Part 3

“Soon after, the appointment of Mr. Eden to the government of 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.”