Part 2

The student of Southern history will reach this conclusion by following other lines of investigation. It is a well-known fact that in the decade before the Civil War annual commercial conventions were held in the leading Southern cities. These conventions tended also to become political in character and furnished an opportunity for the exploitation of some rather extreme propositions, such, for example, as that looking to the reopening of the foreign slave-trade. They serve to illustrate the important part played by the _ante-bellum_ towns in developing and intensifying the movement toward secession; but it is more to the point here to observe that they were preceded by a series of conventions more strictly commercial in character--gatherings that did all they could to stir up the people of the South to the need of urban development and to open their eyes to the fact that their section was yearly falling behind in wealth and political power.[1]

This first series seems to have begun with a gathering in Augusta, Georgia, in October, 1837, the object of the meeting being to allow merchants the opportunity to discuss projects for developing a direct trade between the South and Europe. As the only speeches that caused comment were made by two “Colonels” and a “General,” it is easy to perceive that even in such a convention the commercial classes were overshadowed. The delegates met twice, however, the next year, and afterwards at Charleston and Macon, the presence of delegates from all the Southern States being solicited and in part obtained. These meetings did what they could to arouse the South to commercial activity, on one occasion viewing “with deep regret the neglect of all commercial pursuits” that had thitherto prevailed among the youth of the section. That their efforts were no more successful than those of the contemporary railway promoters proves only that the failure of urban development in the South was due not to the supineness of the entire population but to the presence of an institution during the existence of which agriculture was bound to be the paramount industry. It is interesting to notice that these efforts toward urban development were contemporaneous with and in answer to the agitation of the early abolitionists; that they practically ceased during the movement for territorial aggrandizement in Texas and the Far West; and that they began in full force when it became apparent that the South had gained less of the new territory than she thought she would. So true is it that all Southern history has a political background!

It is not, however, desirable that the present Introduction should degenerate into a dry historical essay devoted to certain obscure points in the economic history of the South, although it does seem important that the reader should realize that the citizens of Southern towns between the years 1800 and 1860 were not altogether lacking in enterprise and foresight. Yet the period mentioned is so interesting in many ways that it is hard to leave it. It would be pleasant to sketch briefly the efforts made to develop literary centers--especially at Richmond and Charleston: the establishment at the former place of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, forever connected with the fame of Poe; at the latter, of the earlier and the later _Southern Review_ and of Russell’s _Magazine_, connected, respectively, with the names of Hugh S. Legaré, William Gilmore Simms and the ill-fated Henry Timrod, whose genuine poetical genius is slowly being recognized. It would be interesting, too, to discuss the political influence wielded by such newspapers as the Richmond _Enquirer_ and the Charleston _Mercury_. A topic no less important is the effect of the classical culture undoubtedly possessed to a considerable degree by the leading citizens of the older towns upon the problem, only now being solved by the New South, of affording every child a free and sound education. A discussion of this topic would naturally lead one to inquire into the status of the lower and middle classes in the _ante-bellum_ Southern towns, and this would necessarily carry us very far afield. Perhaps the best way to break the train of these suggestions and reflections is to ask the reader whether he would ever have thought it possible for a German immigrant to become a day-laborer in a Southern town, to save enough money in six years to build an important bridge and wharf, to found a town of his own which soon became a flourishing cotton market and actually, as its leading personage, to enter into quasi-diplomatic relations with the government of Hamburg, Germany! Yet all this actually happened in the “unprogressive” _ante-bellum_ South. The man’s name was Henry Schultz; the town in which he made his fortune, and, sad to relate, subsequently lost it, was Augusta, Georgia; the town he founded was Hamburg, South Carolina, which it must be confessed has not become a metropolis and is chiefly known in connection with certain important riots.[2]

Next to the large number of towns worthy to be included in the volume, perhaps the most striking feature is the fact that nearly every town described has experienced the vicissitudes of war. No walls of long standing or traces of them may be pointed out to the curious visitor of to-day, but battlefields there are, and in more than one instance stories may be told of long-sustained sieges and heroic defences. The Sunny South ought naturally to be a land of languorous peace, but over no other section have the clouds of war rolled so heavily. Its oldest town, St. Augustine, was born of war. Baltimore and Washington suffered during the War of 1812, and the latter was seriously threatened during the War for the Union. Frederick Town lives in our memories along with Stonewall Jackson and Barbara Fritchie. Before Richmond Lee foiled the troops of McClellan, and the gallant capital, after four years filled with high hopes and reckless gayety and solemn mourning, surrendered when the same undaunted Lee had but a few thousand starving veterans to oppose to the splendid and puissant hosts of Grant. The ghosts of long-dead cavaliers must have shivered when the streets of Williamsburg echoed to the tramp of soldiers from Puritan New England. The name of Wilmington brings to mind the daring exploits of the blockade-runners; that of Charleston recalls the heroic defence of Fort Moultrie, the occupation by the British, the threatened bloodshed of the Nullification crisis, the capture of Sumter and the magnificent resistance offered the Federal arms throughout the Civil War. Like Charleston, Savannah can tell of encounters with Spaniards and British undergone gloriously by her sons, although she doubtless does not yet relish having been Sherman’s Christmas gift to the nation. Mobile and New Orleans are forever associated with the illustrious name of Farragut, and the latter can boast of being the scene of the most splendid victory in our annals, that won by Jackson and his backwoodsmen over the picked troops of Wellington. As for the great siege of Vicksburg that set the seal upon Grant’s fame, or for the battle of Nashville that gave almost equal renown to Thomas, men will not forget them even when Tolstoy’s dreams of universal peace have become a blessed reality.

But peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, as these chapters all tell us in language as convincing if not so noble as that of Milton. The history of the brave and successful efforts made by the South to recover from the losses of the war and from the still more disastrous effects of the worst-devised legislation ever inflicted upon a conquered people cannot yet be fully written, but when it is, the part played by the Southern towns will surely be paramount. Population and business have greatly increased in the urban centers; the cause of truly public education has been fostered to a remarkable extent; political prejudices have waned; respect for human life has increased; and, finally, a true national spirit has been developed. Much remains to be done in the way of municipal improvements,--for example in the founding of public libraries,--but the history of the past thirty-five years warrants us in believing that the citizens of the Southern towns will be able to work out their own salvation. The outlook for the rural districts, where the commission merchant has his liens and mortgages, where ignorance and lack of thrift foster political unrest, where race hatred is partly extenuated by its causes and wholly discredited by its results, is less hopeful but still by no means hopeless.

The present volume, however, deals with what has been rather than with what is or will be, and, as has been already remarked, mainly with what took place before even our great-grandfathers were born. To some of us the history of our fathers’ times is more interesting than the story of what remoter ancestors did, even though the costumes and the furniture of the former are by no means so picturesque as those of the latter. But _tot homines, tot sententiæ_. To Colonial Dames, and Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, and readers of the Colonial and Revolutionary romances that are in such vogue, many pages of this book ought to prove both interesting and instructive. Nor are devotees of the modern wholly unprovided for, and the special student finds matter for reflection. He can speculate, for example, upon how far the South’s comparative freedom from French and Indian attacks rendered early urban development less urgent. He can notice how few great Southern statesmen and generals were of the urban type. He can contrast Charleston and New Orleans, in their relations with their outlying districts, as a miniature London and a miniature Paris, respectively. He can wonder whether any subtly psychological cause was at work to prevent the various writers dwelling upon slavery, duelling and other features of the past that are not especially relished by the present, yet assuredly had much to do with making Southern towns as picturesque and interesting as occasional travelers used to find them and as the investigator finds them to-day. Yet, if what is omitted reminds the student of the immense opportunity for original and important research that lies before the rising generation of Southern historical scholars, neither he nor the general reader should forget the gratitude due to the editor, the various writers and the publishers of this volume for first giving the public in an attractive form adequate proof of the interest and charm attaching to the towns of the _ante-bellum_ South. In more than one important series of books relating to our national history the South is but scantily represented, but such a reproach cannot attach to this series of American Historic Towns. For weal or woe the South is now an integral part of the nation, and the attractive and inspiring, no less than the warning features of its history, should be a portion of the intellectual inheritance of every American.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The later series of conventions is well described by Mr. Edward Ingle in his interesting and valuable volume, based mainly upon magazine and newspaper research, entitled _Southern Sidelights_ (pp. 220-261). Mr. Ingle pays but slight attention to the earlier series, which seems nowhere to have been fully described.

[2] Schultz was a party for years to a very important case known as “John W. Yarborough and others _vs._ The Bank of the State of Georgia,” etc., for documents relating to which I am indebted to William K. Miller, Esq., of the Augusta bar. The interesting career of the man became known to me some years since through researches undertaken in the early volumes of the Edgefield (S. C.) _Advertiser_.

[Illustration]

HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES

BALTIMORE

THE MONUMENTAL CITY

BY ST. GEORGE L. SIOUSSAT

For many a year after the weary passengers of the _Ark_ and the _Dove_ had disembarked at St. Mary’s, there to make the first settlement under the proprietary government of the Lords Baltimore, the rivers of Maryland ran, like Mr. George Alfred Townsend’s Rappahannock,

“All townless from the mountains to the sea.”

