—on both the British and the American side—for

whom there is at least some valid proof of military contributions. The second

chapter, of equal quality, describes prominent African-Americans who excelled in

areas of a nonmilitary nature. The character sketches of several of these, with

supporting documentary evidence, are especially well done. The poetic gifts of

Phyllis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon, both of New York, are effectively delineated.

And Maryland's famous astronomer, Benjamin Bannecker, is also well portrayed. In

fact, the twenty pages of analysis devoted exclusively to him far surpass the coverage

of any of the other African-American figures who are described. This fine monograph falls short in one important respect: this revised edition is

only moderately larger in volume than the original edition. There is, for example.

312 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

no new material in chapters two, three, and four and only moderate amounts of new information in chapters five and six. Considering the positive reception of the first edition and the additional effort that goes into a revised edition, the authors might have expanded that effort to add more figures (as they did) and one or even two more chapters dealing with additional meaningful themes involving African- Americans in their struggle for freedom. In just one state like Maryland there is exciting material in newspapers and in legal records that could have been employed to illustrate several important themes. For instance, there is the effort on the part of state residents to move their constituents toward abolishing slavery within the state by 1790. Or the international flavor of the anti-slavery movement could have been emphasized by noting the flight of French planters with their household slaves from Santo Domingo to Maryland in the 1790s and the manumission of a large majority of these chattels within three years of their arrival here. Finally, a series of meaningful vignettes could have show how some of the newly freed African- Americans were proving that former slaves could succeed economically in what was almost totally a white man's world.

Despite not bringing in additional pertinent themes, the book in its present form is still a treasure store of information on African-American history in the late eighteenth century. The reader has not only a lively description of the events and the people involved but also a pictographic record of the artifacts relating to those events, both supported by an excellent listing of bibliographic source material. The very success of the work points up the need for a succeeding volume to deal with the next sixty years of African-American life, taking the story down to the eve of the American Civil War.

W. L. CALDERHEAD

United States Naval Academy

Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. By Joseph T. Glatthaar. (New York: Free Press, 1990. Pp.xiii, 370. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.)

Joseph T. Glatthaar's meticulously researched book explores the inner thoughts of the 178,000 black troops and their interactions with the 7,000 white officers who commanded them in the Civil War. They fought on 449 different fields, participated in more than forty important battles, and on many occasions saved federal forces from disaster. Since 144,000 black soldiers came from the slave states, their enlist- ment deprived the Confederacy of a tremendous labor force; since Southern whites were phobic about the very idea of blacks bearing arms, the psychological factor did its own special damage to the Confederate cause.

During the critical summer of 1864, when the North suffered heavy casualties and the government was anxiously seeking replacements, more than 100,000 blacks were in uniform, comprising one-ninth of the entire U.S. Army. With zeal they enlisted and served—despite unequal pay, inadequate rations and equipment, inferior medical care and the suspicion and dislike of their white comrades.

Book Reviews 313

Drawing on personal letters, contemporary newspapers and official documents, Glatthaar, who teaches at the University of Houston, has fleshed out the remarkable story of these troops in eleven mesmerizing chapters. Although the author seems reluctant to overburden the text with specific dates and placenames, he provides extensive documentation from which these data can usually be culled with a little extra effort. In fact, his three appendices (statistics samples. Congressional Medal of Honor winners, and black officers in the Union army), notes, bibliography, and index comprise well over one-fourth of the book.

From the statistics we learn, for example, that of the 400 white officers in the sample, more had been farmers before the war than any other profession. In another appendix Glatthaar offers a list of all black soldiers who became officers themselves.

There are two excellent sections of photographs (four pages each) that range from imaginatively racist cartoons from Southern and Northern periodicals to "before" and "after" shots of a slave in rags transformed into a uniformed federal soldier.

In the summer of 1862 Congress passed the Militia Act, empowering the president to organize blacks for military or naval service, and immediately Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew scoured antislavery groups for gentlemen of the highest caliber to lead the newly authorized troops. From these circles came the intellectual Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who raised the first black regiment, and the charis- matic Robert Gould Shaw, whose colorful 54th Massachusetts Infantry included two of the sons of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Shaw and over forty percent of his men were casualties in the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on 18 July 1863-

References to Maryland almost invariably reflect hostility to the use of blacks as Union soldiers. When Col. J. P. Creager unknowingly recruited several slaves along with free blacks, local Maryland (site undesignated) authorities threw him into jail. Another recruiter was shot by a Maryland slaveowner who promptly fled to Virginia. A black surgeon named Alexander T. Augusta was attacked by a mob in his hometown of Baltimore and is quoted as saying he had "always known Baltimore as a place where it is considered a virtue to mob colored people" (p. 197).

In addition, Maryland's Maj. Gen. Edward Otho Cresap Ord, born in Cumberland in 1818, is cited for unfairly revoking the commission of a former black sergeant of the 109th Colored Infantry, Francis A. Boyd, who had been granted a chaplaincy by Ord's predecessor, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. But Ord's opposition to the promotion of black soldiers was typical of most white officers, and the same scenario was repeated many times.

