Maryland, Sir William Draper arrived in that Province on a tour
throughout the continent. He contemplated the origin of Baltimore
and its rapid progress with astonishment, and when introduced by the
Governor to the worthy founder, he elegantly accosted him by the
appellation of the American Romulus.”
These words were written many years later: to quote them here is to
take a long glance ahead. When Dr. Stevenson came to Baltimore, the
clouds of war were lowering over the colonies. Governor Sharpe of
Maryland exerted himself to the utmost to co-operate with General
Braddock in the conquest of the Ohio for England, but fell out with the
Lower House of the Provincial Assembly. The war was never popular in
Maryland, although large sums were finally appropriated for the defence
of the Province. When the news of Braddock’s defeat reached Baltimore,
the alarm was intense. Tradition relates that upon one occasion such
terrifying reports of the proximity of the Indian allies of France were
brought to Baltimore that the women and children were put aboard ships,
while the masculine portion of the inhabitants prepared to withstand
the attack of the savages. But the attack never came; instead, many
settlers in Western Maryland and Western Pennsylvania hurried back
to the East, impressed with the necessity of closer settlement for
defensive purposes. This powerful incentive to unity was one that
had never been felt by the early colonists of Maryland, who, unlike
their brethren in the North, for the most part dwelt in peace with the
natives.
During the war, several companies of royal troops were quartered in
Baltimore. Among the officers in command, Captain Samuel Gardner, of
his Majesty’s Forty-seventh Regiment, was engaged in recruiting for his
Majesty’s service. His recruiting sergeant displayed such great zeal in
the pursuit of his duty that strenuous opposition was aroused among the
gentry of Baltimore, who found their indentured servants disappearing
one day, to appear the next in his Majesty’s uniform. Upon one
occasion, Mr. Charles Ridgely and others rescued--or recaptured--six
recruits, claiming that they were indentured servants, which proved,
Captain Gardner said, “not to be the truth _as to all of them_.” The
irate Captain appealed to the civil authorities, with a long story
about a conspiracy of “some of the better sort at the Church in the
Forest [St. Thomas’s]--to raise a body of about two hundred men, and
take all my Recruits from me.” The plan of the conspirators, if such
existed, never materialized, but Captain Gardner received cold comfort
from Mr. Bordley, the Attorney-General. “He put a case,” laments
Captain Gardner to Governor Sharpe, “not very much to the Honour of the
Recruiting Service--_Suppose a man steals a horse, etc._”
While the French and Indian War was in progress, Baltimore received
a large addition to its population. When the “French Neutrals” were
removed from Acadia by the British Government, many came to Baltimore,
and were hospitably quartered in the mansion of Mr. Edward Fottrell,
which stood upon the square now covered by the stately court-house
recently completed. When the Abbé Robin visited Baltimore during the
Revolutionary War, these unfortunate people and their descendants
filled about one quarter of the town, a quarter mean and poor in
appearance. They still spoke their native dialect, and treasured the
altar vessels given them, with his parting benediction, by their
old curé, M. Le Clerc, who had been the loving guardian of their
souls. Though they began in great poverty, this portion of Baltimore’s
population by industry and thrift rose to a high place in the life of
the city. Many of the seafaring men who later played so important a
part in the commercial development of Baltimore were the descendants of
this sturdy fisherfolk of Acadia.
[Illustration: BATTLE MONUMENT.]
Between the French and Indian War and the Revolution Baltimore grew
apace. Marshes were drained and a market-house was erected. In 1768,
Baltimore became the county-seat, and a court-house was built upon the
site where now the Battle Monument commemorates the defence of the city
in 1814. “The Town” and “the Point” vied with each other, and those
with an eye to the future bought lots in both places. Many mansions
were erected, among them Mount Clare, the residence of Charles Carroll,
Barrister. Dr. Henry Stevenson, brother of the “Romulus of America,”
built a house on the York road near the Falls, which was called
“Stevenson’s Folly” because of the contrast between its elegance and
the simplicity of the surrounding dwellings. It deserved a better name,
for later it was transformed into a hospital for inoculation against
the smallpox. Here the Rev. Jonathan Boucher brought “Jacky” Custis,
to be “given the smallpox,” and we find recorded in Washington’s
correspondence an account of Dr. Stevenson’s charges of “2 pistoles and
25 s. for board.” At the close of the century, the venerable doctor was
one of the founders of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland.