The Chesapeake and its almost numberless tributaries made every plantation accessible to shipping, and so precluded that concentration of trade and population at points of vantage which is the essential condition of municipal growth. As Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore, wrote, in 1678:

“The principall place or Towne is called St. Maryes ... other places wee have none, that are called or cann be called Townes. The people there not affecting to build nere each other but soe as to have their [houses] nere the watters for conveniencye of trade and their Lands on each side of and behynde their houses, by which it happens that in most places there are not ffifty houses in the space of thirty myles. And for this reason it is that they have been hitherto only able to divide this Provynce into Countyes without being able to make any subdivision into Parishes or Precincts which is a worke not to be effected untill it shall please God to encrease the number of the People and soe to alter their trade as to make it necessary to build more close and to Lyve in Townes.”

When Lord Baltimore offered to the Lords of Trade this explanation of the dearth of municipal life in Maryland, he emphasized precisely those facts which have distinguished the political development of the South from that of the North, and unwittingly explained the late appearance upon the map of America of the city which now perpetuates his family name.

Boston had lived and grown for nearly a century, New Amsterdam had been New York one half that time, and a whole generation of Philadelphians had passed away before the future metropolis of the South came into being. A half-century passed, and the Revolution found the town upon the Patapsco about the size of Salem or Providence; in another half-century it had become the third city in the United States. The pre-eminence which Baltimore thus attained was many years ago termed “an unsolved problem in the philosophy of cities.” Now, when one views this phenomenon in a longer perspective, it is possible, perhaps, to discern more clearly some of the elements which combined to give rise to it. Certainly, late years have brought to light much which one is enabled to add to the story of historic Baltimore that the fathers have handed down.

As Lord Baltimore’s letter to the Lords of Trade indicates, the economic disadvantage of the absence of town life in Maryland was appreciated by the Government of the Colony at a very early period in its history. It was not due to the lack of desire or of effort upon the part of the Proprietaries that in Maryland “towns there were none.” For, first by proclamations, then by Acts of Assembly, towns were “erected” in a great number of places situated upon the water and selected, apparently, with little reference to any previous exhibition of a tendency to municipal growth, and with equally little reference to any expressions of desire upon the part of the inhabitants. That the success of this policy was hardly proportionate to the efforts made in its behalf is indicated by the statement made at a later time, that “the settlers, and now the Government call town any place where as many houses are as are individuals required to make a riot, that is twenty, as fixed by the Riot Act.” Indeed, these “fiat” towns were in nearly every case total failures. Harvy-town, Herrington and many similar creations have passed into oblivion, and now only serve as institutional fossils for the political palæontologist. As Jefferson said of Virginia, “there are other places at which the laws have said there shall be towns: but nature has said there shall not.”

[Illustration: OLD COURT-HOUSE (1768) AND POWDER MAGAZINE.

FROM AN OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.]

Among these shadow-towns of early Maryland were some of particular interest to the history of Baltimore. The settlement upon the Patapsco was not the first in Maryland to bear the proprietary name. The first Baltimore seems to have been a point of land in St. Mary’s County, spoken of only once in the early records, and never again mentioned. A more important predecessor of the Baltimore of to-day was Baltimore upon the Bush, a small river emptying into the head of Chesapeake Bay, not far south of the Susquehanna. “The town-land on Bush River” is mentioned as early as 1669, and, some years later, it was made the seat of the court and court-house of Baltimore County. Though the court-house was removed before long to Joppa, upon the Gunpowder, farther to the south, many of the eighteenth-century maps of Maryland show Baltimore as still upon the Bush. Of the history of this early settlement no details have been preserved; only lately has its site been determined.

Meanwhile, in the course of this general “towning,” the Patapsco had not been neglected. In the town acts were included provisions for towns upon Humphreys Creek, and upon Whetstone Point in that river. Of the actual existence of any corporate life at these points there is, however, no record; and it is probable that King George’s accession found the Patapsco watering the same broad plantations as of yore. But a new era in the town history of Maryland was dawning. Governmental stimulation was being supplanted by private enterprise. Certain progressive individuals conceived the idea of erecting a town upon a point of land which runs out into the main stream of the Patapsco and to-day is included within the limits of Baltimore city. At that time, this land was the property of a Mr. John Moale, and was known as Moale’s Point; but if it is Baltimore now, Mr. Moale was resolved that it should not be Baltimore then, and taking his seat in the Assembly, to which he was a delegate, he prevented the location of the town upon his property. Tradition has censured this worthy for preferring the excavation of iron ore to the development of a municipality, but colonial experience in town lots had doubtless been such as to yield him ample justification for his determination.

