“A
power unknown to our Laws”: A Study of the Effect of
Federal Policies on Border State Unionism in Kent
County, Maryland 1861-1865
A Senior Honors Thesis by:
Brandon P. Righi
Dr. Ken Miller, Advisor
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………..3
Chapter 1––1861…………………………………………13
Chapter 2––1862…………………………………………29
Chapter 3––1863…………………………………………36
Chapter 4––1864…………………………………………47
Conclusion––1865 and
After……………………………58
Bibliography……………………………………………...65
Introduction
Antagonisms regarding slavery’s expansion, and northern
affronts to the honor of the southern states shaped the
political discourse of the Antebellum years. South
Carolina had threatened to secede from the Union in
1833, and between that time and the outbreak of civil
war north/south tension was a given in national-level
politics. The presidential elections of 1852 and
1856 saw both sections jockeying for political
advantages, and searching for compromises that would see
the Union preserved, if tenuously, for another four
years.
But by 1860 the second-party
system had proven incapable of containing the passions
of sectional conflict, as the system of two opposing
national
parties broke down into open north/south competition for
the White House. With Republican candidate Abraham
Lincoln the northern voters sought to limit slavery’s
expansion into the new western territories, if not
abolish the institution. Northern commercial
interests also found a home in the Republican Party’s
platform of liberal internal improvements and protective
tariffs. The South, in turn, fell behind John
Breckinridge of Kentucky, Vice-President of the United
States and an outspoken supporter of slavery’s
preservation and westward expansion. Breckinridge,
along with Stephen Douglass of Illinois, shattered the
Democratic Party, with the latter carrying the support
of the “regulars” or National Democrats, and
Breckinridge courting purely Southern interests.
Rounding out the ticket was John Bell of Tennessee,
whose short-lived Constitutional Unionist party
preferred to take no stand at all on the most burning
issue of the day, and campaigned on the platform of the
“Constitution, the Union, and the Enforcement of the
Laws.”
The 1860 election was
revolutionary in that candidates and campaigners were
not debating mere taxes, tariffs, and banks, but the
very nature of the Union. The gravity of the
situation, and the sense that momentous events were on
the horizon, were not lost on the citizens of Kent
County, a sleepy enclave on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland. Situated in a border slave state of no
predictable north/south allegiance, Kent, like Maryland
as a whole, would feel the weight of both of the
nation’s regions and experience the wrenching
ideological conflict brought by the specter of civil
war.
A sparsely populated
agricultural community, Kent County in 1860 looked much
as it does today. Numerous farms around
Chestertown, the county seat, produced their goods using
the labor of African-American slaves, as had been the
custom since colonial times. Naturally the social
structure and economic basis of the area, so little
changed from the colonial era, disposed most
Chestertownians to a conservative political outlook
apologetic toward the institution of slavery. A
tendency to see themselves as “Southern” was the result
of the politically electric atmosphere of 1860.
In an essay dated February 24, 1860, Joseph Burchinal, a
student at Chestertown’s Washington College,
distressfully posed the question on local minds:
“[C]an we suppose that the North would send to the
presidential chair and to Congress, men not to honor,
who would take legally or illegally, every advantage
[of] the South[?]” Burchinal, like many local
residents, was disturbed by the prospect. “For if
this be the case,” he continued, “every American south
of Mason’s & Dixon’s Line should be loud in his
acclamation for southern secession.”
Following Lincoln’s election in
November of 1860, and in the spirit of the “secession
winter” following shortly thereafter, many Eastern
Shoremen did indeed acclaim for southern secession.
Yet a majority of Chestertownians sided, at least
reluctantly, with the Union. After considering the
option of disunion, forced upon the South by Northern
fanatics, Burchinal continued, “…I am persuaded that
this would not be the case. Millions of northern
hearts beat warmly for the South….” He then went
on to consider, with optimism, the benefits of union.
As in Burchinal’s essay, secession was an idea only
flirted with by most Chestertownians, an idea deemed
unattractive following careful consideration of its
consequences.
Chestertown’s experience during the war years
illuminates the unionism of slave holding states and the
relationship between slavery, race, and unionism.
Kent County’s union predilections were sentimental and
economic in nature, and when war broke out unionism
prevailed for pragmatic reasons. The previous
eighty years of stability under the federal government
seemed foolish to discard. But the Civil War was
the end of the pragmatic evolution of the slavery
debate, and a revolution of the slave/master
relationship was the last thing desired by most white
Kent Countians. When the war was being fought “to
save the Union,” Kent was among the most patriotic areas
in Maryland. When the county realized that the
war’s result could be a Union “as it ought to be,” at
least in the eyes of the loathed Northern abolitionists,
support for the federal government would take a drastic
downturn. Military interference in Maryland
elections, emancipation of Southern slaves, and the
eventual abolishment of slavery in the border states all
contributed to the marked souring of Kent’s opinion of
the government and the war, a sense of dissatisfaction
that survived the silencing of the battlefields in the
spring of 1865 and would shape the local political map
for years to come.
***
The dichotomous north/south
nature of the Union in 1860 was evident in the Border
States, Maryland in particular. Indeed, the cliché
of addressing pre-war Maryland as an “America in
Miniature” is tempting. The increasing ethnic
diversity of the northern states as opposed to the
continuing Anglo-Saxon homogeneity of the South’s white
population, and the increasing industrial capacity and
modernization of commerce in the North as opposed to the
unchanging dominance of agriculture in the South, were
phenomena that were played out in Maryland among her own
diverse sections.
The
most industrialized part of the state, Baltimore and
northern Maryland in general, had by 1860 a large
immigrant, and predominantly German, population.
Of the 77,529 foreign born residents of Maryland in the
year of Lincoln’s election, 52,497 resided in Baltimore,
totaling nearly one quarter of the city’s population.
The large German community on the upper Western Shore
formed a solid anti-slavery constituency––in fact the
only openly abolitionist newspapers in the state were
printed in German. The cosmopolitanism of
Baltimore was juxtaposed by southern Maryland and the
Eastern Shore, the large slave holding regions of the
state. In 1860 the Eastern Shore (excluding Cecil
County), with a free population of 97,259, had a total
of 641 foreign born residents. The vast majority
of the region’s whites consisted of descendants of the
original English settlers.
Similar
to the northern states outpacing the South in industrial
capacity, northern Maryland and Baltimore in particular
dwarfed the southern counties and the Eastern Shore in
manufacturing capability. Cecil County’s annual
value of manufactured products, at $1.6 million in 1860,
more than doubled the totals of all of the Eastern Shore
counties combined.
In the more industrialized states of the North, and in
free northern states in general, the value of real
estate far outpaced the value of personal property,
while in slave states the reality was just the opposite,
as the value of personal assets were buoyed by slave
property which at the same time tended to devalue the
land on which the plantation culture thrived.
In Maryland this trend largely held at the county level:
in three of the largest slaveholding counties (Charles,
St. Mary’s, and Calvert) personal estate out valued real
estate by $3,475,952; $3,024,360; and $236,915,
respectively. In Dorchester and Prince George’s
Counties, homes to sizeable slave populations (Prince
George’s being the highest in Maryland), aggregate
values of real and personal estate were nearly
identical.
Relating to these demographic
and economic statistics of the era, the Kent County of
1860 proves difficult to define as “northern” or
“southern.” It was surely rural and agricultural,
had a fair number of slaves (well over twice the number
of its northern neighbor, Cecil, which had only 950 in
bondage), and overall had more in common with the
counties of southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore than
it did with Baltimore. Yet considering
only the counties of southern Maryland and the
Eastern Shore, Kent was among the most “northern.” It
was one of only three of these counties that had a free
black population exceeding the number of slaves, and the
county had the most number of foreign born residents of
any county on the Eastern Shore.
In 1860 Kent County’s population
consisted of 7,347 whites (251 of whom were foreign
born), 3,411 free blacks, and 2,509 slaves, for a total
of 13,267. The population of Chestertown consisted
of 882 whites, 417 free blacks, and 240 slaves, for an
aggregate population of 1,539. Kent County also
had the most valuable manufacturing industry on the
Eastern Shore, worth $194,300. Kent’s farms were
the most valuable on the Eastern Shore with a cash value
of $6.8 million, and the value of real estate easily
outweighed the sum of personal ($6.3 million compared to
$2.8 million). Compared with figures from the more
slave-based county economies in Maryland, it becomes
clearer that Kent had less in common with the South than
other sections of the state. The three
aforementioned counties whose personal assets out valued
real estate (St. Mary’s, Charles, and Calvert) had
relatively small white populations that owned large
numbers of slaves: St. Mary’s County had 6,798
whites and 6,540 slaves, with only 1,866 free blacks.
In Calvert and Charles, the slave populations alone
actually exceeded the white populations, 4,609 to 3,997
and 9,653 to 5,796, respectively. The free black
populations in these counties were small, with 1,068 in
Charles and 1,841 in Calvert.
These figures, of course, do
not confirm the unionism or secessionism of a particular
area during the Civil War. They are simply helpful
for determining public opinion and political orientation
in 1860. The war was long, and public support of
the Federal government in Kent declined after the
excitement of the onset of hostilities, as the Northern
army occupied parts of Maryland, inaugurated
conscription, confiscated slaves for enlistment in the
colored regiments, and forced abolition on the white
population. Kent County entered the war years as a
determined supporter of Washington and eager suppressor
of secession and revolution, but these trying events
would strain the patriotism of the conservative element,
as shown a county on the more economically progressive
end of the border state spectrum. The devolution
of unionism in Kent, as seen in the public discourse of
the press, the dropping numbers of military volunteers,
the election of more southern-sympathizing politicians,
and post-war racial developments is best understood by a
chronological assessment of the era, beginning shortly
after the conclusion of the 1860 general election.
***
In the
140 years since the Civil War’s close numerous volumes
on Maryland history have appeared, most of which at
least in part cover the state’s role and experience
during the years of conflict. The approaches vary
widely from pedestrian attempts at a balanced historical
account, to deeply researched scholarly accounts.
All have proven valuable, with the more scholarly pieces
providing the majority of my secondary source material,
and the openly partisan giving insight into the staying
power of Civil War memories.
The most useful secondary sources all hail from the
second half of the twentieth century (with the exception
of George Radcliffe’s article on Thomas Hicks, which is
still a respected biographical source on Hicks and his
relationship with the “Secession Legislature” of 1861).
For the most part the authors proved to be adequately
enough removed from the war era to write well balanced
histories without noticeable emotional investment in the
subject matter. But such is not the case for a
large part of the works written on the topic of Maryland
in the Civil War, which often brings the researcher
face-to-face with the hard feelings of those offended by
federal actions in Maryland.
Early compendium histories of
Maryland often prove to be overtly political and
acerbically anti-Lincoln when discussing the war,
examples being J. Thomas Scharf’s History of Maryland
of 1879, L. Magruder Passano’s History of Maryland
of 1901, and Matthew Page Andrews’ 1929 book of the same
title. Time has not healed all animosities;
strongly anti-Federal Civil War histories are published
to this day, and in the realm of Maryland history, the
most vicious are Harry Wright Newman’s Maryland and
the Confederacy of 1976, and Bart Rhett Talbert’s
Maryland: The South’s First Casualty of 1995.
As much explorations of the authors’ imaginations as
they are of the Civil War in Maryland, works such as
these are nonetheless valuable in assessing the
conflict’s legacy in a border state, a topic that will
be considered more fully in the concluding chapter.
Of
course, the focus of this paper is Chestertown and Kent
County during the war years, and secondary sources are
sparse.
Works discussed up to this point all offer some
information on Kent, although they usually stick to the
few wartime events of highest profile. Despite
this lack of coverage, Kent County serves as a
fascinating and informative case study of the
development and political impact of federal wartime
policy in the Border States. A chronological
assessment is the best means to portray the evolution of
wartime policy and its consequences, and so I have
structured this essay in a year-by-year format.
Chapter one, on 1861, describes the Kent and Maryland
Unionist majority that emerged out of the chaotic
Secession Winter, as most citizens of the geographically
vulnerable border state fell in line with efforts to
suppress the Confederacy; also covered are the
characteristics of Maryland Unionism. The second
chapter covers the early stages of federal emancipation
policy in 1862, and the negative political reactions in
Kent and Maryland in general. Also important for
Kent in the second year of the war was the issue of
federal military arrests, as a particularly high-profile
case closely touched the upper echelons of local
Unionist ranks. Chapter three covers the crucial
year of 1863, by all means the turning point of Unionism
in Kent, as military interference with elections and
local slaves disillusioned the conservative Unionist
population. Chapter four on 1864 analyzes the
repercussions of the events of 1863, as Kent Countians
took a reactionary turn at the ballot box, leading to
the unprecedented wartime election of Democrats and the
realignment of most conservative Unionists with the
party of the South. And finally, the concluding
chapter will touch on 1865 and post-war legacies.
The experience of Kent County shows that many in the
more conservative areas of the country initially
supported and fought in the Civil War to “save the
Union,” naïvely hoping that the slavery question would
not enter into the fore. Of course it did, and the
federal policies supporting emancipation in the South,
along with the raising of colored regiments, rendered
the war aims alien to this significant portion of the
population. The resulting “revolution” of the
master/slave relationship polarized locales such as Kent
the way the firing on Sumter did not, setting the stage
for the unfortunate racial tensions that would mar the
nation for at least another century.
November of 1860 saw what was
the United States’ most ominous federal election, the
result of which was Abraham Lincoln’s election to the
presidency with forty percent of the nation’s popular
vote, a popular vote markedly biased to the northern
states. Lincoln’s electoral tally south of the
Mason-Dixon was dismal. Marylanders fell in with
their fellow southerners, handing Lincoln a paltry 2,294
votes out of 92,441 cast, with the real contest for the
Old Line State’s electoral votes coming between Bell and
Breckinridge. The final tally of Maryland’s votes
was hardly a reliable weather vane of the state’s future
course, as the Constitutional Unionist John Bell and the
Southern Democrat John Breckinridge were nearly tied.
Breckinridge won Maryland’s eight electoral votes by a
720-vote margin. Kent County was closely divided
as well, with Bell beating Breckinridge 853 to 693.
Kent had more votes for Lincoln
than any county south of Cecil, with 42 tallies for the
Republican. Two counties, Worcester and Kent’s
immediate southern neighbor, Queen Anne’s, gave Lincoln
zero votes, and the slaveholding strongholds of Prince
George’s, Calvert, and St. Mary’s Counties had one
Republican vote each.
Even in contrast with these more anti-Lincoln areas, of
course, Kent’s critics of the Northern party still
handily outnumbered its scattered supporters. The
more extreme of these critics lobbied for Maryland to
follow the states of the Deep South into secession,
attracting a group of hardliners that would be active
throughout the war. Nonetheless, the county
maintained a Union majority, as seen in the elections of
1861.