When he came to Baltimore, the youth of the town already enjoyed the
instruction of one schoolmaster, and there was demand for another.
[Illustration: MOUNT CLARE, 1760, RESIDENCE OF CHARLES CARROLL,
BARRISTER.]
Of Baltimore in this pre-Revolutionary period, a few odd, disconnected
facts have been handed down. The tax upon bachelors--levied to raise
supplies for his Majesty’s service--cannot have been very productive,
as only thirteen “taxables” are reported. The commercial activity of
the community was stimulated every October and May by a fair, when
residents and visitors were free from arrest, except for felony and
breach of the peace. Among other police regulations, fines were laid
upon those whose chimneys blazed out at the top, or who neglected to
keep ladders. Baltimore began to look like a busy, thriving town,
enjoying life to the utmost.
And if our ancestors lived well, they endeavored to die well--at least
with regard to the comfort of the guests at their funerals. One bill
for funeral expenses, besides yards upon yards of crape, tiffany,
broadcloth, shalloon and linen, several pairs of black gloves and other
necessary attire, includes these items:
47¹⁄₂ lbs. loaf sugar
14 doz. eggs
10 oz. nutmegs
1¹⁄₂ lbs. allspice
20⁵⁄₈ gall. white wine
12 bottles red wine
10³⁄₈ gallons rum [!]
The first recognition of Baltimore’s existence by the Proprietary
appears to have been in connection with an inquiry as to the
possibility of making the growth of the town a source of additional
income. Cecilius Calvert, the secretary of Frederick, the sixth Lord
Baltimore, writes to Governor Sharpe that in Philadelphia William
Penn has reserved property that brings him “much income now” and will
produce to his heirs “immense revenue.” Sharpe replies that Baltimore
town is built upon land patented to private persons, and embraces the
opportunity to moderate the extravagant reports of Baltimore’s size
that had reached the ears of the Proprietary, by adding that it “is
almost as much inferiour to Philad^a as Dover is to London.” However,
the twenty-five houses and two hundred people of 1752 had become, in
1764, two hundred families, and the town “is increasing.”
Such was Baltimore town when the citizens met together in town meeting
to adopt a non-importation agreement, and to propose, upon the last day
of May, 1774, the assembling of a general congress of delegates from
all the colonies. The suffering of Boston under the Port Bill awoke
deep sympathy, and in August of this year the sloop _America_ sailed
from Baltimore Harbor carrying three thousand bushels of corn, twenty
barrels of rye flour, two barrels of pork and twenty-one barrels of
bread, “for the relief of our brethren, the distressed inhabitants of
your town.”
Though never the scene of actual hostilities, Baltimore lacked neither
employment nor excitement. Early in 1776, a demonstration was made
against the town, which had hitherto been entirely defenceless, by a
British sloop of war and some smaller vessels. Fortifications were
hastily erected upon Whetstone Point, where Fort McHenry later was to
check the entrance of another British fleet; vessels were sunk in the
channel, and the ship _Defense_ was hurriedly fitted out and put under
the command of Captain James Nicholson. The British commander did not
risk an action, but stood off down Chesapeake Bay, leaving behind a
valuable prize that he had shortly before captured. “Such was the ardor
of the militia,” wrote Samuel Purviance, Secretary of the Committee of
Safety of Baltimore town, “that not a man w^d stay in Comm^{ee} room
with me but Mr. Harrison.” Captain Nicholson was complimented as having
“first had the honor of displaying the Continental colors to a British
man-of-war without a return.”
[Illustration: BOOS HOUSE NEAR WHICH LAFAYETTE’S TROOPS ENCAMPED.]
Upon Baltimore, formerly Market, Street, between Sharp and Liberty, a
tablet commemorates the site of “Congress Hall” a “three story and
attic” brick building, which, in 1776, belonged to one Jacob Fite,
and was at that time one of the most imposing buildings in the town.