It was a hard life, sometimes hardly better than the slavery the recruits had sought to escape. Constant physical labor wore out their clothing and gave them a shabby look that reinforced white prejudices; they were assigned to the most primitive tasks, such as burial detail or picking up garbage. That Confederate rancor was greater for black soldiers than for whites is a sadly incontrovertible fact. Not infrequently Confederate commands met black troops under the dreaded black flag, a signal that no mercy would be accorded to any surrendering foes.

314 MARYIAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Inexorably, awareness of the contribution made by blacks to save the Union faded

as Reconstruction set in place a code of racial attitudes that would prevail for years

to come. Traditional history texts have allotted little space to black heroics during

the Civil War, and this reviewer never had an inkling of any such thing until as an

adult on a visit to Boston he viewed Augustus Saint-Gaudens's monument to the

memory of Col. Robert Gould Shaw and his 54th Massachusetts. All this constitutes

an inexcusable oversight, and now we can only be grateful that Glatthaar's well

documented study has emerged to help us redress the long-standing error.

JACK SHREVE

Allegany Community College

The Warof 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. By Donald R. Hickey. (Urbana and Chicago:

University of Illinois Press, 1989- Pp. xiii, 457. Notes, maps, illustrations, index.

132.50.)

Donald Hickey approaches the War ofl812asa conflict characterized by paradox.

It is, he declares, the nation's most obscure, most unpopular, and most forgotten

war. And to the extent that it has been remembered at all, it is regarded as a success

rather than the failure that it really was. The reasons why obscurity and misinformed

popular mythology should surround this war are, of course, manifold and complex.

Among them Hickey includes his belief that both its causes and its consequences

are "shrouded in mystery," although that mystery, he adds, "should not blind us" to

the war's significance as "an important turning point [and] great watershed in the

history of the young republic" (pp. 1, 3). In order to unravel the paradoxes thus

defined, Hickey offers us a fresh account, one based on the sources and with new

material, "that more fully explores Republican policies and their impact on the

nation." His War of 1812 is accordingly designed "to be both a textbook and a

monograph and to appeal to generalists and specialists alike" (p. xi).

Generalists will certainly find much to like in this book. It is impressively

researched, attractively and clearly written, and it provides the reader with a series

of efficient narratives on a wide range of topics relating to the military, naval, and

financial aspects of the war. Hickey also includes valuable nuggets of information

on subjects often neglected in other treatments of the War of 1812, such as the

details of prisoner of war exchanges, some of which were managed, albeit rather

ineptly, by the Maryland general William Henry Winder. Readers of this journal will

be particularly interested in the author's substantial account of the Baltimore riots

of 1812, though they might wish at the same time for a more extended discussion

of the British campaigns in the Chesapeake, including the attack on Baltimore in

1814. Other readers from regions farther west might feel that the Indian conflicts

on the northwest and southwest frontiers have been similarly slighted, but these

are small matters in what is otherwise a fine and compelling account of the major

events of the war. The greatest strength of the book, however, is the attention given

to the Federalist party and its opposition to the war. Especially noteworthy here is

a very strong chapter wherein Hickey ably reveals how the Hartford Convention of

Book Reviews 315

1814-15 arose from the conflicts between the New England states and the federal government over the defense needs of the region.

Specialists, however, can always quibble, and Hickey gives them a few pretexts to do so. Many will doubt whether the causes of the war were quite as obscure as the author suggests, and even if they were, his treatment of the problem does not go very far toward resolving it. For die most part, Hickey is content merely to list the issues that disrupted Anglo-American harmony after 1805 with some passing notice of the bewildering variety of interpretations that historians have sought to impose on the subject. If he ventures a contribution here, it is to suggest that the declaration of war might be best understood as a piece of bluff, a stratagem designed more to shock the British into taking American grievances seriously than it was the prelude to waging a serious war. This is an intriguing possibility and one deserving more discussion than it receives. The idea certainly entered the mind of Secretary of State James Monroe, but Hickey does no more to support his contention than mention that the speed with which James Madison sent out peace feelers after the declaration suggests that he, too, expected a "bloodless victory" (p. 47). Yet surely Madison was far too serious and too deliberate a statesman to treat war merely as a matter of bluff; and if he was seeking a painless victory should not Hickey devote more space than he does to the question of why the president decided to persevere with the war, even after he learned of the repeal of the Orders in Council and the British proposals for an armistice during the summer and fall of 1812? In other words, Madison went to war, not because he was bluffing but because he thought he could win the victories necessary to solve the nation's difficulties with Great Britain.