This chapter explores the formative process of wartime
political parties in the state, and the nature of
Maryland border-state Unionism. Kent’s Unionism
can be attributed to the pragmatic desire to avoid
bloodshed on Maryland soil, and the belief that
secession and its tumultuous consequences would do more
damage than good to the area’s interests. From the
outset of the crisis Kent County and Marylanders in
general made clear their preference for the status quo
by berating secession and abolition with equal vigor.
Recognizing that the state was too weak to drastically
alter the course of events leading to civil war,
Maryland’s leaders made the safe bet of Union.
Accompanying their allegiance, however, was ample
evidence that unfavorable federal alterations of slavery
could cause Marylanders to rethink their patriotism.
The
Kent News staked out this tenuous position of the
county’s conservative population early on. A
weekly newspaper with Whig origins,
the News set the tone for the rest of Kent’s
experience during the war with an editorial that was
passionately anti-secession:
The doctrine of peaceable secession, we repudiate, as
inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the
Constitution, with the teachings of the Fathers of the
Republic, and the genius of our Government…. The
simple fact of an election, in opposition to our wishes
and opinions, may be ground of regret and mortification,
but none for resistance or dismemberment.
But it was also a position that
set out to make clear that opposition to disunion did
not equate to support for the party of the North:
“We are as friendly to the South, her rights and
institutions, as South Carolinians––and we denounce as
strongly the conduct of the North, in reference to our
fugitives from service.”
The Kent News was
a moderate public voice on the Eastern Shore during the
war, with one rival publication, the Chestertown
Transcript,
solidly Democratic, and another, John Leeds Barroll’s
Kent Conservator, as the voice of the county’s
fire-eaters. Yet, in that relative moderation, we
see a stance towards the looming conflict that would
only be sustainable in a border state such as Maryland.
A more hard-line column of the News, already
wading into the volatile debate over whether or not the
Governor should call for a State Convention, read, “…the
time has come to vindicate the Constitution…. If
the Northern States accede, it is well, but if they
refuse, it will then be for Maryland to
decide…upon her future course.”
The secessionist Conservator surely published
material with even less ambiguous exhortations for a
Convention.
The state benefited from the bonds of union, but it was
clear that Kent was not yet ready to abandon the ways of
the Old South.
***
The rapidity of South Carolina’s
secession following Lincoln’s election, and the prompt
following in her footsteps by states of the Deep South,
seemed to beg for decisive action by all of the slave
states, either to make clear the unanimity of opinion in
the South, or to arrest the move toward disunion and
civil war. Thus the localities of Maryland
mobilized, with town hall meetings across the state
contributing to the political dialogue. After the
presidential election, the primary issue at hand was the
course of Maryland––specifically, what section the state
would back in the looming conflict, if either.
Early disagreement in the state focused on whether or
not to convene the heavily Democratic state legislature,
which could only be called by the Governor.
Thomas Holliday Hicks, born in
the Eastern Shore county of Dorchester in 1798, was
elected Governor of Maryland in 1857. The state
constitution at the time divided Maryland into three
gubernatorial “sections,” which provided candidates for
the state’s highest office in turn. It is because
of this peculiar system that the state was led in the
early days of the national crisis by one of the most
controversial figures in Maryland. A man of
fortitude perhaps unequal to the tensions of late 1860
and early 1861, Hicks rarely backed a particular faction
or party with any consistency, be it during the Civil
War or his long public career at large. Originally
a Democrat, Hicks was swept into the Governor’s office
as an example of the short-lived nativist frenzy of the
1850’s characterized by the American (or “Know-Nothing”)
Party. Hicks was no friend of the fire-eaters of
the late 1850s, and greatly distrusted the Democratic
General Assembly of Maryland. But he was also a
slave owner and the member of a prosperous plantation
family, and thus loathed the election of a Republican
president. Throughout the Secession Winter and
during the following spring Hicks’ unionism wavered,
with little public comment or action from him regarding
future political alignment of the State notwithstanding
loud demands to the contrary from the populace.
Chestertownians were no
exception to the pull for civic action.
On Tuesday, January 8, 1861, residents of the town
gathered at the Court House, “with a view to the
expression of opinion on the part of Kent,” for what
would be the first of numerous like gatherings
throughout the war. And it was here that the
wartime divisions of the voters of Kent became apparent.
Several other counties in the state had already held
similar town hall meetings that resulted in the
endorsement of a call of the legislature, and this
question would drive a wedge in Kent’s voting
population, laying the groundwork for wartime political
parties.
The position taken by a majority of those present at the
meeting, conservative as they might have been regarding
slavery and other issues dear to Southern hearts, was
one of moderation, a wait-and-see strategy indicative of
their torn sympathies. Not about to advocate the
radical path of secession, the only sure consequence of
which would have been invasion from the North,
Chestertownians for the time being would cast their lot
with Washington.
Several prominent men of the
area were in attendance on January 8. The
Honorable Ezekiel Foreman Chambers, who served as
President of the meeting, was a longtime judge at the
local Chestertown Circuit Court, an important and
wealthy landholder with long ties to Kent. Born in
Chestertown in 1788, he had fought the British at the
Battle of Caulk’s Field in the war of 1812, and had
served as a United States Senator for Maryland from 1826
to 1834. Chambers graduated from Washington
College at the age of seventeen and practiced law in the
town, and also served as the college’s President of the
Board of Visitors and Governors for twenty-four years.
Before his death in 1867 he would also participate in
the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1864, and in
that same year he was the unsuccessful Democratic
candidate for governor. Available statistics
indicate that Chambers was also one of the largest
slaveholders in Kent County.
George Vickers, another prominent local figure, wealthy
landowner, and slaveholder, also participated in the
meeting. Vickers was likewise a native of
Chestertown where he practiced law, and his name is the
most commonly encountered in newspapers of the era, for
his main source of income seems to have been real
estate; on a weekly basis Vickers had one or more farms
and properties for sale. He served as a Democratic
presidential elector in the 1864, an advisor to Governor
Augustus Bradford (who succeeded Hicks), and as a U.S.
Senator from Maryland from 1868 to 1873. Other
names at the meeting, including Ricaud, Wickes, Comegys,
Usilton, Hines, and Westcott, were likewise prosperous
lawyers, planters, and merchants who would be closely
involved in the coming events of the war.
This first Union Meeting was the
only truly non-partisan political gathering in
Chestertown for the duration of the war, for differences
arose between two high-profile men, Chambers and
Vickers, which would within a few short weeks be
discernable as two party lines. As at similar
meetings around the country, the men of Chestertown
assembled, elected officers of the session, and voted on
resolutions delineating the positions of those present.
Chambers, acting as the meeting’s president, had several
innocuous and patriotic resolutions passed unanimously.
“Full and very animated debate” followed, however, upon
the sixth and seventh resolutions, which called for
Governor Hicks to summon the Maryland General Assembly
so that body could authorize a sovereign convention.
The reasoning behind the call for convention was,
according to Chambers and other supporters of the
resolutions, “necessary to perpetuate our glorious
Union,” as Maryland would then clearly align with the
Constitution and Union and stifle calls for secession.
Vickers, along with Governor Hicks and many other
Marylanders, doubted the patriotism of the state’s
legislature. And thus upon the vote for the
resolutions calling for a state convention he presented
a substitute to the voters which applauded the course
Hicks had taken, and included a vague reference to “the
time shall arrive for Maryland to speak…” Vickers’
resolution was adopted “by a large majority.”
Chestertownians felt Hicks’ cautious strategy to be
wisest, not trusting the motives of the Democratic MGA.
***
Kent County and the Eastern
Shore did of course have those who preferred more
drastic measures to protect Southern institutions.
Men who favored an expedient call for a convention
quickly formed a notable political bloc in Kent.
This group, briefly known as “Convention Men” and after
the outbreak of hostilities as the Peace Party,
was large enough to warrant constant attack by the
News and other Union papers of the state, especially
during elections. Southern sympathizers working to
frustrate federal war aims as well as outright
secessionists proved to be grave concerns of Maryland
Unionists during 1861 and after. The Eastern Shore
had no shortage of those hostile to the Lincoln
administration and federal war efforts, and so a
description of this important segment of the population
is essential to understand the area’s political makeup
and the strength of Kent Unionism in the early stages of
the Civil War.
In Chestertown, one of the most
aggressive representatives of the Peace men was John
Leeds Barroll, voice of the weekly newspaper the Kent
Conservator. A local lawyer and member of
one of the oldest Eastern Shore families, Barroll
energetically attacked the indecisiveness of Governor
Hicks, along with any other political development boding
ill for Southern interests.
For the Conservator, the result of the
disagreement of the January 8 Union Meeting was one of
“discord,” “animosity,” and “party feeling.” Those
in favor of a Convention thus called an exclusive
meeting for February 9. Disowning any support of
secession, as was pinned on supporters of a convention
by the News, the Conservator defended its
political ally Chambers by getting to the heart of the
matter, saying the Judge was only “anxious to protect
[his] negroes… He is not a man to give his negroes
and his life to appease the offended, blood-thirsty
Demons of Abolitionism.”
Ironically for Kent, it was the extreme political poles
that fully understood the ramifications of the crisis,
as both secessionists and abolitionists focused on the
issue of slavery. For the time being, however, the
Unionists of Maryland seemed determined to ignore that
controversy.
The February 9 meeting of
Convention Men elected delegates to send to the
“Southern Rights Convention of Maryland,” a
well-attended statewide gathering in Baltimore during
February 18 and 19 that, among other things, resolved
“that the secession of the seven slaveholding States…was
induced by the aggression of the non-slaveholding
States, in violation of the Constitution,” and that
Maryland should not be “made a highway for federal
troops” sent to coerce the Southern states.
Vigorously made was a call for a sovereign convention,
and Judge Chambers, who served as the convention’s
president, neatly summed up the platform of the Peace
men in his keynote address: “Yes, gentlemen, great
and multiplied as are the blessings we have derived
under the Constitution and Union, yet if they can only
be enjoyed by the sacrifice of the honor and dignity of
our nation and our State, we must refuse them all.”
Union was desirable as long as the tides of abolition
could be controlled, and departure from the United
States was to be seriously contemplated if “honor,” the
lawful retention of property in slaves, could not be
guaranteed. The Southern Rights Convention ended
with a promise to again meet if the legislature was not
called, a promise it never fulfilled owing to the
inauguration of war.
Political antagonisms that festered in Maryland in the
winter and spring of 1861 took on new importance in the
month of April, as the onset of hostilities
fanned the fires of Southern-sympathy in Maryland, and
the suspension of habeas corpus along with
martial law on the Western Shore attracted cutting
criticism.
Richard Bennett Carmichael of Centreville, in Queen
Anne’s County, and a judge of the circuit court in
Easton, typified high-profile political dissatisfaction
with the course of events in 1861. A close friend
of George Vickers, friend of John Leeds Barroll and
Judge Chambers, and an ally of James Alfred Pearce (a US
Senator for Maryland and a Chestertown resident),
Carmichael mounted an enthusiastic and organized
campaign against military power in Maryland and the
unfair cancellation of sacred political freedoms in the
suspension of habeas corpus and subsequent
military arrests of political dissenters.
Carmichael’s charge to the Grand Jury of Talbot County
instructed jurors to acquit those victimized by
“arbitrary, illegal, and false imprisonments,” and in
his controversial petition to the Maryland General
Assembly (to which Unionist newspapers such as the
News
were referring as the “Secession Legislature”)
he, along with forty-eight other citizens of Queen
Anne’s County, pleaded that the body not adjourn as many
had requested. The petition labeled the
legislature’s critics as “confederates of the Governor”
and painting the military forces in Maryland as
“out-laws,” “traitors,” and “usurpers.”
The
highly visible actions of Peace men such as Chambers and
Carmichael, while certainly considered a liability by
the Lincoln administration and its backers, were only
the political machinations of a movement that also had
armed components. The military presence in
Maryland, started by Brigadier General Butler in late
April and May of 1861, coincided with very real concerns
regarding the strength of secessionist military
companies in the state. During the summer of 1861
Major General John A. Dix of the Commanding Department
of Annapolis repeatedly asked for arms and troops to
suppress secessionist military companies that were
training in “Caroline, Queen Anne [sic], and Carroll
Counties,”
and Kent citizens S.W. Spencer, Jesse K. Hines, and
George Vickers expressed concern to Governor Hicks for a
secessionist “outbreak” following the Confederate
victory at the first battle of Bull Run (Manassas).
Governor Hicks made frequent pleas for federal troops to
put down a Maryland rebellion he saw as imminent; a
“desperate struggle” in the state seemed to linger on
the horizon, especially early in the year.
Confederate smugglers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to
Virginia were a concern throughout the war, with the
Pocomoke and Annemessex rivers reported to be swarming
with “armed pirates and blockade runners” as late as
August 1864.
The
perceived strength of Confederate sympathizers in the
state of course contributed to the unease of Unionists
at election time. Still intimidated by the
rebellious riot in Baltimore in April, Augustus Bradford
(of Harford County and Union candidate for Governor in
November 1861) requested that Maj. Gen. Dix require
loyalty oaths of voters in the gubernatorial election.
Hicks also requested the administration of oaths at
polling places, and expressed fear that the election of
the Peace candidate for Governor, Benjamin Howard,
seemed likely. On the Eastern Shore George
Vickers, an active agent of the Union candidacy, sent
$82.80 worth of Unionist
Kent News issues to Centreville, an act deemed
necessary to help swing that town’s electorate in favor
of Bradford.
***
Maryland’s active Peace Party and Confederate
sympathizers in Maryland attracted much attention from
Unionists and military authorities, but nonetheless the
Union cause was victorious in state politics. Kent
Unionism had a strong foundation, with the county’s
leading newspaper firmly behind the administration upon
the firing of Fort Sumter, and Chestertown Union
meetings well attended. But it is the vote tallies
from the year’s two elections that best tell of the
strength of the local Union party. On June 11
elections were held to fill seats in the House of
Representatives, as Lincoln had called a special session
of Congress to address the national crisis. In the
Second Congressional District, of which Kent was part in
1861, the Union candidate Edwin Webster ran unopposed,
and the county’s tally for him was 993, 140 more than
Kent voters had cast for the Constitutional Union
presidential candidate John Bell in 1860.
The November elections were even more decidedly in favor
of the Unionists, with Augustus Bradford beating Howard
1095 to 663, “a majority larger than ever before given
in any contested election in Kent County.”
Compared to Bell’s 1860 presidential tally, Bradford
bested him by 242. John A. Dix had declined
Bradford and Hick’s requests that military authorities
require loyalty oaths, reasoning that he lacked the
authority to interfere in a state election.