Hither the Congress of the United States adjourned in 1776,--when the
British approached the Delaware,--and remained several weeks, during
which period Washington was made a virtual dictator. A few squares to
the east was the Fountain Inn, which entertained Washington and many
other statesmen and soldiers who came to Baltimore, or passed through
the town on their way north and south. Among these visitors was the Duc
de Lauzun, whose legion lay encamped around the knoll where later, in
1806, was commenced the erection of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Upon
Bond Street, Fell’s Point, there was standing, not many years ago, an
old farmhouse belonging to a German named Boos, near which Lafayette’s
troops were encamped, and at which they obtained milk for their
syllabub, and other products of the dairy and the garden.
When Lafayette passed through Baltimore _en route_ for Yorktown, a
ball was given in his honor; his melancholy demeanor upon this joyous
occasion, explained by the Marquis as due to his concern at the
sufferings of his ill-clad soldiers, awoke such sympathy that next
morning “the ball-room was turned into a clothing manufactory. Fathers
and husbands furnished the materials; daughters and wives plied the
needle at their grateful task.” “My campaign,” said the General upon
his return, “began with a personal obligation to the citizens of
Baltimore, at the end of it I find myself bound to them by a new tie of
everlasting gratitude.” When, forty-three years later, Baltimore again
welcomed Lafayette, one of the most touching incidents of his visit
was his especial inquiry for Mr. and Mrs. David Poe,--grandparents of
Edgar Allan Poe,--the one of whom had advanced Lafayette money from his
private funds, and the other had herself cut out five hundred garments
for his ragged troops. Mrs. Poe, with feeble body but unclouded mind,
was yet alive to welcome the General, but her husband had preceded his
venerable friend to the rest which comes after toil.
Another foreigner well known in Baltimore was Pulaski, who completed
here the organization of the legion in command of which he fell at
Savannah. In the library of the Maryland Historical Society hang the
now faded folds of
“The crimson banner, that with prayer,
Had been consecrated there,
by the Moravian nuns at Bethlehem, before
“The warrior took that banner proud,
And it was his martial cloak and shroud.”
Besides welcoming those from elsewhere, Baltimore gave to the war the
best and bravest of her own. To aid Smallwood and Williams, Baltimore
sent General Mordecai Gist, who as Major commanded the Maryland troops
that covered the American retreat at Long Island. Another was John
Eager Howard, who at Cowpens seized the critical moment, and turned
the fortune of the day. At Guilford and at Eutaw Colonel Howard was
equally conspicuous, and when peace came Maryland honored him by thrice
electing him to the national Senate. “He deserves,” said General
Greene, “a statue of gold, no less than Roman and Grecian heroes.” A
third was Captain Samuel Smith, who held Fort Mifflin, the “Mud Fort on
the Schuylkill,” for seven weeks, against powerful land and sea forces
of the British, who were seeking to open the communication between
Philadelphia and the Atlantic. It was largely due to the energy of
General Smith that, in the second war with Great Britain, Baltimore
escaped the fate of the national Capital. And with these officers went
hundreds of lesser rank, to join New Englanders and fellow-Southerners
in the common cause of Independence.
[Illustration: COL. JOHN EAGER HOWARD.
FROM THE PAINTING BY REMBRANDT PEALE.]
When the cry “Cornwallis is taken!” announced the final success of
Washington and Lafayette, Baltimore’s exultation was unbounded. In
the evening, we are told, there was a “Feau d’ Joy”: “the Town and
Fell’s Point were elegantly illuminated; what few houses that were
not, had their windows broke.” Upon the Point, Mr. Fell, “a gentleman
of princely fortune,” nephew of the first Edward, gave a “genteel
Ball and Entertainment,” where, Lieutenant Reeves tells us, “we danced
and spent the night until three o’clock in the morning of the 23rd as
agreeably as one could wish; as the ladies were very agreeable and the
whole company seemed to be carryed away beyond themselves on this happy
occasion.”