Related to this issue is Hickey's more general treatment of Republican motives and policies throughout the war. At the root of the author's analysis of every defect in the unsuccessful American campaigns to conquer Canada is his belief that the Republican approach to all aspects of the war was based on a total misperception of the real issues at stake. Not only did Republicans misread British policies and intentions toward America; their own partisansiiip, as well as their imprisonment in the "ideological legacy of the Revolution," then led them to adopt policies which prevented them from waging an effective war (p. 300). Hickey can, of course, make a seemingly persuasive case here, and he might have made an even better one had his argument been more explicitly informed by the large body of recent historical scholarship on the "ideological legacy of the Revolution" than it appears to be. The difficulty with the argument, however, is that this particular frame of reference—which consistently laults the Republicans for failing to think and act like their Federalist opponents—cannot take us very for toward the author's stated goal of reaching a better understanding of Republican policies and their impact on the nation.

Readers can therefore consult Hickey's War of 1812 and feel confident that they have as fine an account of the events of the war as any that has been recently written, but they might also exercise some caution before they accept its overall perspective.

J. C. A. STAGG

Papers of James Madison University of Virginia

316 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Constitutions and Constitutionalism in the Slaveholding South. By Don E. Feh- renbacher. (Mercer University Lamar Lectures No. 31. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Pp. xiv, 115. Notes, index. $16.00.)

One of the perennial issues of American historical thought is. How different was the South? In this graceful and convincing enlargement of his Mercer University Lamar Lectures Don Fehrenbacher argues that Southern constitutions and constitutionalism differed little from the texts and ideas of governance and law adopted in the North. Over the course of the early nineteenth century, Southern constitutionalism traced the same trajectory as Northern reformism. Popularly elected constitutional conventions lessened restrictions on voting and officeholding, reap- portioned legislatures to make them more representative, and even, in Maryland, fixed the maximum annual interest rate at six percent (p. 25). "During the early decades of the Republic, there was no distinctively southern interpretation of the Constitution and no distinctively southern definition of the nature of the union" (pp. 44-45).

There was a worm in the bud of this shared American commitment to democratic constitutional reform. It will come as no surprise to readers of Fehrenbacher's prize-winning work on Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that slavery undermined the common legal traditions of North and South. The crucial event was the debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state. The governance of the nation ground to a halt at the widening gap between the sections over the extension of slavery into the territories. "At a critical juncture, thejeffersonian strategy of majoritarian politics had failed to provide adequate protection for the sectional institution of slavery, and many southerners accordingly began to place more reliance on thejeffersonian theory of states-rights constitutionalism" (p. 49). John C. Calhoun, acting as an advocate for slaveholder interests, developed an agency conception of federalism that well served his clients. The federal government, merely the agent of the sovereign states, could not violate the property interests of the citizens of those states without violating the very compact that brought the federal government into existence. When this doctrine failed to persuade, Calhoun offered a second theory of republicanism based on the primacy of "concurrent majorities." After his death, more radical spokesmen for Southern interests followed the logic of proslavery constitutionalism into secession to protect slavery.

Fehrenbacher finds the attachment to constitutions just as strong in the Con- federacy as in the antebellum South. The Confederate constitution, much resem- bling the federal constitution except for explicit guarantees of slaveholders' rights to their property and some important structural differences, was honored and generally obeyed. In both North and South during the Civil War, civil liberties were flouted in the name of national security, and defenders of constitutional rights in both regions upheld a higher ideal of Rule of Law.

I have not done justice to the subtlety of Fehrenbacher's argument—with good reason: the most remarkable feature of this wonderful book is Fehrenbacher's ability to recapture the great subtlety of contemporary argument in so short an

Book Reviews 317

essay. Fehrenbacher divides Southern constitutionalism into three categories—the relationship between the government and the governed, the structure of governments, and the substantive content of state constitutions in the Carolinas, Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia. He then traces the changing shape of these categories in chapters—originally lectures—on the first state constitutions and their transformation, the South and the federal constitution, and constitutional ideas in the Confederacy. The result is a model of organizational felicity.

A final word: this is a beautifully designed and produced book. The typeface is "pilgrim," a relative newcomer to the academic book publishing world, and its clarity and strength amply support the same virtues in Fehrenbacher's prose.

PETER CHARLES HOFFER

University of Georgia

The Major Fiction of William Gilmore Simms: Cultural Traditions and Literary Form. By Mary Ann Wimsatt. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Pp. xvii, 298. Illustrations. $35.00.)

In certain ways the life of William Gilmore Simms parallels chat of the South he loved. For forty years he was the region's most prolific and most talented writer, and when he died in 1870 he had produced eighty-two volumes of fiction, biography, poetry, history, and criticism, much of it dedicated to the creation of a Southern mythos. The reputation of this impressive body of work has had its ups and down. Before the Civil War Simms was known for his solid, occasionally thrilling romances and adventures. While these appear stilted to modern readers, so do similar works by James Fenimore Cooper. After the war, Simms's reputation fell on hard times, partly because he was not brilliant and partly because he had tried too hard to idealize the South. Most critics regard his work as a literary expression of the plantation mentality, highly useful for revealing the attitudes and self-deceptions of the slaveholding Southerner but—as literature—derivative and cliched.