Therefore, the November elections of 1861 are the most
accurate gauge of Union sentiment in the early war
period, as elections were free of military interference.
Unionism prevailed in Maryland in 1861, but it was of
the typical, conservative border-state brand, and Kent
County’s Union sentiment was no exception. Kent
Unionists offered strong opposition to secession, but it
was made clear from the beginning that the purpose of
the war was to re-form the Union “as it was,” and any
abolitionist policy was vigorously opposed with near
unanimity. The resolutions adopted by Kent’s Union
Party upon its formation in early 1861 offered just as
strong a condemnation of “the multiplied instances of
resistance to constitutional rights of slaveholders” as
it did for the prospect of secession, as did the State
Union Party when it chastised the “misconduct of a
portion of the people of some of the Free States….”
The statewide party also openly stated that when it came
to the slavery question, its opinions were “directly
opposite to the view of [the] Executive.”
Chestertown’s leading figures of Unionism, many if not
most of them slaveholders, were conservative on the
slavery question without exception. The News
commonly railed on the abolitionist “Black Republicans,”
and from Lincoln’s election until the end of the war
made no secret of its partisanship.
Such opinions were in harmony
with Maryland’s various elected representatives.
Maryland’s two US Senators, Anthony Kennedy and James
Alfred Pearce, were elected as Democrats in the 1850s,
and found exception with many Lincoln policies in 1861.
Pearce (who rarely left Chestertown after the first half
of 1861 because of illness, and finally died there in
December of 1862) proved particularly critical of
Lincoln’s policies of military control on the Western
Shore and the suspension of habeas corpus,
complaining to his personal friend Representative John
W. Crisfield, “…tho [sic] they [the
administration] profess as their creed, the union[,]the
constitution & the enforcement of the laws[,] they are
violating the one & setting the other at naught on the
tyrants plea of necessity….” Nonetheless Pearce
was a consistent opponent of secession, a course of
action that, as he put it, would be Maryland’s “ruin.”
This touches on a key tenet of
conservative Unionism. One of the more popular
reasonings against secession was rooted in the
realization that Maryland, should it leave the Union,
would be the northernmost seceded state, a guarantee
that any civil war would be fought on its soil.
Crisfield summed up this reality, when he wrote to
Pearce, “Disunion––at least disunion on the line of
Mason & Dixon––is death to us.". The Kent
News also articulated this convincing argument
against Maryland secession, reasoning that “Our
geographical position would cause us to be the arena of
strife and deadly conflict, between the legions of the
North and the South, and as a small power between
immense ones, we would be crushed between the ‘upper and
the nether mill stone.’” Even so, the slave-owning
Pearce was truly torn, professing to Crisfield his
conviction of the impossibility of a restoration of the
Union. Judge Richard B. Carmichael, who was a
friend of Pearce’s, encouraged these doubts, writing,
“For God’s sake, do without a moment’s delay, make your
speech denouncing this unholy war, and the
unconstitutional proceedings with which it has been
gotten up, and conducted….”
John W.
Crisfield, elected to Congress from Maryland’s First
District in 1861, was of the same political mold as most
other Maryland Unionists. Born in Chestertown in
1806 and educated at Washington College, Crisfield in
1860 lamented Lincoln’s “inevitable” election as “a
disgrace to our national character, to say nothing of
the positive mischief to Southern interests.” In
letters from early 1861 to his friend Senator Pearce he
proved to be critical of the Lincoln administration,
calling the new President an “utter failure,” and “a
well meaning, but a weak, man….” Yet the start of
civil war saw Crisfield support Lincoln’s call for
troops, and he hoped that the assembling force would
“prevent the flow of blood, by the exhibition of an
overwhelming force….”
Like countless other Maryland
politicians Crisfield regretted the Republican control
of the White House, but the start of the Civil War saw a
dissolution of party labels as slaveholders and
defenders of slavery ran to the Union banner when war
became inevitable. Union sentiment in Chestertown
and Kent County followed an identical evolution during
the year 1861. Despite the menace of secessionist
militants, overt secessionists saw very little political
success in Maryland, and the more moderate Peace Party
managed little success at the ballot box. The
Unionists in Chestertown and the surrounding area, for
the most part, managed to forget the differences most of
them had with the platform of the Republican
administration, and most early federal wartime actions
met with approval. Even the September arrests of
members of the so-called “Secession Legislature” in
Frederick by General Winfield Scott, certainly a prelude
to the numerous military arrests that would become
common in Maryland during the war, met with enthusiasm
from the News, which reasoned that “Gen.
Washington found it necessary to arrest domestic
traitors, and Gen. Scott but follows his example.”
But when specific political questions are considered,
most obviously that of slavery and emancipation, Kent
Unionists knew all too well of their incompatibility
with Lincoln’s platform. What sustained this
precarious bond, then, was a certainty that the slavery
question was not the pressing issue at the war’s outset.
Upon an objective consideration of the unfolding events,
how could it have been? Before secession, the
Southern politicians wielded “complete power…over the
present Administration, through their majorities in the
Senate, and…the House of Representatives,” the Maryland
State Union Party astutely observed in June. “The
question of slavery,” therefore, “we believe to be not
seriously in the contest.”
Highlighting the risk of
secession, the
News reported that mere weeks after secession
daily life in South Carolina was altered dramatically:
“No vessels loading, no business doing, women weeping,
and men overcome by sickness, and the city in the hands
of a mob, is the bulletin travellers [sic] present of
the condition of things…in Charleston.”
Secessionists had traded a robust slave economy and
weighty political power in Washington for a chaotic
existence and a “ruinous system of taxation,” where
there was a new “State tax of Two Dollars in the
$100, and $1.66 upon every negro.”
Secession seemed the surest way
to financial and physical ruin, and thus the quickest
path for slavery’s demise. Kent Unionists, despite
being “Southerners in all our feelings and affections,”
would stick with the tried-and-true Union, under which
Southern institutions had always flourished. In
1861 most Maryland Unionists, Governor-elect Augustus
Bradford among them, hoped to avoid a rupture of the
Union Party along the slavery question by ignoring the
question altogether. Bradford refused to debate or
discuss slavery during his campaign, saying he “could
not conceive how the discussion of it…can in any
contingency contribute to strengthen the loyalty of
Maryland at this crisis…” Ignoring the era’s
political white elephant, however, would prove to be an
unrealistic proposition, and in the war’s coming years
evolving federal slave policies would strain Kent
Unionism.
Chapter 2 ––1862
In
Chestertown the second year of the war started as the
first had ended, with enthusiastic support of the
federal military effort. Local militiamen had been
organizing throughout 1861, and in January of 1862 they
numbered around 500 men at their base at “Camp Vickers,”
just outside of town.
In February the men started to leave for the Eastern
Shore of Virginia to be mustered into the 2nd
Eastern Shore Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Colonel
Edward Wilkins of Kent County. Their first
assignment while in Accomack and Northampton counties
was to prevent smuggling between Delmarva and mainland
Virginia. The departure was met with enthusiasm by
the
News, and the unit would keep consistent
correspondence with the newspaper. Military
volunteerism remained strong into the summer in
Chestertown, and by August 62 Chestertownians enlisted
out of a voting population of less than two hundred.
By the
summer Lincoln had issued calls for troops totaling
600,000 men, to be drawn from state militias, and all
deficiencies were to be filled by means of a draft in
the states that had not satisfied their quotas.
The inauguration of the draft was fully supported by the
News, which reasoned, “if the war is to be
vigorously and successfully prosecuted, it is…necessary
that a large additional force should be called into the
field.” Kent Countians could afford such
enthusiasm, as the county’s quota of 341 men had been
easily surpassed, with 448 in service in October.
At the same time, the counties considered to be the
stronghold of secessionism in the state, Calvert, St.
Mary’s, Prince George’s, and Charles, had a total
of seven men in service. Queen Anne’s County fell
306 men behind its quota.
While
the “men in the street” of Chestertown and Kent County
were imbued with a patriotic martial spirit, the
political elites increasingly found themselves at odds
with federal policy. In 1862 this emerging chasm
between Kent and DC was apparent in two areas, federal
arrests and negro policy, that in the war’s later years
greatly soured the county’s Unionist enthusiasm.
In October of 1861 Secretary of State William Seward had
recommended to John A. Dix, of the Annapolis Commanding
Department, that Judge Richard B. Carmichael be arrested
for disloyalty, and the next February Dix proposed the
idea to Governor Bradford. The General said that
Carmichael “has for many months been one of the prime
movers of disaffection and disloyalty on the Eastern
Shore,” undoubtedly referring to his efforts to derail
federal arrests of Southern sympathizers and his efforts
to keep the “Secession Legislature” from adjourning, as
discussed in the previous chapter. But Dix
revealed that he had “forborne to take any measure in
regard to him by the advice of gentlemen on the Eastern
Shore,” a bow to Carmichael’s numerous friends and
acquaintances such as Vickers, Pearce, and Crisfield.
“[B]ut,” Dix pitched in early 1862, “I believe the
feeling is now nearly unanimous that his disloyal and
vindictive conduct has been endured too long.”
Bradford apparently refrained from comment on the
matter, allowing Dix carte blanche to pursue the arrest.
Carmichael’s actual arrest in Easton on May 27th
made for an exciting story, as he was apprehended in his
courtroom with a trial in procession, and had to be
beaten over the head with a revolver butt to overcome
his violent resistance.
While the news of Carmichael’s detainment in Fort
McHenry hardly troubled the News, which regretted
the violence of the arrest but reminded readers that the
judge “had himself to blame” for the affair, the
Carmichael saga saw notable Eastern Shore Union men, who
were friends of Carmichael, horrified at the exercise of
military power. Senator Pearce, by this time quite
ill, lobbied forcefully for Carmichael’s release,
visiting Secretary of War Stanton and other officials on
the judge’s behalf (Pearce’s agitation drew grumblings
from General Wool, who criticized Stanton for even
entertaining such a visit). Pearce’s friend
Representative John W. Crisfield was just as active in
the matter, writing the President as well as personally
contacting Secretary Seward. George Vickers was
likewise a lobbyist for the judge,
and “Prominent and Substantial Union men of Centreville”
assembled a petition addressed to Lincoln calling for
Carmichael’s release, their main fear being the effect
of the violent arrest on the sympathies of “conservative
union men” of the Eastern Shore.
By
November even the News was loud for the judge’s
release, for the “wants and necessities of the public”
required that the courts be held.
But late in the year the News’ columns espoused a
marked level of bitterness in relation to the other
sticking point for Kent Unionists in 1862: the
federal government’s increasingly liberal behavior in
the realm of slavery. In December 1861 a bill was
introduced into Congress to emancipate the slaves in the
District of Columbia, and by April 1862 it was law.
The newly free soil of DC attracted many runaways from
adjacent counties in Maryland and infuriated their
owners, who called the law “unwise, ill-timed,
unconstitutional, and…the entering wedge of a general
scheme of abolition.” Maryland Unionists
fought the proposal while in Congress, and once DC was
emancipated lobbied for District officials’ full respect
for the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Governor
Bradford, who described the District’s emancipation as a
“selfish and incendiary course of those who…have
persisted in this wanton violence to the feelings of the
border states,” did his best to see that Maryland slave
owners would be able to enter DC and retrieve their
runaway property.
This
early squabble over slave policy, which would pale in
comparison to what was to come, was already straining
the Union Party in Maryland. While organs of the
party’s conservative wing adamantly opposed any entry of
the emancipation debate into the public forum, and
commonly tossed around rhetoric to the effect of,
“abolitionists and the secessionists are equally
detestable…and both seem bent on the destruction of the
country,” the Unionists of Baltimore were holding
meetings separate from the state party in which
resolutions were passed endorsing Lincoln’s policy of
gradual emancipation.
Yet the criticism of the
state’s conservative Unionists reached new heights upon
word of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued on
September 22 and set to take effect on the
first day of 1863. The News
was simply aghast at the idea of freeing all of the
slaves in the South, and steamed that
The idea of a President, whose duties are prescribed in
the Constitution…by a paper publication, changing the
relation of master and slave, and emancipating four
millions of human beings…without any provision for their
colonization… excels in stupendous wonder and amazement
anything that this or any former century has produced.
“No authority exists in him nor
in the Government combined to interfere with the
relation of slavery,” the News opined. And
further, the proclamation “closes the door to
reconciliation––places the Confederates at
defiance––embitters and aggravates the feelings of
hostility between the sections….” According to
conservative Unionists such as the editors of the
News, the President had at the same time alienated
loyal slaveholders of the Border States, and
reinvigorated the Confederates enthusiasm to fight, a
seemingly disastrous situation. And since the
proclamation instituted “wholesale emancipation,” and no
plan to deport the newly freed slaves, the News
predicted that it “would be the most unwise and
injurious act towards the negroes themselves that could
possibly be committed,” as a new war “for the ejectment
[sic] of the African race from the country” was surely
on the horizon.
In
general, the Emancipation Proclamation was met with a
cold reception in Maryland. The Baltimore
American, among the most unconditional supporters of
Lincoln’s wartime policy, doubted the constitutionality
of freeing the slaves of the South as well as the
proclamation’s military value. Governor Bradford
likewise missed any military or political expediency
being served by sudden emancipation, and said that the
proclamation would only give the rebels “a rallying cry
against us.” He refused to sign an address issued
by representatives of sixteen states approving of the
measure. In Congress the Maryland delegation
delivered nearly unanimous condemnation.
Representative Crisfield was particularly hostile to the
proposal, quipping that it triggered “astonishment,
terror, and indignation” in every loyal heart.
Keeping in line with his previous opinions of Lincoln
articulated in letters to Senator Pearce, Crisfield
lamented that conviction of the President’s “incapacity
is every day becoming more universal.”
In May,
before the proclamation of September 1862, Thomas Hicks,
still an active Unionist despite no longer being
governor, sent a letter to Lincoln he hoped would help
stem the tide of emancipation. “I beg you,” Hicks
wrote, “Keep down as far as you can the ultra men of the
North.” The former Maryland Governor begged the
President to put all effort behind beating the South
militarily before attention was paid to freeing slaves,
unnecessary meddling that he, like Bradford, considered
damaging to the Union cause in the border states.
Representative John Crisfield, in correspondence with
Senator Pearce (who was on his deathbed, and would die
in December at age 57), took a less optimistic tone on
the subject of slavery’s retention after the war than
Hicks or the Kent News, which at the end of 1862
still held hope that the peculiar institution would
survive. “I am satisfied,” Crisfield said, “that
so far as the administration and this Congress are
concerned, slavery is doomed.” Dramatically he
continued, “Every day the conviction is more and more
thorough that republican constitutional liberty is
overthrown, and that we must soon have a master.”