Many years ago, one of the most distinguished of Baltimore’s sons,
the Hon. John P. Kennedy, himself a scholar and an orator of the old
_régime_, gave, in an informal lecture, some of his reminiscences of
Baltimore town as it was at the end of the eighteenth century. Though
often quoted, the quaint and charming spirit of the author makes his
description yet as fresh and sparkling as his conversation ever used to
be, and it is never too late to give in his own words some of his early
memoirs of Baltimore town:
“It was a treat to see this little Baltimore town just at the
termination of the War of Independence, so conceited, bustling and
debonair, growing up like a saucy, chubby boy, with his dumpling
cheeks and short, grinning face, fat and mischievous, and bursting
incontinently out of his clothes in spite of all the allowance
of tucks and broad salvages. Market Street had shot, like a
Nuremberg Snake out of its toy box, as far as Congress Hall, with
its line of low-browed, hip-roofed wooden houses, in a disorderly
array, standing forward and back, after the manner of a regiment
of militia, with many an interval between the files. Some of these
structures were painted blue and white, and some yellow; and here and
there sprang up a more magnificent mansion of brick, with windows
like a multiplication table and great wastes of wall between the
stories, with occasional court-yards before them; and reverential
locust-trees, under whose shade bevies of truant schoolboys, ragged
little negroes and grotesque chimney-sweeps ‘skied coppers’ and
disported themselves at marbles.
“In the days I speak of, Baltimore was fast emerging from the village
state into a thriving commercial town. Lots were not yet sold by
the foot,--except perhaps in the denser marts of business,--rather
by the acre. It was in the _rus-in-urbe_ category. That fury for
levelling had not yet possessed the souls of City Councils. We had
our seven hills then, which have been rounded off since, and that
locality which is now described as lying between the two parallels
of North Charles Street and Calvert Street presented a steep and
barren hillside, broken by rugged cliffs and deep ravines, washed
out by the storms of winter into chasms which were threaded by paths
of toilsome and difficult ascent. On the summit of one of these
cliffs stood the old church of St. Paul’s [the second], some fifty
paces or more to the eastward of the present church [the third],
and surrounded by a brick wall that bounded on the present lines of
Charles and Lexington Streets. This old building, ample and stately,
looked abroad over half the town. It had a belfry tower, detached
from the main structure, and keeping watch over a graveyard full of
tombstones, remarkable to the observation of the boys and girls, who
were drawn to it by the irresistible charm of the popular belief
that it was haunted, and by the quantity of cherubim that seemed to
be continually crying about the death’s-head and cross-bones at the
doleful and comical epitaphs below them--images long since vanished,
without a trace left, devoured by the voracious genius of brick and
mortar.
“... I have a long score of pleasant recollections of the
friendships, the popular renowns, the household charms, the
_bonhomie_, the free confidences and the personal accomplishments of
the day.... In the train of these goodly groups come the gallants who
upheld the chivalry of the age, cavaliers of the old school, full of
starch and powder: most of them the iron gentlemen of the Revolution,
with leather faces--old campaigners, renowned for long stories: not
long enough absent from the camp to lose their military _brusquerie_
and dare-devil swagger; proper roystering blades, who had not long
ago got out of harness and begun to affect the elegancies of civil
life. Who but they! jolly fellows, fiery and loud, with stern glance
of the eye and brisk turn of the head, and swash-buckler strut
of defiance, like game-cocks, all in three-cornered cocked hats
and powdered hair and cues, and light-colored coats with narrow
capes and marvellous long backs, with the pockets on each hip, and
small-clothes that hardly reached the knee, with striped stockings,
with great buckles in their shoes, and their long steel watch-chains
that hung conceitedly half-way to the knee, with seals in the shape
of a sounding-board to a pulpit; and they walked with such a
stir, striking their canes so hard upon the pavement as to make
the little town ring again. I defy all modern coxcombry to produce
anything equal to it--there was such a relish of peace about it, and
particularly when one of these weather-beaten gallants accosted a
lady in the street with a bow that required a whole side pavement to
make it in, with the scrape of his foot, and his cane thrust with a
flourish under his left arm till it projected behind along with his
cue, like the palisades of a _chevaux-de-frise_; and nothing could be
more piquant than the lady as she reciprocated the salutation with
a curtsey that seemed to carry her into the earth, with her chin
bridled to her breast, and such a volume of dignity.”
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH.
FROM AN OLD COPPER PRINT.]