Mary Ann Wimsatt's study of Simms attempts a major reappraisal. She never loses sight of Simms's loyalties as a Southerner, but gone is the preoccupation with slavery which dominated previous scholarship. Gone, also, is the tendency to see Simms as wholly imitative and unoriginal. Wimsatt offers us Simms the artist, a craftsman who plumbed his Southern heritage all his life to mold, invigorate, and perfect one literary form—the romance.

It is a genre not much used these days by serious writers, and that fact leads many of us to forget that before the Civil War the romance dominated long fiction. Its elements included a dialectic structure of grand, almost superhuman conflict in which the forces of right and wrong fought through to a usually happy ending. Its purpose was to educate and inspire. Simms considered it the modern epic, and he was probably right. "It does not confine itself to what is known, or even what is probable," he wrote in an introduction to his best work. The Yemassee. "It grasps at the possible...." Modern readers may find the romance a bit excessive and its heros rather wooden; Simms and others found it imaginative and compelling.

318 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Critics have long recognized two voices in Simms's romances. The Charleston social climber wrote historical novels of the tidewater and extolled the ideals of the planter gentry. The other Simms, a rougher and cruder Irish outsider, wrote violent pieces about renegades or fanciful stories about woodsmen. Simms blended them into groups of novels—colonial romances, border romances, frontier tales—that collectively form a Southern epic. He wrote fast, and by 1837 had already produced his best-known work, including The Yemassee and The Partisan. Wimsatt pays proper attention to these novels, but she—better than any previous critic—takes an extended and critical look at the later stuff. The Panic of 1837 undercut the market for long works and sent Simms searching for new audiences and new materials. At the same time he began to sharpen his estimation of the tidewater gentry. The traditional romance was too confining to accommodate these changes, and Simms was forced—no doubt willingly—to modify the form.

He did so chiefly through the use of humor. Simms drew on both traditional forms of comedy and the more innovative work of the frontier humorists of the antebellum era. Either genre offered him ways of extending and revitalizing the romance. He began to graft the comedy of manners into his tidewater novels, for example, in order to take a hard look at the pretensions of the gentry. His border works began to read like frontier yarns. A few, like Woodcraft, used both genres. The combination did not always work, yet Simms kept at it. In the process he began to abandon the idealistic, gauzy prose of his youth, and his later works have a satiric quality that is often overlooked. By the 1860s—with the South and the myth he had helped construct collapsing around him—the tall tale was the only voice he had left. Wimsatt's critique of his last works, especxMy Paddy McGann, is sure and percep- tive.

Wimsatt chronicles Simms's evolution with hard work, sympathy, and style. If there are criticisms to make, they are that she surveys too much and uses one lens. Virtually all of Simms's major fiction is covered here, and it need not be. Fewer works and more depth would be more interesting. Moreover, she gives short shrift to his many bouts with depression and his chronic anxiety—conditions which helped shape his labors at least as much as his intellectual commitment to certain literary forms or his fascination with the tidewater style. Nor does she offer anything really new on Simms the Southern apologist. Still, this is a major book, one of the best ever to appear on Simms, one of the most accessible studies of the romance, and—almost as a bonus—one of the best on the peculiar development of Southern humor. That is a considerable feat.

JOHN MAYFIELD

University of Baltimore

Book Reviews 319

The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. By Drew Gilpin Faust. (The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Pp. vi, 110. Illustra- tions, notes, index. $19-95.)

Why did the Confederacy lose the war? In delivering these distinguished lectures. Drew Gilpin Faust focused on religion and politics, arguing that most whites saw as the South's two chief weaknesses extortion (wartime greed) and slavery: if not remedied, they would cause a divinely ordained defeat.

The author claims to be setting aside the usual hindsight on her topic—"interpretation must precede evaluation" (p. 6)—but she falls into the failure-of-culture school. It is never clear whether Faust feels there was a separate southern culture. Her attempts to explain what was distinctively southern are weak. She argues that nationalistic ideas were disseminated, at least among "reading southerners" (p. 10), through the novels of Sir Walter Scott, citing Mark Twain as her authority. Yet Scott was just as popular in northern households, where Harriet Beecher Stowe remembered recitation contests from Ivanhoe. Given the much higher literacy rates claimed for the north, one wonders how influential any writer could have been in such a benighted region. "During the antebellum period," Faust argues, "southerners had portrayed themselves as the most godly of Americans" (p. 22). Unlike New Englanders?

Faust calls Jefferson Davis's statements about the constitutionality of secession and war "assertions" (p. 24), but most of what anyone expressed about the Constitution's meaning and the framers' intent is assertion, only more or less well-informed. The Confederate congressman quoted on this point was near the mark; it was a war about the Constitution, if not for it. And West Virginia had already demonstrated that secession was constitutional.