During Congress’ 1862 session Crisfield engaged in
cutthroat debates in the House defending slavery in
Maryland, in particular with abolitionist Representative
Owen Lovejoy, who deplored Crisfield’s defense of an
institution “which is a stench in the nostrils of God.”
Crisfield took the traditional Southern patriarchical
stance, claiming the choice before them was “between
slavery on the one hand, and degradation, poverty,
suffering, and ultimate extinction on the other.”
The unprecedented federal intervention into the
institution of slavery, for the time being only in the
seceded states, along with persistent and sometimes
heavy-handed federal suppression of dissent in Maryland
(typified by Carmichael’s arrest), certainly altered in
1862 the harmony of purpose that had been seen the
previous year. Military recruitment for the time
being proceeded without much trouble, as only the
state’s political elites seemed to realize slavery’s
days were truly numbered. Federal “negro policy”
and military intervention into the political realm would
continue in Maryland, and in the next year erupt in
scandal. This would cause many to question their
loyalty, and the implosion of the state Union Party.
Chapter 3––1863
Conservative Unionists tried to
ignore the “negro question” during the opening phase of
the war, but in 1862, with the manumission of the
District of Columbia’s slaves and the announcement of
the Emancipation Proclamation, the debate over proper
policy regarding the African-American population became
unavoidable. The argument naturally spilled into
1863, as the first of the year marked the enacting of
Lincoln’s policy of southern emancipation that was
announced the previous September. All of the
slaves in the seceded states were, at least on paper,
“free.” The stakes were raised, as was the News’
hyperbole; revisiting the issue upon the inauguration of
a new year, the editors lamented that Lincoln’s display
of Executive power “can find no parallel or precedent in
the history of the world, since Adam and Eve left the
garden of Eden.”
However, the slaves of Kent and Maryland were still
legally in bondage, and defenders of the institution
worked against any further agitation of the question, at
least until the end of armed conflict. The News
was energetic in its condemnation of those whom it
termed as sufferers of “nigger on the brain,” lumping
abolitionist politicians and secessionists together as
equally deplorable. But emancipation was undeniably a
fixture of state politics, and Maryland party
developments in 1863 evolved solely along the issue.
By the end of the year conservative Unionists, easily a
majority of Kent’s voting population, would be on the
losing end of the emancipation debate. Foiled at
the ballot box by gross military interference, and
humiliated by what they saw as inexcusable violations of
property rights, Kent Unionists were left with only
bitterness at year’s end, a feeling that would show in
1864’s important elections and referenda.
***
A
unified State Union Party did not last long into 1863.
Early in the year Unionists held meetings at various
locations calling for “more effectual” support of the
Lincoln administration, and condemning those who were in
opposition to tenets of the President’s platform.
The Grand League of Baltimore Unionists soon called for
a convention to assemble on June 16,
inviting “all persons who support the whole policy of
the Government….” Conservatives, not inclined to
support emancipation or other controversial federal
policies such as the raising of regiments of black
troops, quickly organized and scheduled their own
convention for June 23rd, as the State
Central Committee. The former group was referred
to as “League Men” or “Unconditional Unionists,” and the
latter as “Conservatives.”
Adding
to the confusion was the fact that both sects of
Unionists claimed to be the legitimate Union Party of
Maryland. On June 23, when both conventions were
meeting in Baltimore to articulate their platforms and
nominate candidates for statewide offices, the Union
League Convention communicated with the State Central
Committee, or conservative, Convention, proposing that
the two meetings disband and meet together on some
future day. James Ricaud of Kent County made
particular noise against this proposal, rejecting the
Union League’s ability to call a convention and refusing
to allow “the subject of emancipation…[to] be settled by
a party convention.” The two conventions never
united as planned. Another peculiar situation
arose in Kent when Unionists of the First District met
in Cambridge, Maryland, to nominate a candidate for
Congress. Both Conservative and Unconditional
Unionist sent delegates to the convention (Kent was the
only county in the district to send two delegations),
only to have the Unconditional Unionists turned away.
The Conservatives renominated John Crisfield, but
Unconditional Unionists of the First District later met
in Easton and nominated John A.J. Creswell for the seat.
The
disarray of the state’s Unionists, and the reality that
the Unconditional men were naturally to be favored by
the federal government, did not initially drive the
Conservatives into a state of pessimism. On the
Eastern Shore the Conservatives were a healthy majority,
and so there was hope for frustrating the state’s
abolition movement. The News, as late as
September 5, lashed out at papers endorsing
emancipation, saying, “Every intelligent man knows that
Congress never made any…decision [to support national
emancipation]…and [a] recent letter of the President…is
a flat contradiction of the assertion that the
Administration has.”
But such high spirits on the part of the conservatives
were unrealistic, especially in light of federal efforts
to enlist so-called Colored Regiments, which got
underway in the spring of 1863. The enlistment of
African-Americans, one of the controversial issues that
led to the splitting of the Union Party in Maryland,
would first start with confiscated slaves of
Confederates, then encompass the state’s free black
population, and finally would be opened to those still
held in slavery by loyal owners. This progression
would prove unpopular with Conservatives, and was of
course loathed by slave owners in the affected areas.
Kent County would feel the weight of this federal
desperation for troops, raising dissatisfaction with the
federal government to new levels.
In May
1863 the Bureau of Colored Troops was established by the
War Department, and recruiting began in the summer.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton chose William Birney, son
of a noted abolitionist, to recruit in Baltimore.
Colonel Birney started by enlisting former slaves of
Confederates who were being imprisoned in city and
county jails, along with free blacks, but in September
the recruitment effort took the turn dreaded by
Conservatives. Judge Hugh Lennox Bond of the
Baltimore Circuit Court sent a letter to Secretary
Stanton lobbying for the soliciting of current slaves to
join the colored regiments.
Judge Bond’s proposal attracted an outpouring of
opposition from Maryland Unionists, including Governor
Bradford and Thomas Hicks.
Influenced by Vickers, who said of Bond’s proposal that
“no grosser violation of law, justice & Constitution,
was ever contemplated,” Bradford publicly attacked slave
recruitment in a letter published in the state’s
newspapers. The Governor fumed that the enlistment
scheme “is calculated to inflict irreparable damage upon
the Union cause, and is alarming, agitating, provoking,
and disgusting our Union-loving and Government
supporting citizens beyond any thing [sic] that has
lately occurred in the State.” Hicks also warned
Lincoln of the resentment being aroused among once fully
loyal Marylanders.
Appeals
for relief from slave enlistments would eventually be
successful, but not before large numbers were “abducted”
from the counties of the Eastern Shore. Almost
immediately after Judge Bond’s letter to Stanton was
made public in early September, officers under the
ambitious Col. Birney steamed across the bay. It
is difficult to exaggerate the revulsion that Eastern
Shoremen, Unionist or otherwise, expressed at what
happened upon the ships’ arrival. The News,
upon hearing word that slaves were to be targeted for
recruitment, wailed that “[Maryland] is now to have her
slaves taken, her crops ungathered…her people brought to
suffering for her patriotism and sacrifices in the cause
of their country!” During the second week of
September, Birney landed at Queen Anne’s County, and
according to John B. Ricaud, George B. Westcott, S.W.
Spencer, and George Vickers in a letter of complaint to
the Governor, “more than one hundred slaves” were
confiscated. The men complained “some sudden and
unlooked for act of the military power [offends] our
people and again casts a gloom and despondency over
every loyal heart…. Great outrages are daily
perpetrated….” Despondency had obviously gripped
the letter-writers, as they reasoned that “want and
partial starvation must be the inevitable result” of the
loss of slave labor.
On
September 20 a steamer landed in Kent, “off Eastern Neck
Island, in the lower part of this county,” and “carried
off” an estimated 150 to 200 slaves, “including nearly
every able bodied slave in Eastern Neck.” The
News again reported on October 3 that nearly three
hundred slaves had been abducted from Chestertown on
September 25. “No discrimination was made between
loyal and disloyal owners.” The editors could not
contain their disgust: “Our vernacular is unable
to express the feeling of indignation and of
mortification that these proceedings have aroused among
all classes of the community.”
Vickers used similar language in a letter to Bradford
when he protested “The Piratical Steamer from
Baltimore,” after it landed and took slaves belonging to
“Mr. Ricaud, & I suppose other loyal men….We are
indignant without exception….” Indeed, Vickers
seems to have been particularly offended by the slave
recruitments, as word of his vibrant countermeasures
soon reached Washington. According to Birney,
Vickers, while formerly “a noisy Constitutional Union
man,” had become a “virulent enemy of the Government and
associate with known secessionists.” Birney also
reported that he had learned that Vickers
proposed to two secessionists to raise a mob at
Chestertown and burn the small Government steamer
employed for the transportation of recruits for the U.S.
colored troops; and that he was busy and officious in
advising masters of slaves to offer armed resistance to
the recruiting officers.
Vickers’ friend Judge Richard B.
Carmichael, back on the bench after being released from
federal custody in late 1862, was also active against
the recruitment of African-Americans, prompting Birney
to label him a “vindictive and dangerous enemy to the
Government.”
Lincoln, aware of Vickers’ position in the Bradford
administration and perhaps receptive to the growing
resentment of theretofore loyal Maryland slave owners,
directed Secretary Stanton in early October to issue
orders establishing strict guidelines for any further
slave recruitment in Maryland, stipulating that only
slaves of known disloyal citizens could be confiscated,
and slaves of loyal owners were to enlist only with
their owners’ consent. Loyal slave owners were to
be compensated not more than $300 per enlisted servant.
As for the inflammatory behavior of Vickers, Lincoln
specifically ordered Birney not to arrest the Bradford
aid.
***
Enthusiasm for the 1863 elections, which included the
contest for the First Congressional District as well as
several local offices, was high in Chestertown, given
the gravity of national as well as state and local
developments in the summer and fall. The two wings
of the former Maryland Union Party, fully split by
November, offered sets of opposing candidates, and for
the first time since 1860 there were Democrats running
for office, in a bid to take advantage of the divided
Union Party vote. Yet despite the complexity of
the tickets, statewide officials expected success of the
conservative Unionists in the First District.
What was not expected, however, was the brazen behavior
of John Frazier, Jr., the Provost Marshal of the Eastern
Shore and Unconditional Union candidate for Clerk of the
Circuit Court in Kent County. The disruptions
undertaken at his orders, along with highly questionable
polling practices elsewhere in the district and state,
led to a resounding Unconditional Union victory, the
aftermath of which would be Unionists in conservative
areas such as Kent County leaving for political parties
they had only shortly before considered “secessionist.”
Interference in elections on the Eastern Shore, which
had experienced comparatively few effects of the Western
Shore’s military occupation, was precipitated by leaders
in the Unconditional Unionist party, who contacted
Lincoln about their concerns over possible disloyal
voter participation in the upcoming election.
Unconditional Unionists in Chestertown and elsewhere
called for the administration of test oaths for voters
of “odious or objectionable character.”
Conservatives strongly resented such action.
Vickers warned Bradford of Chestertown Unionism’s
growing frailty, and warned, “With all my love for the
Union and the Constitution…I might shrink from an Oath
required of me by a power unknown to our…Laws.”
Nonetheless, General Robert C. Schenck, military
commander in Baltimore, issued orders requiring test
oaths on the Eastern Shore despite Bradford’s
proclamation to the contrary.
On the
November 3 election day in Chestertown, however, Provost
Marshal John Frazier dispensed with the use of the oath
and had his Lieutenant Colonel, Charles C. Tevis, issue
an order endorsing the Unconditional Union ticket as the
only one “recognized by the Federal authorities as loyal
or worthy of the support of any one who desires the
peace and restoration of the Union.” Frazier,
apparently still not content with his chances of being
elected, then had his conservative Unionist opponent for
Clerk of the Circuit Court, Jesse K. Hines of
Chestertown, arrested. The steamer Nellie Pentz
landed in Chestertown on Monday evening with the Third
Maryland Calvary and a detachment of New York Infantry,
and by Tuesday was sailing to Baltimore with Hines on
board, along with several other prominent Union men
(Cols. Edward Wilkins and S.W. Spencer, Charles Stanley,
Thomas Baker, David Benjamin, George Perkins, John Dodd,
and the editors of the Kent News, James H.
Plummer and William B. Usilton)
whom Frazier had deemed worthy of arrest. The
Nellie Pentz sailed to Schenck’s headquarters in
Baltimore, where the General, recognizing the illegality
of Frazier and Tevis’ actions, immediately released the
prisoners.
Provost
Marshal Frazier’s strategy for being elected backfired
miserably: despite the arrests, Jesse Hines won
the office of Clerk of the Circuit Court by a vote of
914 to 112, and Frazier and Tevis found themselves
imprisoned by General Schenck for their interference in
Kent’s elections. Conservative Unionists Ricaud
and Westcott won their elections for State Senate and
House of Delegates, respectively, and overall the
conservatives did well in the county. Frazier may
have failed to swing the vote to the Unconditional
Unionists in Kent, but irregularities in the rest of the
First Congressional District gave John A.J. Creswell a
dubious victory over conservative incumbent John
Crisfield. In many districts on the Eastern Shore
the Crisfield ticket was not allowed at all by military
authorities: in Crisfield’s town of residence,
Princess Anne, only one citizen was allowed to vote
before the election judges were arrested and polls
closed. Other abuses also marred the election, as
Unconditional Unionists spent at least $2,400 in
Caroline County alone for bribes, and countless ballots
were tampered with throughout the district.
The final count in the First District gave Creswell a
1,260-vote majority.
At
first Eastern Shore conservatives expressed faith that
the results of the Creswell election would be overturned
once Bradford and the federal authorities knew of the
myriad abuses, but they did not count on the crushing
defeat dealt to conservative Unionists in the rest of
the state. The victory of Unconditional Unionists
was most complete in Baltimore, without any notable
military interference, and the final vote count for the
Maryland General Assembly had 52 out of 74 Delegates and
at least 12 out of 21 Senators committed to calling a
Constitutional Convention for the State.
Bradford was unwilling to renew the debate over
emancipation by calling a new election, and felt
browbeaten by the combined loss of his party at the
polls and the exercise of power by military authorities
in direct contradiction to his wishes. While
grumbling that the elections were a mere farce, on
November 25 the Governor certified the results,
including Creswell’s election to Congress.
Illustrating the level of interference, on the Eastern
Shore the total votes cast for state comptroller totaled
only 56.6% of the vote sum in the same election of 1859.