“The rejected of Mr. John Moale” was not, however, to wander far, for slightly to the north lay property belonging to Charles and Daniel Carroll, sons of the former agent of the Lord Proprietary. Here the Patapsco formed a basin, a safe harbor for vessels of light draft; and near by a stream, known to this day as Jones’s Falls, after the name of an early settler, running from the hills near by, through lowland and marsh, poured a muddy torrent into the river. In 1709, was passed an act “for erecting a town on the north side of Patapsco in Baltimore County and for laying out into lots sixty acres of land in and about the place where one John Fleming now lives.”[3]

The owners of the land, the Carrolls, were more complaisant than Mr. John Moale: they readily parted with sixty acres of land at the rate of forty shillings per acre, payable in tobacco at one penny per pound. The town was then surveyed and laid out into lots, after the most approved “boomer” fashion of to-day. To secure an estate in fee simple, “takers-up” of lots were required to erect thereon, within eighteen months, a building covering at least four hundred square feet: failure to comply with this condition laid the lots open for other takers-up.

Baltimore’s boom seems to have started well, for after Mr. Carroll, as former owner, had selected the first lot, no less than fifteen other persons invested the same year. This success was so much appreciated that two years later _another_ town was established, consisting of two acres laid out into twenty lots, just east of the Falls, “where Edward Fell keeps store.” Communication between the new town, known as Jones or Jonastown, and Baltimore was soon improved by a bridge across the Falls, and a few years later the two towns were by Act of Assembly formally made into one.

[Illustration: EDWARD FELL, IN UNIFORM OF PROVINCIAL FORCES.

FROM ORIGINAL PAINTING IN POSSESSION OF WILLIAM FELL JOHNSON.]

A third distinct element in the early growth of Baltimore was a settlement somewhat farther to the east, known as Fell’s Point. In 1730, Mr. William Fell, a Lancastrian Quaker, purchased a tract of land known as Copus’s Harbor and erected thereon a mansion. A little to the south, a point jutting out into the Patapsco offered wharfage facilities to vessels of large draft that were denied entrance to the shallow basin of Baltimore town. This fact was soon appreciated, and at a later time Edward Fell, who was the son of William, and an officer in the Provincial army, laid out Fell’s Point into lots, thereby reaping a fortune magnificent for those times.

During the first half of the eighteenth century little of note happened in Baltimore. Within a few years, however, some of the most important influences in its later development began to make themselves felt. In Northern Maryland, particularly near the Pennsylvania border, settlement was going on rapidly, and denser settlement meant the extension of commercial intercourse. In 1736, communication was established between the settlement on the Conewago--Hanover, in Pennsylvania--and the Patapsco. Seven years later, the people of York, also, “have opened a road to Patapsco. Some trading gentlemen there are desirous of opening a trade to York and the country adjacent.” “In October, 1751, no less than sixty waggons loaded with flaxseed, came down to Baltimore from the back country.”

Baltimore, though vigorous in action, was as yet but mean in appearance. In the rooms of the Maryland Historical Society hangs a sketch of the town, drawn in 1752, by John Moale, the son of him that would have none of towns or town lots. Rude in perspective as this youthful effort is, it is treasured as one of the oldest and most interesting of the city’s heirlooms. Twenty-five houses--four of them built of brick--and two hundred inhabitants were then to be found in Baltimore. Upon the hill we see perched the first of four St. Paul’s churches successively erected upon the same lot, though not all upon the same site. At anchor in the harbor are the brig _Philip and Charles_ and the sloop _The Baltimore_. The merchant navy of Baltimore was still small: the large vessels of foreign trade still waited at Whetstone Point to receive their freight, transported in large lighters from the plantation landings on both branches of the river.

More flattering than this early artistic attempt is Governor Sharpe’s description of Baltimore, two years later, as having

“the appearance of the most increasing town in the Province,” though “hardly as yet rivalling Annapolis in number of Buildings or inhabitants: its situation as to Pleasantness, Air and Prospect is inferior to Annapolis, but if one considers it with respect to Trade, the extensive country beyond it leaves us room for comparison: were a few Gentlemen of fortune to settle there and encourage the Trade, it might soon become a flourishing place, but while few besides the Germans (who are in general masters of small fortunes) build and inhabit there, I apprehend it Cannot make any considerable Figure.”

The requisite “gentlemen of fortune” were not long lacking. One soon appeared in the person of Dr. John Stevenson, who, in 1754, came from Ireland, accompanied by his brother, Dr. Henry Stevenson, a man also noteworthy among the founders of Baltimore. Dr. John Stevenson turned his attention to commerce, and began the systematic development of Baltimore’s foreign trade. He contracted for large quantities of wheat, which he shipped to Scotland with such profitable results that general attention was attracted to the development of a more extended commerce.

[Illustration: MOALE’S SKETCH OF BALTIMORE IN 1752.

FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE POSSESSION OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.]