Every nation involved in a major war has tied it to higher ends, and the Con- federacy was no more an exception than was the Union. Faust places great importance upon Davis's wartime fasts, but they were widely ridiculed by hungry Confederates, and her discussion of the covenant between God and the southern people ("Such an ideology transformed God himself into a nationalist" [p. 28]) shows fuzzy thinking. When has God, at least Jehovah, not been a nationalist? Southern religion has traditionally been hostile to reforms, but Faust overstates northern acceptance of "isms." Even in New England feminism, socialism, and abolitionism (as distinct from antislavery views) were not embraced by the majority.

Faust argues that southern leaders were trying to create a society with only two classes, black and white—hardly an original interpretation—and she fails to discuss this "Herrenvolk democracy." The loyalty of slaves has of course been greatly exaggerated, but most of them stayed on farms and plantations until war's end. Quoting a few dozen lines of sentimental poetry about "faithful darkies" is an easy way to ridicule the southern mystique without understanding it.

Similarly, Faust makes much of the fact that nearly 100,000 slaves "took up arms in active combat against the Confederacy" (p. 71) from a population of almost four

320 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

million. Racism kept many from fighting, and the border states, with far fewer slaves, furnished 44 percent as many as the entire Confederacy. This is a politically charged argument, a Glory interpretation. Among the black males of military age in Maryland, 28 percent served, but in Virginia only 6 percent did, and the Confederacy did not lose control of its slaves there until the end of the war.

One might raise further such objections. "The 'institution of slavery' the Southern Presbyterian Review baldly—and wishfully—asserted, 'is so interwoven with the very texture of the social, political and religious life of the Southern people, that there is no diversity of interest among them'" (p. 73) • What does the author mean? Was this not the case? "Without the holocaust of the Civil War, the South might have 'reformed' slavery into a different sort of unfree labor, which it might well have continued to call slavery" (p. 80). But the South did precisely that (if more imaginatively), calling it sharecropping. Faust asserts that "southerners had fallen short in their duties as both servants and masters" (pp. 82-83). Where is the evidence? She is really talking about guilt over slavery but never uses the word, for it is hard to prove. This view reflects our moral stance, not that of nineteenth-century whites. And what of the many southerners, like John Hartwell co*cke and the Lees, who were fulfilling their duties? What of the millions who believed that they were? Faust quotes the phrase '"God will not be mocked'" (pp. 76, 81, 83) three times in her last nine pages, implying that white southerners did that and paid the awful price. Is it not more likely that God was simply on the side of the big battalions? While pondering that question, we should also remember that Clio will not be mocked.

MICHAEL B. CHESSON

University of Massachusetts, Boston

Books Received

William Penn authorized the election of representatives from the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex in 1691, but the Pennsylvania proprietor hardly expected these lower counties to become so politically self-conscious as to demand independence. Sectional jealousies and procedural quarrels finally led to peaceful separation in April 1704, when an assembly for Delaware convened in New Castle. Bruce A. Bendier, a resident of Bear, Delaware, has put together a checklist of prominent early Delawareans, Colonial Delaware Assemblymen, 1682-1776. Well indexed and with an appendix of session lists, this directory includes background sketches of each member—his family, property holdings, heirs, church affiliation, and public service before and after election to the assembly. Bendier's introduction sketches his sources, the general characteristics of the legislators, the persistence of voting clusters, and the assembly's committee structure. A highly useful publication.

Family Line, $12.50 paper

Until 1777 Maryland law required that all probate records be filed with the Prerogative Court, which conducted inventories of estates involving moveable property. Because these inventories listed a decedent's personal goods, occupation- al tools (or books), household effects, slaves, livestock, etc., they outlined one's wealth and status and even hinted at his or her way of life. V L. Skinner, Jr., recently has made available Abstracts of the Inventories of the Prerogative Court of Maryland: Libers 81-90, 1763-1766, complete with a name index. Skinner's work belongs to a series that eventually will cover all inventory records for the colonial period.

Family Line, $13-50 paper

Uriah Forrest, born in St. Mary's County, fought for the patriot cause in the Revolution and then, an amputee, settled in Georgetown, where he rose from town mayor to congressman. Louise Mann-Kenney, a Georgetown resident and student of local history, has just completed a small book on Rosedale: The Eighteenth-Cen- tury Country Estate of General Uriah Forrest, a charming foray into the social and political life of the early nation's capital. Forrest's estate, on the northern outskirts of Georgetown, later became Cleveland Park.

Privately printed, $ 11

Gordon DenBoer and his staff have produced volume four of The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790. This installment covers the presidential and vice-presidential elections and the following state elections in

321

322 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Rhode Island and North Carolina—two states that finally ratified the Constitution and joined the Union. For the Maryland elections, see volume two.

University of Wisconsin, $50

Few senior citizens would agree at age eighty-one to take part in a pathbreaking and highly demanding national conference, but Benjamin Franklin did. According to William G. Carr in The Oldest Delegate: Franklin in the Constitutional Conven- tion, the elderly Pennsylvanian performed far more effectively than historians have believed. His personal power and conciliatory skills played an essential part in the success of the gathering, argues Carr; his fellow delegates supported 70 percent of his suggestions, most notably those on congressional authority to override presidential vetoes, a narrow definition of treason, and the safeguards provided by the congressional power of impeachment.