At the
end of 1863, it was apparent to even the News
that “Any argument on the slavery question is now
futile.” The new General Assembly of the state was
guaranteed to propose a constitutional convention, and
all conservative Unionists could hope for, according to
the News, was that “our Legislature will meet the
subject in a fair and proper spirit.” 1863 had
seen drastic changes, from new levels of wartime
casualties like those at Gettysburg in the summer, to
notable political developments at the national and local
levels, such as the gaining strength of the Democratic
Party in conservative areas. In Maryland a united
Union Party failed to survive the slavery debate, and by
year’s end the victorious radicals of the Unconditional
Union Party quickly embarked on a crusade against
involuntary servitude. What would result in 1864
would mirror events elsewhere in the nation––former
conservative Unionists would abandon that party, and a
reinvigorated Democratic bloc would emerge.
Some in
Chestertown and Kent County would be unable to get over
the hard feelings after the tumultuous fall of ’63.
Vickers, who made it a personal mission to see that John
Frazier was permanently removed from any position of
authority (he would ultimately see this goal realized in
early 1864),
still fumed about Negro enlistments in December.
He powerlessly complained to the Governor that “We have
now here, a White Lieutenant, & 11 Negroes, in
Uniform, with Arms, recruiting…. The whole
proceeding is most revolting & humiliating to us.”
Vickers’ bitterness was clear, and speaking for his
group of elite slaveholding Unionists, Bradford’s
faithful weather vane of Maryland political sentiment
gave a thankless grumble, “So much for our Loyalty &
allegiance….” These were the feelings leading into
1864, which was to bring two important referenda and a
Presidential election to the sore opinions of the voters
of Kent. In 1864, the beginning of the Democratic
political order that would rule the area for decades
afterward was to come to the surface.
Chapter 4—1864
Maryland Unionism underwent
great changes between the start of the war and 1864.
At the outset of the secession crisis, supporters of the
Union formed a strong political front against secession
in Maryland, united by the patriotism of the moment and
fear of war on Maryland soil. But in 1861
Unionism, embodied in the organized statewide party, was
conservative and open as to its differences with the
Republican administration regarding slavery. By
January 1864, however, radicals of the very Northern
grain roundly despised by so many Marylanders were at
the center of political power in the state, with no
small thanks to string pulling in the District of
Columbia and strong-arm tactics at the ballot box.
The change of allegiance was
most striking in Baltimore, a city that in 1860 had cast
a majority of its presidential votes for Southern
Democrat John Breckinridge, and in 1861 had brought
Maryland to the doorstep of secession as it rioted upon
the arrival of Northern troops. By 1864 the city
was Maryland’s bastion of emancipationist sentiment and
the Unconditional Union Party. Thousands of
Baltimoreans with southern-sympathies had fled, and the
impact of three years of occasionally heavy-handed
military rule likely contributed much to the political
about-face. In the 1859 election for State
Comptroller, Baltimore residents cast a total of 23,453
votes. In the 1864 plebiscite for the
Constitutional Convention, only 9,189 votes were cast.
The result was that the Old Line State was on the verge
of being the first border state to free its slaves.
This
reversal of fortunes for the conservative class of
Unionists, who at one point seemed unquestionably in
control of the statewide party, was embittering.
In Kent County the Unionists were more hopelessly
estranged than in most counties, and members of the
majority conservative wing would approach the last full
year of the war with party flight to the Democratic side
in mind. It did not take long for the
Unconditional Unionist General Assembly to get at the
catalyst for such flight. It voted in favor of
various resolutions endorsing emancipation in January,
and on February 9 passed a bill calling for a
constitutional convention. On April 6 Maryland
voters would have the chance to accept or reject the
convention, as well as vote for convention delegates.
Kent
County’s Union factions proved unable to unite in the
meantime, resulting in a divided front against Kent
County’s first slate of Democrats since before the war.
The News stuck with the Union ticket in the
spring, lobbying for the election of George B. Westcott,
Caleb W. Spry, and John Gale as the county’s delegates
to the convention. The Unconditional men ran three
candidates of their own, and the Democrats ran three
familiar faces: George S. Hollyday, David C.
Blackiston (a former member of the Secession Legislature
of 1861 and, according to the News, a
“pure, unadulterated Secessionist”), and Judge Ezekiel
F. Chambers (the former president of the Southern Rights
Convention of 1861). The News was quick to
criticize the politics of these men, and the “Secession
Democracy” in general, but to no avail. On April 6
Kent Democrats scored a notable victory at the polls,
with Hollyday, Blackiston, and Chambers being elected
soundly. The Democratic ticket beat even the
combined vote of the Unconditional and conservative
Unionists.
George
Vickers was mollified at the election result, as the
military abstained “from all improper interference.”
Importantly, he leveled the blame for the Unionist
defeat squarely on Lincoln, as he explained to Governor
Bradford: “I suppose there were 350 voters who
absented themselves from the Polls, [three-quarters] of
whom were Union men, who doubtless were dissatisfied
with the President’s negro policy…”
Kent’s dissatisfaction with the approaching reality of
emancipation, as well as the specter of a much more
politically powerful city of Baltimore (to be achieved
through a reapportionment of representatives in the new
constitution) was clear in the county’s vote on whether
or not to have the convention: 991 voted against
having a convention, while 453 voted for it.
Nonetheless, the statewide vote was decidedly in favor
of holding the constitutional convention, and to this
body Kent County was to send three archconservatives to
do their best to preserve the old order.
The
Democratic Kent County delegation, led by Judge
Chambers, put up a strong defense of slavery at the
convention that assembled in Annapolis on April 27.
Chambers was on the Committee of the Declaration of
Rights, the section of the new constitution that would
ban slavery, and upon the new Declaration’s completion
authored the Committee’s minority protest against it.
The new Declaration of Rights was introduced to the
convention on May 12, and after vigorous but futile
denunciation by the Democratic delegates, was passed on
June 24.
Kent’s delegates voted unanimously against it. The
Kent delegation also voted to form a state registry of
former slaves, and to ban all future immigration of
African-Americans into Maryland. In an action that
would remove any teeth from Article XXIII, the
delegation also voted against an amendment that allowed
the state to levy fines and imprisonment for owners who
continued to enslave after emancipation went into
effect. Chambers, Hollyday, and Blackiston were on
the losing side of all of these votes.
The
convention finally approved the new constitution on
September 6.
The final step in the process was for the document to be
submitted for approval by the state’s voters, and the
convention scheduled the plebiscite for October 12-13.
The original Convention Bill that passed the legislature
in February had given the convention the right to
establish voter qualifications, and for the public vote
on the new constitution strict rules were adopted.
Most controversial was the administration of loyalty
oaths, an issue that caused open disagreement between
Bradford and Vickers. Vickers considered the oaths
“inquisitorial, illegal & oppressive…in direct conflict
with the Constitution of the [U.S.].”
While Vickers was campaigning against the use of loyalty
oaths by election judges, a campaign he would lose,
conservatives around the state rallied against the final
passage of the new constitution by the voters of
Maryland. The press in Chestertown published
strong denunciations of the document, with the
Transcript
going as far as saying that radicals wanted the
Negro and White races to intermarry, forming an
indefinable race. Such amalgamation would result
in the extinction of humanity, the Transcript
enlightened readers, as hybrid animals are often
infertile.
Strong
opposition from the conservative areas of the state
resulted in a closely contested vote. At first
indication it seemed that the document had been
defeated, with newspapers as late as October 20
celebrating the demise of the “Negro-Robbing
Constitution,” and on October 22 the Baltimore Weekly
Sun was still reporting a slight advantage for the
opponents of adoption. However once the soldier
vote was fully tallied, the constitution was passed by a
razor-thin majority of 263, out of 59,973 votes cast,
with voters being disqualified by loyalty oaths
undoubtedly making the difference. The vote on the
constitution followed along clear sectional lines within
the state; only one county of Southern Maryland or the
Eastern Shore, Caroline, approved the constitution, and
that was by a tiny 48-vote margin. Kent County,
fitting with the pattern, delivered a decidedly
anti-constitution vote, defeating the document 1,246 to
289. Governor Bradford announced the official
results on October 29, and the new state constitution
went into effect November 1, 1864.
Kent’s
vote on the new constitution came only weeks before the
important general elections of November 1864, and in
these contests the county’s vote would take on the same
tone as the defeat of the new constitution.
Regarding the National Union Convention held in
Baltimore on June 7, the News
restrained any editorial opinions, a pattern it held
throughout the fall. Instead, lengthy letters
written by anonymous readers, perhaps even the News
editors themselves, provided plainly anti-Lincoln
political commentary. One such essay instructed
the average Union voter of Kent County to “recall…the
humiliations, indignities, injustice” of the Lincoln
years, and “decide like an American freeman, for whom he
will vote.” In the summer the paper held out hope
that a “sound, Constitutional Union candidate” would
emerge for the presidential election, but if this did
not happen, the tone of the paper clearly foretold its
future alliance with the Democrats.
The Democratic Party held
statewide conventions in Baltimore on June 15 and
October 28, nominating Judge Ezekiel F. Chambers of
Chestertown as their candidate for Governor, and sending
three delegates to the national Democratic Convention,
one of whom was Judge Richard B. Carmichael. Hiram
McCullough was to run against the unpopular John A.J.
Creswell in the First District. At the national
convention in Chicago, Democrats chose General George B.
McClellan as their presidential candidate, and upon this
politically astute nomination the conservative Union
Party of Maryland began to unravel. George Vickers
threw his hat into the McClellan ring, as did other
notable conservatives in the state. The News
lauded McClellan’s credentials, saying he was “properly
the nominee of the War Democrats and the Conservative
Unionists” in view of his unpopularity among the
Maryland “Peace Democrats” (who had branded him a
“tyrant” because of his arrest of the 1861
Secession Legislature). The paper was enthusiastic
about his chances, noting the “increasing
dissatisfaction with the management of affairs and
policy pursued by the present Administration…”
Signs pointed toward a rapid return to a two party
political arena, as the Union Party became more
exclusively the home of Republicans and conservatives
flocked to the Democratic camp.
The 76 year-old slaveholder
(until the new state constitution went into effect)
Judge Chambers served as a fitting symbol of the old
order Maryland Democrats hoped to preserve. Their
conservatism predictably carried the 1864 elections in
Kent County, as the charge that the Democratic Party
harbored only secession had clearly lost its potency.
McClellan and Chambers captured majorities of 853 and
669, respectively, and despite Kent News’
complaints about alleged military intervention in Talbot
and Caroline Counties, McCullough beat Creswell for a
seat in Congress by a district-wide vote of 9,677 to
6,307. The conservative sentiments of the Kent
County voting population, aroused in 1863 and 1864 by
gradually more liberal federal Negro policies (and their
increasingly aggressive enforcement), fully emerged in
the votes of 1864 as they did in conservative areas
nationwide, clearly inaugurating the return of two-party
politics.
Besides election returns, there are other indicators of
Chestertown and Kent’s changing Unionism. The
onset of draft fatigue and general war weariness late in
the conflict, combined with increasing political
dissatisfaction, fostered a notable decline in the
martial spirit of the county’s population. Early
in the war Kent consistently exceeded its quotas for
volunteers, but by 1864 it was a challenge getting
draftees to show up for duty. Also, Kent County’s
response to the new status of the Negro, as well as
efforts in the county to head off any possibility of
“negro equality,” which took over “emancipation” as the
new bogeyman of conservatives, helpfully exposes the
reactionary mindset of a large portion of the population
in the border state.
Confederate invasion of Maryland
in 1863, as Lee moved North in what would culminate in
the Battle of Gettysburg, certainly stimulated military
volunteerism. But the display of martial spirit in
the summer of ’63 was an increasingly uncommon
phenomenon in the later war years. The new federal
draft system, and the call for around four hundred
thousand men, encountered opposition on the Eastern
Shore, as Chestertown’s Provost Marshal Frazier
complained of “daily” threats against enrolling officers
in the First District. In August of 1863 George
Vickers began to protest loudly against the
apportionment system of excess troops upon reading in
the Baltimore Sun
that excess troop numbers were to be credited to the
quota of the state at large, as opposed to each county’s
respective quota. “In Kent County,” Vickers wrote
Bradford, “much pains were taken by Union men & much
money expended to procure Volunteers to relieve us from
the Draft,” relief that was being robbed by erasing the
county’s quota excess.
Relief from the draft
became a primary concern in 1864, as in the summer of
that year Lincoln issued a call for five-hundred
thousand additional troops, and any deficiency not
enlisted by September 5 were to be drafted. The
News knew full well that the quota for Kent would
“fall heavily on the people,” and the paper lobbied for
immediate action to raise money for bounties that would
encourage volunteers.
Kent failed to meet its quota, making necessary a draft
held on September 19 despite Vickers’ pleading
that it be delayed; by November, for the first time
during the war the First District’s Provost Marshal
circulated a flyer calling for information leading to
the arrests of “many persons,” thirty-five in Kent’s
first district alone, who had been drafted but failed to
report for duty. By early 1865 Kent County was
thoroughly taxed by the draft, and fresh federal calls
for more troops exasperated the News, which
pondered whether the county’s spring troop quota of 199
was the product of some confused bureaucrat. The
same newspaper that earlier in the war had
enthusiastically endorsed conscription now applauded
“Movements to escape the draft.”
The insatiable need for more federal troops certainly
worried the citizens of Kent, but political developments
in 1864 caused just as much anxiety. The era of
the Old South was on its last legs by the year’s
beginning, with national emancipation only a matter of
time, and in Maryland slavery ended earlier than in any
of the other border states. Conservatives
nationwide found the rapid escalation of the status of
African-Americans unsettling, and in Kent County the
paternalism inherited from centuries of slaveholding
proved too ingrained to be shaken. Conservative
sentiment railed against any chance of dreaded “negro
equality,” and the reaction of Chestertown’s leading
conservative Unionist voice, the
News, to the new freeman status of the county’s
slaves provides a telling example of the white
population’s desire to keep the races rigidly
stratified.
Late 1863 saw the News
finally admit to slavery’s rapidly approaching demise,
and early 1864 inaugurated the paper’s campaign against
designs to establish any political equality for the
minority race. Early in the year the News
ran a venomous column against the US Senate, which
considered a bill guaranteeing the equal rights of the
District of Columbia’s black population to use
Washington’s railcars. When the state
constitutional convention was under consideration the
paper warned that “extreme ultra men” were plotting to
accomplish “negro equality and negro voting” in
Maryland. Referring to the funeral of
Representative Lovejoy of Illinois, where there had been
“nine white and one negro bearers,” as an
indication of the shocking mingling of races that the
radicals had in mind, the News warned Kent
Countians “to be on their guard, or they will have negro
equality and negro voting before they are aware of it!!”