The “rus-in-urbe” life of Baltimore was nearly ended; with the close
of the Revolutionary War began a new period in its history. Soon
streets were paved and lighted, better bridges built, and a watch was
established. Commerce sprang up with renewed vigor. The tobacco trade
found other markets than the mother country; the West Indies bought
flour, Spain and Portugal, wheat. By 1790, Baltimore skippers had
rounded the Cape of Good Hope and cast anchor in the harbors of the
Isle de France. The year 1793 brought another foreign addition to the
already polyglot population of Baltimore. The revolution in San Domingo
drove fifteen hundred of the inhabitants to Maryland, to develop a
great trucking and garden trade, with Baltimore as its centre. The
Baltimore clippers, too, with their jauntily raked masts, showed
their heels to the craft of the rest of the world, and the reign of
Baltimore’s merchant princes began.
Previous to this time, all large payments of money were made in bags
of heavy coin: in 1790 a bank was organized. Several papers were now
published, and a circulating library was established by Mr. Murphy. A
series of medical lectures was preparing the way for the University
of Maryland, and education in general was receiving more attention.
Population increased continually, and in 1796, the change from town to
full municipal life was made legal by the incorporation of Baltimore
city.
Now, also, began again the improvement of internal communication.
For many years the white-topped Conestoga wagons had rumbled down to
Baltimore from west and north; and from time to time efforts had been
made to improve the main roads. In 1805, the main routes converging in
Baltimore were turnpiked. Western Maryland was now becoming thickly
settled, many thriving towns had sprung up, and in a few years the
“National Road” joined Cumberland, on the Potomac, with the Ohio
River. The connection between Cumberland and Baltimore was completed
by means of a curious tax on the banks of Maryland. Thus the line of
communication between Baltimore and Wheeling was continuous, over one
of the best roads in the world. This and six other turnpikes were as
seven great rivers, bearing their precious freight of grain, tobacco,
dairy products and whiskey to Baltimore for foreign shipment; and in
spite of overtrading and the resulting period of depression, such
was Baltimore’s progress that in 1825 Jared Sparks could say, “Among
all the cities of America, or of the Old World, in modern or ancient
times, there is no record of any one which has sprung up so quickly
to so high a degree of importance as Baltimore.” At this time the
population of Baltimore was five times as great as it had been thirty
years before, and commerce had increased proportionately. The causes of
this remarkable progress were enumerated by Sparks as the advantages
of Baltimore’s local situation, the swift sailing-vessels, the San
Domingan trade, the two great staples, tobacco and flour, “for which
the demand is always sure, and the supply unfailing,” and lastly, the
energetic spirit of the people.
[Illustration: BELVIDERE, 1786, THE HOME OF COL. JOHN E. HOWARD.]
During all this period the city improved in appearance as well as in
size. Especially characteristic of the new Baltimore was “Belvidere,”
the residence of Colonel John Eager Howard. Belvidere was completed in
1794, and only a few years ago was dismantled by the ruthless hand of
the city surveyor, to make way for the progress of the ever-expanding
city by the extension of North Calvert Street. From Belvidere, which at
the beginning of the century was a half-mile from Baltimore, one could
look down, as from some mediæval castle, upon the bustling town below.
In the view from Belvidere, we are told,
“the town,--the Point, the shipping in the Basin and at Fell’s Point,
the bay as far as the eye can reach, rising ground on the right and
left of the harbor,--a grove of trees on the declivity on the right,
a stream of water [Jones’s Falls] breaking over the rocks at the foot
of the hill on the left, all conspire to complete the beauty and the
grandeur of the prospect.”
Here, as at many of the country-seats near Baltimore, a lavish
hospitality brought strangers from America and from Europe into
pleasant association with the leading Marylanders of the day. A little
to the south of Belvidere, in what was then the woodland of “Howard’s
Park,” there soon rose the grandly simple column of the Washington
Monument.
If Maryland escaped actual invasion during the Revolutionary War,
she bore the brunt of the second contest with England. After the
British had sailed up the Patuxent, laying waste the manor houses and
wide plantations along its banks, after they had burned the national
Capitol and routed a body of American militia, they proceeded to
attack Baltimore by land and sea. The story is told that some faint
hearts came forward with a proposition to compound for the safety of
the city with a heavy ransom, when Colonel Howard replied, “I have as
much property at stake as most people, and I have four sons in the
field; but sooner would I see my sons weltering in their blood, and my
property reduced to ashes, than so far disgrace the country.”