University of Delaware, 829.50

Notices

PARKER AND HARRIS PRIZES AWARDED

The Genealogy Committee herewith announces the winners of prizes for the best genealogical works received in the Maryland Historical Society Library during the fiscal year 1989-90.

The first prize in the Sumner A. and Dudrea Parker contest for the best work on Maryland families goes to Kenneth F. Hodges for The Hodges Family "Omaha Hill" Prince George's County, Maryland; second prize to Edward M. Perdue for Our Family Heritage: The Perdues of Eastern Shore of Maryland 1563 to the Present. Honorable mention to Joseph C. Maguire,Jr. for The Maguire Family of Baltimore: Six Generations of an Irish-American Family in Baltimore 1850-1989

The Norris Harris prize for the best genealogical source work on Maryland was awarded, first, to Bill and Martha Reamy for their two-volume compilation of Records of St. Paul's Parish (The Anglican Records of Baltimore City and Lower Baltimore County in the Early 1700's through 1800). Second prize went to Henry C. Peden, Jr. tor Revolutionary Patriots of Baltimore Town and Baltimore County, Md., 1775-83 • Honorable mention to Irma Harper for Heirs and Legatees of Caroline County: Genealogical Extracts from the Land Commission Records (1774-1895) and County Chancery Court Records (1815-1863).

UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY CONTEST

The Education Committee congratulates the winner of the first annual undergraduate essay contest, Christopher D. Premo, of Washington College in Chester- town. Mr. Premo's paper, "Maryland's Move Toward Independence and the Rise of the Popular Party" prevailed in competition that included entries from the Univer- sity of Baltimore, Frostburg State University, and the University of Minnesota. The deadline for next year's contest is 30 May 1991. The winner receives a prize of $ 2 5 0.

MARITIME HISTORY CONTEST

The Maritime Committee of the Maryland Historical Society and the University of Baltimore are pleased to announce the second annual Maryland Maritime History Essay Contest, the purpose of which is to stimulate research in Maryland maritime history. Subjects that prospective authors might consider include all aspects of seafaring between 1600 and 1800: ships, boats and their equipment; cargoes, catches, or passengers carried on Maryland vessels and the economic systems they operated within; their officers and crews; naval activities; and maritime law. Papers should rely on primary source materials and not exceed 6,000 words in length. The deadline for submission will be 11 January 1991 with the winners being announced

323

324 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

in the late spring of 1991- Cash awards will be given to the top three papers in the amount of $300 for first place, 11125 forsecond, and$75 for third. Participants must submit four copies of their papers; since it is hoped that winners will submit their essays to the Maryland Historical Magazine for possible publication, they are requested to follow the magazine's contributor's guidelines (see pages 98-100 of the spring 1989 issue or write to the editor for a copy). Mail papers to the Maritime Essay Contest, The Maryland Historical Society, 201 West Monument Street, Bal- timore, Maryland, 21201.

CATONSVILLE

Copies of Joe Arnold and Ed Orser's illustrated history of Catonsville, reviewed in this issue of the magazine, may be purchased from the Catonsville Historical Society for 833.45, including tax and postage. Ms. Jean Walsh, 717 Edmondson Avenue, Baltimore 21228, accepts orders for the society.

NEW MARKET DAYS

The 31st annual New Market Days will be held on the streets of historic New Market, Maryland, 28-30 September 1990 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. daily. Nineteenth-century craftspeople, old-time entertainment, and fine foods will delight visitors who may also wish to visit the more than thirty antique shops in the 'Antiques Capital of Maryland." Admission is free. For details write to New Market Days, Box 295, New Market, Maryland 21774.

IN PURSUIT OF THE HELENA. MILLER

Seeking any information on a ship called the Helen A. Miller—built in Baltimore in 1851 by William and George Gardner and owned by J. Henderson, then of 77 Pratt Street in Baltimore. Please write M. A. Seymour, 21 Corston Village, near Bath, BA2 9AW England.

CORRECTION

The PARKER HARRIS PRIZESAWARDED notice on page 213 oithe Maryland Historical Magazine summer 1990 issue should have read:

The Derrfamily 1750-1986, compiled by Roy H. Wampler, was published in 1987 not 1989- It received first prize in the Sumner A. and Dudrea Parker contest for the best work on Maryland families for 1987/88. A second prize was awarded to Harold Jesse Robertson for The Robertson Family of Carroll County, Maryland, 1837-1987. The 1988/89 awards were given, first, to Robert W Barnes' Baltimore County Families, 1659-1759, published in 1989, and, second, to Kenneth F. Hodges for The Hodges of "Green Hill, "Montgomery County, Maryland, 1988.