These scare tactics may have
worked in Kent, where the referendum for the convention
was defeated, but upon the validation of the new
constitution by Governor Bradford and the document’s
effective date of November 1, Maryland slaves were
released from bondage. After November 1, admirers
of the old guard clung to the system of
“apprenticeship,” wherein it was the duty
of the Orphans’ Court of the
several counties and the city of Baltimore to bind out
until they arrive at the age of twenty-one for males,
and eighteen years for females, all negroes
emancipated…who are minors and incapable of supporting
themselves, and whose parents are unable to maintain
them….
Via this plan to deal with
indigent black youths, many slaveholders maintained a
form of involuntary servitude in spite of the new
constitution, and members of the judiciary sympathetic
toward the slaveholding interest hastened the process.
Supporters of the system, such as the News,
defended apprenticeship of black minors in humanitarian
terms, arguing that such youths should be “taught habits
of industry and economy that would be of great benefit
to them when they should come to provide for
themselves.”
The apprenticeship system had
many detractors, who saw nothing humane in taking the
children away from newly freed slaves. The News
seems to have had a tough time grasping this reality, as
it reported quizzically, “There is evidently a
disposition among negro parents to hold on to their
children….” In December opponents of
apprenticeship distributed a circular, warning that such
unfavorable treatment of the new free black population
would result in their fleeing northward, further robbing
the area of much-needed labor. “All that is
requisite in this matter for the benefit of all
parties,” the circular read, “…is to let this people
alone in the possession of that freedom which the
law…provides for them and for their children, who are
equally free.” The News
attacked the circular’s logic, reasoning that the black
population was “the last of all people to remove from
one place to another….” The News
contradicted any claim of prejudiced action against the
newly freed blacks with the argument that “As long as
[the freedmen] manifest habits of industry and a
willingness to make themselves useful, they will be
treated with proper consideration….” Despite
promises of proper consideration, the News also
lobbied for regulation of the wages of free blacks in a
bid to protect the wages of white laborers. With
wage ceilings and other prohibitory statutes in place,
the newly freed slaves had little chance to exploit any
“habits of industry or economy” they might have had.
***
The last full year of the Civil War in Maryland saw
military and political developments come to a head.
The once strongly Unionist enclave of Kent County
suffered war weariness as the war dragged on and the
casualties mounted, an expiration of martial spirit
hastened by political precedents unsatisfactory to the
area’s conservatives. Emancipation came
unexpectedly early, and the tumultuous ride toward a new
state constitution saw a solidifying Democratic voting
bloc in the state, with conservative Unionists joining
in droves the political party that would dominate the
south for a century longer. The war was not over
as the year came to a close, but Kent’s political makeup
was already resembling a post-war spectrum.
Conclusion––1865
and After
Lee’s surrender in the spring
of 1865 brought relief, but nothing resembling a
patriotic celebration––in Kent’s case such
embellishments only inaugurated the war. The
changes spawned by the past four years of armed conflict
prohibited a return to normality, as whites sought to
adjust to the new status of their former servants, and
the black population strove to better their lot.
For many, such as the numerous whites whose income did
not rely directly upon slave labor or the free blacks
who had already been working for wages before the war,
adjustment to the post-war universe was not too
traumatic, at least economically. But as is
apparent from the county’s press, acceptance of the new
political order proved considerably more difficult.
“The Negro Question” would almost single-handedly shape
the new party alignment of the post-war years, and Kent
would prove just as hostile to new civil rights measures
as any county in Maryland.
Much as
it had lamented the public debate over slavery, the
News regretted that Washington politicians were
contemplating granting blacks suffrage. “The times
are sadly out of joint,” remarked the editors, as former
Conservative Unionists and Democrats joined forces in
the latter half of 1865 to “stay the progress of
radicalism” and the designs of the “negro jacobins.”
Indeed, the hard feelings former Unionists may have felt
regarding secession seemed to melt away upon the
question of Negro suffrage. “Conservative men of
all parties” met in a county convention on October 25
and agreed upon a Conservative ticket, the candidate for
State Senator being George Vickers. The meeting
resolved that the people of Kent were “uncompromisingly
opposed to negro suffrage,” and called for the repeal of
the contentious Registry Law, a statute passed by the
Maryland General Assembly that required citizens to pass
a loyalty test in order to register to vote. The
News, which had more than once before blamed the war
solely on disloyal Marylanders, now embraced those
pushing to allow returning Confederates to participate
in elections. In fact, the paper fully abandoned
the Conservative Unionist label––that party was still
active in the 1865 election, but the News
dismissed their ticket as a “movement…calculated to
build up a strong Radical party in this county,” even
though the Unionist platform was nearly identical to
that of the Conservatives with whom the News now
associated.
The elections of 1865 were
close in Kent, but nonetheless resulted in the victory
of the entire Conservative ticket––no Unionists carried
the county. This pattern only strengthened in
coming years. In 1866 the News
joined the Transcript in endorsing the incumbent
First District Congressman Hiram McCullough, a Democrat,
and McCullough won Kent’s vote by the formidable margin
of 1092 to 251. And by 1868 the unity of old
Conservative Unionists and Democrats was even more
apparent, as the News endorsed Democratic
Presidential candidate Horatio Seymour. The
catalyst for supporting the Democrats was still race.
The
News warned its readers that “Universal and
impartial negro suffrage, and the elevation of the negro
to a position of…equality with the white men, is the
cardinal dogma of the…Radical party….” The race
card proved to be the most persuasive argument for the
county’s Democrats.
The
“Democracy’s” resurgence was not by any means limited to
Kent County. By the end of the 1860’s the state
government of Maryland was firmly under the party’s
control, and the only electoral hope the Republicans had
was a voting black population. In 1865 several
prominent politicians deserted the state’s Unconditional
Unionist Party, among them Montgomery Blair and Senator
Reverdy Johnson. The highly contentious Registry
Law was a sticking point for many of the deserters, and
in 1866 Unionist Governor Thomas Swann replaced the
registry judges that had been appointed by Governor
Augustus Bradford with more conservative men. The
result was an explosion in the numbers of registered
voters, mostly to the benefit of Democrats.
That same year Democrats and Conservatives took hold of
the General Assembly, and little time passed before a
new constitutional convention was approved, as
conservatives sought to undo the wrongs they felt had
been perpetrated by the 1864 Constitution. The
1867 convention, presided over by the formerly
imprisoned “secessionist” Richard Bennett Carmichael,
reassured “rural supremacy” by again greatly limiting
Baltimore’s representation in the General Assembly.
Also eliminated were loyalty test oaths, fully
re-enfranchising former Confederates. Maryland
voters overwhelmingly approved the document, 47,152 to
23,036.
The
Fifteenth Amendment, soundly defeated in the Maryland
Legislature but still approved by the required number of
states in 1870, formally gave black men the right to
vote, and in that year Chestertown saw its first black
voters since the early years of the century.
The result was palpable; in the election of town
commissioners on May 23 1870, the black vote was able to
fill all seven seats with Republicans. The
Transcript vowed to fully mobilize the white
Democrats for future elections, hoping that the “pride
of race in the Caucasian element which even Mongrel
influence cannot obliterate” would compel whites to
“resume control of their own government.”
The Eastern Shore in general
proved quite hostile to the idea of black voting. Local
elections on the Western Shore seemed to carry on
smoothly with the newly enfranchised voters, but on the
Eastern Shore several towns had no blacks cast ballots.
Salisbury town officials refused to allow blacks to vote
in their April 4 election, and St. Michael’s April 5
election was “untrammelled [sic] by the fifteenth
amendment––no negroes offered to vote.” In
Easton––then the Shore’s largest town with 2,110 people
(43.2% of whom were black)––elections took place on May
2, after which the
Easton Star was happy to report that “Africa did
not make his appearance on the field of action.”
If it is indeed true that the blacks did not attempt to
cast ballots, threats and intimidation from a portion of
the white population likely played a role.
Before its town election in May,
Chestertown aimed to make disenfranchisement official
policy by attempting to incorporate as a town with only
white-male suffrage (Governor Oden Bowie vetoed the
incorporation bill once it passed the General Assembly).
Free blacks not only had to deal with wage ceilings and
disenfranchisement, but also racial terror in Kent.
By 1867 a dozen schools for free blacks, usually
operated in Methodist Episcopal churches, had been
arsoned in the state, with fully one half of these
conflagrations taking place in Kent County alone.
The only other county with more than one such burning
was Queen Anne’s, just across the Chester River.
***
Abolition is the cause of secession and civil war; its
origin is there. If there had been no Abolition
there never could have been Secession and its
consequences…. [T]hat same spirit of encroachment,
aggression and destruction…inherent properties in the
doctrine of Abolition, now turns upon the white race and
proposes to wage a war upon their habits, tastes,
prejudices, and principles….
This June 1865 letter from “An
Original Unionist” voiced the concerns of the
conservatives in Kent, in Maryland, and indeed
throughout the Union. For men of such beliefs in
Maryland, the war proved to be humiliating as well as
tragic. Armies marched across their soil and
quickly occupied their cities. The State
Legislature had been arrested and cowed, and all
elections seemed tainted by federal interference.
“In the long, bitter aftermath of war,” writes Maryland
historian Robert Cottom, “Massachusetts would reconcile
with South Carolina before Marylanders would forgive one
another.” Maryland rebounded with a marked
Confederate nostalgia after the war. The first
Union memorial was not erected in Baltimore until 1909
(later to be removed for expressway construction), and
the General Assembly officially accepted the potently
anti-Lincoln tune “Maryland, My Maryland” as the
official State Song in 1939.
Hard
feelings haunted many white Marylanders for decades,
even shaping their historical memory. Histories of
the Civil War Era written by Marylanders in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tend to focus
much attention on illegal federal arrests and other
actions, even when written by Unionist opponents of
slavery, such as former Baltimore Mayor George William
Brown, whose book Baltimore and the Nineteenth of
April provides the best first-hand account of the
Pratt Street Riot. Others are often merely
exhibitions of general distaste for the North. The
oft-cited works of J. Thomas Scharf
and Matthew Page Andrews make parallel arguments
defending Dred Scott, pinning the expansion of
slavery on New England, exposing the general lawlessness
of Northern states (i.e., their refusal in many
instances to execute the Fugitive Slave Law), and
bemoaning the “Russia-like proportions” of wartime
“military tyranny.” Histories of this stripe are
still being written. A stunning display of
parochialism, Harry Wright Newman’s condescending
Maryland and the Confederacy was penned in 1976, and
Bart Rhett Talbert’s slightly more academic The
South’s First Casualty, published in 1995, wallows
in a romantic vision of the prewar Southern Gentleman
and distaste for the North.
The consequences of the war, so unexpected and
undesirable to many Marylanders of the time, can inspire
as much second-guessing and regret at they did upon the
passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
***
Unlike
in years past, in 1865 there was no public Fourth of
July celebration in Chestertown.
Residing in an un-seceded state, Kent County was
technically on the winning side of the Civil War, but
politically and culturally most felt a loss. As
evidenced by the post-war election results, the mantra
of the local press, and the virulent anti-black
activities of many in the county (including the town of
Chestertown), Kent County had swung from one of rural
Maryland’s bastions of Unionism in 1861 and 1862, when
the county far exceeded its Southern Maryland and
Eastern Shore peers in Union military volunteerism, to
an encampment of embittered conservatives nostalgic for
the Old South and hostile toward the new political
order. This apparent shift of opinion was actually
the result of evolving federal wartime policy:
began as a crusade against secession, the war ended in
emancipation and looming political equality for blacks.
A helpless place between the “mill stones” of North and
South, Kent hoped to avoid bloodshed and retain its way
of life. But the revolutionary outcome of the
conflict ushered in a new political and racial order,
one that many in the county would strive mightily to
suppress for decades to come. The Civil War had
proven to be the time for great change, but few of the
Kent Counties in the Union proved to be ready.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
“Address and Resolutions Adopted at the Meeting of the
Southern Rights Convention of Maryland, Held in the
Universalist Church, in the City of Baltimore, February
18th and 19th, 1861:
Together with the Address Delivered by the President,
Hon. Ezekiel F. Chambers, on Taking His Seat.”
Baltimore: J.B. Rose, 1861.
Andrews, Matthew Page. History of Maryland:
Province and State. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1929.
Bradford, Augutus W. Papers. Maryland
Historical Society, Baltimore.
Brown, George William. Baltimore and the
Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1887; 2001.
The Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the
State of Maryland, Assembled at the City of Annapolis,
Wednesday, April 27, 1864.
Vol I. Annapolis: Richard P. Bayly, 1864.
Hicks, Thomas H. Papers. Maryland Historical
Society, Baltimore.
Kent County Commissioner of Slave Statistics.
Slave Statistics 1867-1868. Maryland State
Archives, Annapolis, MD.
Kent News,
1856-1870.
Newman, Harry Wright. Maryland and the
Confederacy. Annapolis: Harry Newman, 1976.
Pearce, James Alfred. Uncatalogued Papers.
Washington College Archives, Chestertown, MD.
Pearce, James Alfred. Papers. Maryland
Historical Society, Baltimore.
“Petition of Richard B. Carmichael and Others, Against
the Adjournment of the Legislature Sine Die,” Maryland
House of Delegates, 18 June 1861.
Proceedings of the State Convention of Maryland to Frame
a New Constitution: Commenced at Annapolis, April 27,
1864.
Annapolis: Richard P. Bayly, 1864.
Scharf, J. Thomas. History of Maryland From the
Earliest Period to the Present Day. 1879;
Hatboro, PA: Tradition, 1967.
“Secret Correspondence Illustrating the Condition of
Affairs in Maryland.” Baltimore: 1863.
Talbert, Bart Rhett. Maryland: The South’s
First Casualty. Berryville, VA: Rockbridge,
1995.U.S. Census Bureau. Agriculture of the
United States in 1860. Compiled from the
Original Returns of the Eighth Census under the
Direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph
C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the Census.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population of the
United States in 1860. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1864.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Manufactures of the
United States in 1860. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1865.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistics of the
United States (Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in
1860.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866.
Usilton, William B. III. History of Kent County
Maryland: 1628-1980. Chestertown: publisher
and date unknown.
The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
Series I-III. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1881; Harrisburg, PA: National
Historical Society, 1971.
Secondary Sources
Andrews, Matthew Page. History of Maryland:
Province and State. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1929.
Andrews, Matthew Page. “Passage of the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment through Baltimore, April 19,
1861.”
Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 14, 1919.
Brown, C. Christopher. “Democracy’s Incursion into
the Eastern Shore: The 1870 Election in Chestertown.”
Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 89, no. 3, Fall
1994.
Brugger, Robert J. Maryland: A Middle
Temperament, 1634-1980. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Clark, Charles Branch. Politics in Maryland
During the Civil War. Chestertown, MD: 1952.
Cottom, Robert I., Jr., and Mary Ellen Hayward.
Maryland in the Civil War: A House Divided.
Baltimore: MD Historical Society, 1994.
Culver, Francis B. “The War Romance of John Thomas
Scharf.”
Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 21, 1926.
Curry, Richard O., ed. Radicalism, Racism, and
Party Realignment: The Border States During
Reconstruction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1969.
Denton, Lawrence M. A Southern Star for
Maryland: Maryland and the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861.
Baltimore: Publishing Concepts, 1995.
Dumschott, Fred W. Washington College.
Chestertown: Washington College, 1980.
Emory, Frederic. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland:
Its Early History and Development. Baltimore:
MD Historical Society, 1950; Queenstown, MD: Queen Anne
Press, 1981.
Hemstock, Kevin. “Newspapers Grew Up in the Civil
War.”
Discover Kent County, MD. Chestertown, MD:
Kent County News, Spring/Summer 2003.
Kirby, Walter J. Roll Call: The Civil War in
Kent County, Maryland. Silver Spring, MD:
Family Line, 1985.
Landskroener, Marcia C., ed. Washington: The
College at Chester. Chestertown: Lit House Press,
2000.
Manakee, Harold R. Maryland in the Civil
War. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,
1961.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom:
The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Passano, L. Magruder. History of Maryland.
Baltimore: J.C. Dulany, 1901; 1904.
Radcliffe, George L. P. “Governor Thomas H. Hicks
of Maryland and the Civil War.” Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science,
vol. XIX, nos. 11-13. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1902.
Steiner, Bernard C. “James Alfred Pearce.”
Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 19, 1924.
Wagandt, Charles Lewis. The Mighty Revolution:
Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964; MD
Historical Society, 2004.
Wagandt, Charles Lewis. “Election by Sword and
Ballot: The Emancipationist Victory of 1863.”
Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 59, No. 2,
Summer 1964.
Walsh, Richard and William Lloyd Fox, eds.
Maryland: A History. Annapolis, MD: Hall of
Records Commission, Department of General Services,
1983.
Wennersten, John R. “John W. Crisfield and Civil
War Politics on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, 1860-64.”
Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 99, No. 2,
Spring 2004.
James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom:
The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988) 221.
Harold R. Manakee, Maryland in the Civil War
(Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society 1961)
15-20.
Joseph Burchinal, Essay on the 1860 Election, 24
February 1860, Washington College Archives.
I have found no evidence that Burchinal fought
in the war.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the
United States in 1860, Compiled from the
Original Returns of the Eighth Census under the
Direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by
Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the
Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1864) 215; Charles Branch Clark,
Politics in Maryland During the Civil War
(Chestertown, MD: 1952) 4-5.
There were no returns for Worcester County in
the 1860 Census for this category.
In Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, personal out
valued real estate. In the border slave
states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and
Missouri), real estate was the most valuable, as
it was in every northern state.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manufactures of
the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1865) 228; Bureau of
the Census, Statistics of the United States
(Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in 1860
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1866) 304. Prince George’s figures are
$10,710547 real and $9,513,621 personal,
Dorchester’s are $4,662,977 and $4,652,716.
Population of the United States in 1860,
214-215; Manufactures of the United States in
1860, 228; U.S. Census Bureau,
Agriculture of the United States in 1860
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1864) 72; Statistics of the United States,
304.
There are excellent primers on Maryland Civil
War history available, the most notable being
Harold R. Manakee’s Maryland in the Civil War
(Baltimore: MD Historical Society, 1961), and
Robert I. Cottom, Jr., and Mary Ellen Hayward’s
short book Maryland in the Civil War: A House
Divided (Baltimore: MD Historical Society,
1994). Both paint a balanced portrait of
the whole wartime theatre in Maryland, covering
the political intrigue of the secession crisis
as well as the military campaigns, the most
famous of which being the Battle of Antietam.
However, for the researcher looking for
information on the later years of the war and
detailed political history, these works fall
short. The more specialized and thorough
monographs are Charles Lewis Wagandt’s The
Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in
Maryland, 1862-1864 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1964; MD Historical
Society, 2004), which covers the political
evolution of Maryland’s emancipation movement;
George L. P. Radcliffe’s “Governor Thomas H.
Hicks of Maryland and the Civil War,” Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
Political Science, vol. XIX, nos. 11-13
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1902), an
exhibition of the controversial Governor’s
activities during the secession crisis of the
spring of 1861; Lawrence M. Denton’s A
Southern Star for Maryland: Maryland and the
Secession Crisis, 1860-1861
(Baltimore: Publishing Concepts, 1995), which
sets out to define Maryland’s political
sympathies during the early stages of the war;
and Charles Branch Clark’s Politics in
Maryland During the Civil War (Chestertown,
MD: 1952), easily the best book on the subject,
covering Maryland’s General Assembly,
Congressional delegation, Union Party
activities, and emancipation efforts during the
war.
The most variety of secondary sources, however,
is found as sections embedded in larger Maryland
histories, and many of these provide
well-researched accounts of the period.
Richard R. Duncan’s “The Era of the Civil War”
in Richard Walsh and William Lloyd Fox, eds.,
Maryland: A History (Annapolis, MD: Hall of
Records Commission, Department of General
Services, 1983) is a good start, devoting room
to both political and military components of the
war, as does Robert J. Brugger’s consideration
of the war in Maryland: A Middle Temperament,
1634-1980 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1988). One of the best
analyses of post-war and reconstruction history
in Maryland is Wagandt’s essay “Redemption or
Reaction?––Maryland in the Post-Civil War
Years,” in Richard O. Curry, ed., Radicalism,
Racism, and Party Realignment: The Border States
During Reconstruction (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1969), a tome covering
all of the border states during reconstruction.
J. Thomas Scharf, History of Maryland From
the Earliest Period to the Present Day
(1879; Hatboro, PA: Tradition, 1967); L.
Magruder Passano, History of Maryland
(Baltimore: J.C. Dulany, 1901; 1904); Matthew
Page Andrews, History of Maryland: Province
and State (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1929); Harry Wright Newman, Maryland and the
Confederacy (Annapolis: Harry Newman, 1976);
Bart Rhett Talbert, Maryland: The South’s
First Casualty (Berryville, VA: Rockbridge,
1995).
The works specifically on Kent County are
Roll Call: The Civil War in Kent County,
Maryland by Walter J. Kirby (Silver Spring,
MD: Family Line, 1985), basically a list of Kent
servicemen with only a few pages on politics
during the war, and C. Christopher Brown’s
“Democracy’s Incursion into the Eastern Shore:
The 1870 Election in Chestertown,” Maryland
Historical Magazine, Vol. 89, no. 3, Fall
1994, an article that covers, as the title
suggests, the post-war years. William B. Usilton
III’s History of Kent County Maryland:
1628-1980 (Chestertown: publisher and date
unknown) does not even attempt to cover the
Civil War years, treating them as if they never
existed. Rounding out local history are
books on Queen Anne’s County and Washington
College, which have served as sources for
certain parts of this essay. Frederic
Emory, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland: Its
Early History and Development (Baltimore: MD
Historical Society, 1950; Queenstown, MD: Queen
Anne Press, 1981); Fred W. Dumschott,
Washington College
(Chestertown: Washington College, 1980); Marcia
C. Landskroener, ed., Washington: The College
at Chester (Chestertown: Lit House Press,
2000).
Breckinridge polled 42,497 votes to Bell’s
41,777 statewide.; McPherson, Battle Cry of
Freedom, 232; Manakee, Maryland in the
Civil War, 21; Cecil Democrat
(Elkton, MD) 17 November 1860; Lawrence M.
Denton, A Southern Star for Maryland:
Maryland and the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861
(Baltimore: Publishing Concepts, 1995) 30.
Denton lists the Kent vote as 852 for Bell and
694 for Breckinridge.
Denton, A Southern Star for Maryland, 30.
The News backed the Winfield Scott Whig
ticket in 1852, but by 1856 had made the
transition to the American, or Know-Nothing,
camp, backing Millard Fillmore’s run for the
presidency. See Kent News
(Chestertown, MD) 30 October 1852, 25 October
1856.
Kent News, 24 November 1860.
The Transcript would begin publication in
1862.
Kent News, 24 November 1860.
Naturally, newspapers have proven a substantial
and important resource for this project’s
research. Microfilm Kent News is
available from 24 November 1860 through the
duration of the war. Microfilm of the
wartime issues of the News’ main
competitor, the
Chestertown Transcript, are not
available, and no issues of the Kent
Conservator are extant.
As per the state constitution of 1851, the
Maryland General Assembly met every other year.
1861 was an off year, and thus its convening at
this time would have to be in response to the
Governor’s call.
George L. P. Radcliffe, “Governor Thomas H.
Hicks of Maryland and the Civil War,” Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
Political Science, vol. XIX, nos. 11-13
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1902) 14, 20.
The focus of this paper will remain on political
events, but the military mobilization of the
area is worthy of note. The anticipation
of armed conflict spawned countless organized
bands of volunteers throughout the country, and
one of the earliest in Kent was the Reed Rifles.
The “Reeds” paraded through town with their
“twenty-six muskets, of the Minnie patent” in
the week of November 26-30 (Kent News, 1
December 1860). Other volunteer groups,
with varying political sympathies, were formed
throughout the county and surrounding area.
In the years 1862-63, Washington College had a
“Military Department,” and offered training and
drill practices “to a limited extent to those
who desire it.” See Fred W. Dumschott,
Washington College (Chestertown: Washington
College, 1980).
Kent News, 5 January 1861.
“Vickers, George, 1801-1879,” Biographical
Directory of the United States Congress,
bioguide.congress.gov; Dumschott, Washington
College, 85-87; Kent County Commissioner of
Slave Statistics, Slave Statistics 1867-1868,
Accession No. CR 77,850, Maryland State
Archives, Annapolis, MD.
Kent News, 12 January 1861.
The moniker of “Peace” was because of this
bloc’s disdain for the “coercion” of the seceded
states, in favor of a policy of reconciliation.
Many called for peace and recognition of the
Confederate States of America.
That is, until his arrest for disloyal conduct
by federal authorities in 1863.
Kent News, 19 January 1861; Kent
Conservator, 9 February 1861, in Walter J.
Kirby, Roll Call: The Civil War in Kent
County, Maryland (Silver Spring, MD:
Family Line, 1985) 128.
“Address and Resolutions Adopted at the Meeting
of the Southern Rights Convention of Maryland,
Held in the Universalist Church, in the City of
Baltimore, February 18th and 19th,
1861: Together with the Address Delivered
by the President, Hon. Ezekiel F. Chambers, on
Taking His Seat” (Baltimore: J.B. Rose,
1861) 10, 6.
On the twelfth Confederate guns opened fire on
the small Federal garrison holding Fort Sumter
in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina,
prompting Lincoln to issue his call for 75,000
troops to protect the nation’s capital.
Northern soldiers coming south by rail to
protect the District of Columbia had to pass
through Baltimore, and on April 19 the first
large unit to attempt this passage was the Sixth
Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. The
specifics are conflicting, but the well-known
result of the nervous and armed New Englanders
marching through a Southern city infamous for
its riots was a wild melee on Pratt Street, and
when the smoke cleared several militiamen were
dead, along with about a dozen civilians.
Manakee,
Maryland in the Civil War, 30-37; Robert I.
Cottom, Jr. and Mary Ellen Hayward, Maryland
in the Civil War: A House Divided
(Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,
1994) 29-31. Sources on the events of
April 19 are numerous, with eyewitness accounts
available from the city’s Mayor, George William
Brown, and civilians. George William
Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April,
1861: A Study of the War (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1887; 2001); “Some
Recollections of April 19, 1861,” Maryland
Historical Magazine, Vol. 27 (1932) 274-279;
Matthew Page Andrews, “Passage of the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment through Baltimore, April
19, 1861,” Maryland Historical Magazine,
Vol. 14 (1919), 60-76. Baltimore was
infamous for its political riots of the 1850s,
which were especially violent during the heyday
of the Know-Nothings. The general election
for federal offices in November 1856 saw many
dead and perhaps hundreds wounded in street
fighting between political gangs.
Partisans in some of the city’s wards employed
cannon. Among the best description of
these prewar events are found in Matthew Page
Andrews,
History of Maryland: Province and State
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1929) 473-484,
513-516.
The “Pratt Street Riot” made the Lincoln
administration acutely aware of the volatility
of Baltimore, and the danger of passing large
numbers of Northern troops over an unoccupied
Maryland. Therefore Brigadier General
Benjamin F. Butler, with the blessing of
Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus along
the Maryland route to Washington DC, and on May
13th
he marched into Baltimore, instituting military
rule there that would last until the war’s end.
Manakee, Maryland in the Civil War,
47-51.
Governor Hicks had finally called the
legislature on April 22nd, following
the drama of the 19th in Baltimore.
The body met in Frederick (as Hicks considered
it a safer location), and its conduct confirmed
the fears of many Unionists. While the
legislature denied it had the authority to
decide the issue of secession, the resolutions
it did pass included a strong denunciation of
“coercion” of the Southern states, a formal
recognition of the Confederacy’s independence,
and a cordial relationship with Virginia was
maintained. See Radcliffe, Governor
Thomas H. Hicks, 62-9, 80-3; Kent News
27 April 1861, 22 June 1861. Carmichael’s
friend George Vickers complained of the
legislature’s actions to Hicks, and asked the
Governor to confront that body. See George
Vickers to Governor Hicks, 3 May 1861, Hicks
Manuscripts, Maryland Historical Society (MDHS),
Baltimore, MD.
“Judge Carmichael’s Charge to the Grand Jury of
Talbot County,” 1861; “Petition of Richard B.
Carmichael and Others, Against the Adjournment
of the Legislature Sine Die,” Maryland House of
Delegates, 18 June 1861; Kent News, 22
June 1861.
John A. Dix to George B. McClellan, 23 August
1861, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation
of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 5,
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1881; Harrisburg, PA: National Historical
Society, 1971) 581, 604.
S.W. Spencer to Governor Hicks, 24 August 1861,
S.W. Spencer, Jesse K. Hines, and George Vickers
to Governor Hicks, 24 August 1861, Official
Records, Series III, Vol. 1 (1899; 1971)
463.
John A. Dix to Governor Hicks, 20 August 1861,
Governor Hicks to Winfield Scott, 18 March 1861
and 28 March 1861, Hicks Manuscripts, MDHS;
G.W.P. Smith to Capt. George V. Massey, 13
August 1864, Official Records, Series I,
Vol. 43 (1893; 1971) 785.
Augustus Bradford to John A. Dix, 1 November
1861, Bradford Manuscripts, MDHS; Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 72-74; George Vickers
to Augustus Bradford, 11 November 1861, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS; Hicks to Maj. Gen. N.P.