Notices 325

The Norris Harris prize for the best source record book on Maryland received in the Maryland Historical Society Library during the year 1987/88 was awarded to Ruth T. Dryden for her three publications: Land Records of Somerset County, Maryland, 1985, Land Records of Worcester County, Maryland 1666-1810, 1987, and Land Records ofWicomico County, Maryland, 1666-1810 (no date). In 1988/89 the first prize was awarded to Tbe Maryland Militia in the Revolutionary War,

compiled by S. Eugene Clements and F. Edward Wright, 1987; second, Monocacy and Catoctin, Volume 1, edited by Calvin E. Schildknecht, 1985-

Honorable mention in 1987/88 was given to Ralph Clayton iot Black Baltimore 1820-1870, Howard County Genealogical Society Records, Vol. 11-V, and Frederick S. Weiser, translator and editor, Maryland German Church Records: Saint Mary's Church, Silver Run, Carroll County, 1784-1866, also a special prize to Edna A. Kanely for compilation oi Directory of Maryland Church Records, done for the Genealogi- cal Council of Maryland. In 1988/89 honorable mention went to compilers Bill and Martha Reamy for the 1860 Census of Baltimore City Volume 1, 1st and 2nd Wards.

Maryland Picture Puzzle

Challenge your knowledge of Maryland history by identifying this Baltimore street scene. What is its location and when was the photograph taken? Do any of the buildings remain?

The summer 1990 Picture Puzzle shows the construction of the Belvedere Hotel near Charles and Chase streets in 1903- The hotel opened to the public on 14 December of that year.

The following persons correctly identified the spring 1990 Picture Puzzle: Mr. Wayne R. Schaumburg, Mr. L. Melvin Roberts, Mr. Albert L. Morris, Mrs. Yvonne M. Brown Langan, Dr. J. Albert M. Lettre, Mr. Clinton S. Larmore, Mr. J. Seeger Kerns, Mrs. Gladys C. Stavely, Mr. Raymond Martin, Mr. Thomas F. Cotter, and Mr. Richard Roszel.

326

MASTERS 25at "s^ft-na i*im^

Protect your valuable trees and shrubs from damaging insects and environmental stress by calling the arborists at Arbormasters, Inc. We will inspect, diagnose and prescribe the appropriate treatment with the use of en- vironmentally safe products.

Our services include tree pruning (all phases), tree and stump removal, disease and insect control, fertilizing, bolting and cabling & wind and lightning damage repairs.

10917 Liberty Road Randallstown, Md 21133

301-521-5481.

The All-New 2nd Edition of

THE RESEARCHER'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN GENEALOGY

By Val D. Greenwood

Chosen by the National Genealogical Society as the basic text for their home study course.

Features of the new edition: • Textbook and all-purpose reference book in one • Incorporates all advances in genealogical methods, materials &

record holdings since the first edition • Thoroughly revised and expanded bibliography • Designed to answer every researcher's need

"Recommended as the most comprehensive how-to book on American genealogical and local history research."

Library Journal 623 pp., illus., indexed, cloth. 1990. $24.95 plus $2.50 postage & handling. Maryland residents add 5% sales tax; Michigan residents add 4% sales tax.

Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1001 N. Calvert St. / Baltimore, Md. 21202

We buy and sell Estate jewelry; diamonds, and colored stones— everythingfrom signed pieces by

Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Van Clief& Arpels, Black Star &

Frost to good costume jewelry.

Maryland Historical Society Publications List Best Sellers

* ANDERSON, GEORGE MC C. The Work of Adalbert Johann Volck, 1828-1912, who chose for his name the anagram V. Blada. 222pp. Illus. 1970. $20.00 ($18.00)

* CALLCOTT, GEORGE H. Maryland Political Behavior. 64pp. 1986. $4.50 ($4.05) * COimLL, STILES T.Francis Guy, 1760-1820. 139pp. Ulus. 1981. (paperback) $15.00

($13.50) * COLWILL, STILES T. The Lives and Riintings of Alfred Partridge Klots and His Son, Traf-

fordPartridgeKlots. 136pp. Ulus. 1979. $950 ($8.05) * ELLIS, DONNA; STUART, KAREN The Calvcrt Papers Calendar and Guide to the Micmfilm

Edition. 202pp. IIIus. 1989 $1795 ($16.15) * FILBY, P WILLIAM AND HOWARD, EDWARD G.5/rtr-5prt«g/erfBoofe. 175pp. Ulus. 1972.

$17.50 ($15.75) * FOSTER, JAMES W George Calvert: The Early Years. 128pp. 1983. $4.95 ($4.45) * GOLDSBOROUGH, JENNIFER F. 5y/wr/« Afrtr)'/««^ 334pp. 1983. $30.00 ($27.00) * HAW JAMES; BEIRNE, FRANCIS F. AND ROSAMOND R., AND JETT, R. SAMUEL. Stormy

Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase. 305pp. 1980. $14.95 ($13.45) * HAYWARD, MARY ELLEN. Maryland's Maritime Heritage: A Guide to the Collections of

the Had cliffe Maritime Museum. 31pp. Illus. 1984 $300 ($2.70) * KAHN, PHILLIP JR. A Stitch in Time The Four Seasons of Baltimore's Needle Trades.

242 pp. Illus. 1989 $25.00 ($22.50) * KENNY, HAMILL. The Placenames of Matyland: Their Origin and Meaning. 352pp. 1984.

$17.50 ($15.75) * KEY, BEVVY MCKEEVER. Matyland Manual of Oral Histoty. 47pp. 1979 $300 ($2.70) * KEY, BETTY MCKEEVER. Oral Histoiy in Matyland: A Directoty- 44pp. 1981. $3.00

($2.70) * LEVY, RUTH BEAR. A Wee Bit OScotland: Growing Up in Lonaconing, Matyland at the

Turn of the Centuty. 67pp. 1983. $8.00 ($7.20) * MANAKEE, BETA K. AND HAROLD R. The Star-Spangled Banner: The Stoty of its Writing

by Francis Scott Key at Baltimore, 1814. 26pp. Illus. $1.00 ($.90) * }AmKKEE,Y\AR.OlX>R. Indians of Earlv Matyland. 47pp. 3rd printing, 1981. $3.00

($2.70) * The Mapping of Maryland 1590-1914: An Overview. 72pp. 1982. $6.00 ($5.40) * MARKS, LILLIAN BAYLY/fever's/tom?; The Origins of Reisterstown .. . (Reister and al-

lied families). 251pp. 1975. $15.00 ($1350) * Matyland Heritage: Five Baltimore Institutions Celebrate the American Bicentennial.

Ed. by J. B. Boles. 253pp. Illus. 1976. (soft cover) $7.50 ($6.75) (hardcover) $1500 ($13.50)

* MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINES. $4.00 per issue. * MEYER, MARY K. Genealogical Research in Matyland—A Guide. 3rd Ed. 80pp. 1983.

$8.00 ($7.20) * News and Notes of the Maryland Historical Society. $2.00 an issue. * (Pcalc Family) Four Generations of Commissions: The Pcale Collection of the Matyland

Historical Society. 187pp. Illus. 1975. $4.00 ($360) * PEDLEY, AVRIL J. M. The Manuscript Collections of the Matyland Historical Society. Sup-

plemented by #13 390pp. 1968. $20.00 ($18.00) * PORTER, FRANK W, III. A/rtO'/""^^"^'""*!**^'^'""^^^'- 26pp. 1983. $4.95

($4.45) * ST1VERSON, GREGORY A. ANDJACOBSEN, PHEBE R. William Paca: A Biography.

103pp. Illus. 1976. (soft cover) $4.95 ($4.45) (hard cover) $7.95 ($7.15) * WEEKLEY CAROLYN J.; COLWILL, STILES T., et aljoshuajohnson, Freeman and Early

American Portrait Painter. 173pp. Illus. 1987. $2500 ($22.50) * WEIDMAN, GREGORY R. Furniture in Matyland, 1740-1940 in the Collection of the

Matyland Historical Society. 344pp. 1984. $37.50 ($33.75) * Wheeler Leaflets on Matyland Histoty. 24 titles, 1945-1962. Important for schools; each

$.25 set $5.00

Five copies of a single work may be ordered at a 40% discount (except for hardbound 5/7- ver in Matyland and Furniture in Matyland 1740-1940). All orders are to be prepaid. Postage and handling of $2.00 for the first item and $.50 for each additional item must ac- company the order. Members 10% discount in parentheses. Maryland residents must include 5% state sales tax. Prices are subject to change without notice. Address all orders directly to the Publications Department, Maryland Historical Society, 201 West Monument Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Ui -s

M _-. 0

ri wi /V •H

<. r.i

•Si

• " •'V -— KU

-Z C2 z> x: u. U _! CO u 9 *•

fft -_-j

d . UJ •-< 2; ii. 3 -J

i-i c Q g ? •^ -J TJ_ -• --i %- J •C

M •:: J O 2 r-4 -t: < « Z 0 ^ ;: t) €

Maryland Historical Society Museum and Library of Maryland History

201 W Monument Street Baltimore, Maryland, 21201

Museum and Library: Tues.—Fri. 10 - 4:30, Sat. 9 - 4:30 For Exhibition Hours and Information, Call (301) 685-3750

(PDF) Maryland Historical Magazinemsa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5800/sc... · o n&#039; P N 5" Maryland Historical Magazine ^ 00 0 p o B AL * D E s ^ux^ 15 z s • Published Quarterly - PDFSLIDE.NET (2024)

References

(PDF) Maryland Historical Magazinemsa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5800/sc... · o n' P N 5" Maryland Historical Magazine ^ 00 0 p o B AL * D E s ^ux^ 15 z s • Published Quarterly - PDFSLIDE.NET (2024)