Banks, 16 October 1861, in “Secret
Correspondence Illustrating the Condition of
Affairs in Maryland” (Baltimore: 1863) 30-31.
In the First Congressional District, which
included all of the Eastern Shore counties south
of Kent in 1861 (Kent would be part of the First
District after realignment in 1863), John W.
Crisfield ran as the Union candidate against
Daniel M. Henry. Queen Anne’s County gave
Henry a majority of 53, but Crisfield still won
the election. Crisfield wrote to Senator
James Alfred Pearce on 7 May 1861 that in
Somerset County and the lower Eastern Shore was
“rapidly developing…in favor of the Union
under all circumstances [emphasis in
original].” Crisfield to Pearce,
Washington College Archives (WAC).
Bradford defeated Howard by nearly 2-to-1 in
Somerset, which was “clearly the most
pro-secessionist subdivision on the Eastern
Shore.” See John R. Wennersten, “John W.
Crisfield and Civil War Politics on Maryland’s
Eastern Shore, 1860-64,” Maryland Historical
Magazine, Vol. 99, No. 2 (Spring 2004) 7.
Kent News, 20 April 1861, 12 January
1861, 15 June 1861, 9 November 1861; Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 26-30; John A. Dix to
Augustus Bradford, 1 November 1861, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS.
Kent News, 12 January 1861; “Union
Address to the People of Maryland,” Kent News,
1 June 1861; Among the first actions of the
Union Maryland General Assembly, following the
November ’61 elections, included resolutions and
bills supporting the protection of slavery.
See Clark, Politics in Maryland, 92.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 55-9; Pearce
to Crisfield, 7 June 1861, WAC; Crisfield to
Pearce, 7 May 1861, WAC; Kent News, 27
April 1861; See Bernard C. Steiner, “James
Alfred Pearce,” Maryland Historical Magazine,
Vol. 19 (1924) 13, 162 for more on Pearce’s
leanings at the outbreak of the war. Also
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 55-6.
Crisfield to Pearce, 19 August 1860; 31 March
1861; 28 April 1861, WAC.
For the communications leading up the arrests,
see “Secret Correspondence,” 25-30; Kent News,
21 September 1861.
Kent News, 1 June 1861, 9 February 1861,
12 January 1861.
Kent News, 1 June 1861; Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 70.
Governor Hicks had formally commissioned George
Vickers as a General of the Maryland militia in
1861, but he would see no real military duty.
Kirby, Roll Call, 4-5; Kent News,
11 January 1862.
Kent News, 9 August 1862, 18 October
1862.
Seward to Dix, 2 October 1861, Dix to Bradford,
10 February 1862, Official Records,
Series II, Vol. 2 (1897: 1971) 85, 213; Dix to
Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, 25 June 1862,
Official Records, Series II, Vol. 4
(1899; 1971) 63-4.
Exact details are conflicting. For a good
account of the Carmichael arrest, see Frederic
Emory, Queen Anne’s County Maryland: Its
Early History and Development (Baltimore:
Maryland Historical Society, 1950) 505-6.
Also
Kent News, 7 June 1862.
Vickers kept a low profile in 1862, most likely
because of political pursuits in Annapolis, and
familial tragedy. His son Benjamin, a
26-year-old Confederate soldier and fiancé of
the niece of General Sam Houston, died in
Memphis on May 3rd after being
seriously wounded at the battle of Shiloh.
In July George Vickers was awarded the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel by Bradford, and officially
made a gubernatorial Aid. Kent News,
12 July 1862.
Kent News, 7 June 1862; Pearce to
Lincoln, 8 August 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers,
online via Library of Congress <loc.gov>; Maj.
Gen. John E. Wool to Stanton, 30 June 1862,
Official Records, Series II, Vol. 4 (1899;
1971) 104; Lincoln to Crisfield, 26 June 1862,
Abraham Lincoln Papers; Crisfield to Pearce, 5
July 1862, WAC; Vickers to Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln Papers; Union men of Centreville to
Lincoln, 9 June 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers.
Judge Carmichael was released on the 2nd
of December. Emory, Queen Anne’s County,
506; Kent News, 22 November 1862.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 162-3,
166-7; Crisfield to Pearce, 18 April 1862, WAC;
For an account of the efforts of Maryland
planters to see full enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Law in the District of Columbia, see
Charles Lewis Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution:
Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1964; Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society,
2004) 116-120.
Kent News, 15 March 1862, 17 May 1862;
Baltimore Unionists were also dissatisfied with
the scheme of representation in the General
Assembly under the 1851 constitution, which gave
one delegate to an average of 3,831 white
persons in southern Maryland, but only one per
9,641 whites in the northern counties, with the
state senate being even more skewed.
Baltimore City also lacked what the city
convention considered adequate representation.
Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 165; Wagandt, The
Mighty Revolution, 229.
Kent News, 27 September 1862, 4 October
1862.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 171-73;
Crisfield speech in House of Representatives,
Crisfield to wife Mary, 22 January 1863, both in
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 75-77.
Hicks to Lincoln, 26 May 1862, Hicks
Manuscripts, MDHS; Kent News, 12 July
1862; Crisfield to Pearce, 12 July 1862, WAC;
Wennersten, “John W. Crisfield,” 9-10.
Kent News, 10 January 1863.
Kent News, 11 April 1863, 23 May 1863.
The Grand League would later reschedule and meet
on the 23rd of June.
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 84-86;
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 96-98; In
Kent County the Unconditional Unionists met in
Kennedyville on June 13 to nominate delegates
for the Grand League Convention, and the
Conservatives met in Chestertown on the 16th
for the same purpose. Kent News,
13 June 1863.
Kent News, 27 June 1863; The nomination
convention in Cambridge was held on August
eleventh. On the first Unconditional
Unionists of Kent County held their convention
to nominate delegates to attend at Cambridge,
and the
News was delighted to report that only
twenty participants were present. Kent
News, 8 August 1863; Kent News, 15
August 1863, 5 September 1863. For a
detailed account of the rupture of the Union
Party, and the ensuing nomination process, see
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 95-115.
Kent News, 5 September 1863.
As per the national draft introduced in 1863,
Maryland was responsible for a quota of 13,320
troops. The colored troops raised by
Birney were to be credited to Maryland’s quota
as would white soldiers. Cottom and
Hayward, Maryland in the Civil War, 83;
Kent News, 18 July 1863.
Bond reasoned that locations of large free black
populations, like Baltimore, were losing their
labor force while slave property, untapped by
Birney, was increasing in value.
Thomas Hicks was appointed to the US Senate to
fill the vacancy opened by the death of James
Alfred Pearce.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 179-183;
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 123-4;
Kent News, 26 September 1863.
Kent News, 19 September 1863; Ricaud,
Westcott, Spencer, and Vickers to Governor
Bradford, 16 September 1863, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS.
Kent News, 26 September 1863; Kent
News, 3 October 1863.
Vickers to Bradford, 16 September 1863, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS; Wagandt, The Mighty
Revolution, 128; Birney to “Adjutant-General
U.S. Army,” 13 October 1863, Official Records,
Series III, Vol. 3 (1898; 1971) 881-82.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 187-88;
Lincoln to Birney, cited in Birney to
“Adjutant-General,” 13 October 1863; Wagandt,
The Mighty Revolution, 129; Congressman
Crisfield also lost six slaves to recruiting in
October. Wennersten, “John W. Crisfield,”
12.
Such was Hicks’ prediction, following the slave
recruitment controversies. Hicks to
Bradford, 20 October 1863, Bradford Manuscripts,
MDHS.
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 157; A
power struggle developed between Schenck and
Bradford in the days before the election, with
Bradford attempting to nullify the General’s
call for test oaths, and Schenck subsequently
banning the publication of Bradford’s orders in
Maryland newspapers, particularly those of the
Eastern Shore. Wagandt, “Election by Sword
and Ballot: The Emancipationist Victory of
1863,”
Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 2
(Summer 1964) 146-7. Many military
authorities in Maryland ignored Bradford’s
protests against what he considered
“intervention with the privileges of the Ballot
Box and offensive discrimination against the
rights of a loyal state”, although the confusion
lent to the inconsistent use of test oaths on
election day. Clark, Politics in
Maryland, 103-109; Wagandt, The Mighty
Revolution, 158-163; Vickers to Bradford, 22
October 1863, Bradford Manuscripts, MDHS.
Plummer and Usilton were much more critical of
this arrest than they were of the apprehension
of John Leeds Barroll, the proprietor and editor
of the Kent Conservator, who was arrested
for publishing treasonable articles on April 17,
and deported to Virginia shortly thereafter.
See Kent News, 18 April 1863, 25 April
1863. A good history of the Barroll affair
can also be found in Kevin Hemstock,
“Newspapers Grew Up in the Civil War,” in
Discover Kent County, MD, promotional
pamphlet (Chestertown, MD: Kent County News,
Spring/Summer 2003) 57-89.
Order of Lt. Col. Charles Carroll Tevis, Kent
News, 7 November 1863; Kent News, 14
November 1863; Clark, Politics in Maryland,
110-111; Wagandt, “Election by Sword and
Ballot,” 157-61. Frazier’s behavior on
election day was not without warning.
Starting in October, George Vickers repeatedly
warned Governor Bradford of the Provost
Marshal’s intentions, complaining that Frazier
was “totally unprincipled & ought to be broken.”
John B. Ricaud even went to Baltimore, also in
October, to deliver affidavits attesting to
Frazier’s belligerency. Vickers to
Bradford, 22 October 1863, 30 October 1863,
Bradford Manuscripts, MDHS.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 111;
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 176;
Wagandt, “Election by Sword and Ballot,” 151-56.
Kent News, 7 November 1863; Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 113.
A Constitutional Convention was necessary to end
slavery in Maryland, as the current 1851
Constitution forbade the Legislature from ever
interfering with the institution. See 1851
Maryland Constitution, Article III, Section 43.
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 112-14;
Wagandt, “Election by Sword and Ballot,” 163-4.
Kent News, 5 December 1863.
Lincoln, whom Vickers visited personally to
discuss the 1863 election fiasco, at first
seemed uninterested in the Frazier affair,
prompting Vickers to fume of the President’s
“artless simplicity, & frank & honest impulses.”
“If he had the moral firmness of a man,” Vickers
complained, Frazier would be removed at once.
Vickers to Bradford, 15 December 1863, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS;
Kent News, 27 February 1864.
Vickers to Bradford, 15 December 1863, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS.
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 219.
Kent News, 16 January 1864, 13 February
1864; Included in the legislation were
safeguards against unwanted military inference
in elections, allowing the Governor to call a
new election in troubled districts.
Wagandt,
The Mighty Revolution, 194-6.
For example, Chambers landed 793 votes, as
compared to Spry’s 451 and Unconditional
Unionist Leary’s 241. The tallies for the
other men were similar; Wagandt, The Mighty
Revolution, 200; Kent News, 26 March
1864, 9 April 1864.
Vickers to Bradford, 8 April 1864, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS.
Citizens voted for or against the convention, as
well as for a delegation to send to the
convention. This was done in one election
for the sake of efficiency, so if the convention
was approved there would already be delegations
elected.
The statewide vote for the convention was 31,593
to 19,524. All of Southern Maryland, along
with most of the Eastern Shore counties, voted
against the convention. Northern Maryland
voted unanimously for the convention; in
Baltimore City only 87 votes were cast against
it. Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution,
218-19;
Kent News, 9 April 1864.
Article XXIII of the Declaration of Rights
banned slavery, and the Committee’s minority
denounced it as “a sudden, violent, and most
mischievous destruction of the relation of
master and slave,” that would instigate “very
serious…injury and suffering” among both slaves
and masters. The Debates of the
Constitutional Convention of the State of
Maryland, Assembled at the City of Annapolis,
Wednesday, April 27, 1864, Vol I (Annapolis:
Richard P. Bayly, 1864) 81-82.
The votes were, respectively: 37 to 28, 50
to 25, and 42 to 13. Proceedings of the
State Convention of Maryland to Frame a New
Constitution: Commenced at Annapolis, April 27,
1864 (Annapolis: Richard P. Bayly, 1864)
225, 337-38, 79, 606-7. Chambers also
seemed particularly offended by Article IV of
the Declaration of Rights, which stipulated that
Marylanders owed their supreme allegiance to the
Constitution and laws of the United States.
Chambers offered an amendment to the Article,
altering it to say that Marylanders owed
allegiance to the laws of the U.S. “so far as
such…ordinances shall be in conformity to the
Constitution of the United States….” The
amendment was defeated, and the Kent delegation
voted against final passage of the Article,
which was approved 53 to 32. Chambers also
submitted a protest against banishment of “rebel
sympathizers,” a punishment endorsed by a
resolution passed by the convention.
Proceedings, 200-1, 204, 397.
Loyalty oaths consisted of several “test
questions,” an example of which being, “When the
Union and Rebel armies meet in battle, which
side do you wish to see succeed?” Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 193.
Chestertown Transcript, 25 April 1864, in
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 249.
Microfilm of the Kent News is unavailable
for most of September and October of 1864.
Maryland Union, 20 October 1864, in
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 260;
Baltimore Weekly Sun, 22 October 1864;
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, 262-3;
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 192-3.
For the Union voters of Kent County the
political confusion was compounded by
conflicting Union endorsements; local papers
such as the News railed against any more
Lincoln terms, but the statewide conservative
Union Party formally endorsed Lincoln on October
18. Clark, Politics in Maryland,
122-23;
Kent News, 11 June 1864.
Kent News, 18 June 1864, 3 September
1864; Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution,
244-5; Clark, Politics in Maryland,
122-3.
Baltimore Weekly Sun, 11 November 1864;
Clark, Politics in Maryland, 125; Kent
News, 19 November 1864.
Kent News, 27 June 1863; John Frazier,
Jr., to James B. Fry, Provost-Marshal-General,
Washington, D.C., 14 July 1863, in Official
Records, Series III, Vol. 3 (1898; 1971)
492; Vickers to Bradford, 14 August 1863,
Bradford Manuscripts, MDHS.
Petitions were circulated requesting the County
Commissioners to apportion $20,000 to devote to
enlistment bonuses.
Vickers to Bradford, 14 June 1864, Bradford
Manuscripts, MDHS.
Kent News, 23 July 1864, 30 July 1864, 19
November 1864, 10 December 1864, 11 February
1865, 21 January 1865.
Kent News, 13 February 1864, 2 April
1864.
Resolution adopted by the State Constitutional
Convention, in Kent News, 3 September
1864.
Kent News, 11 February 1864; Clark,
Politics in Maryland, 197-98.
Kent News, 3 December 1864, 17 December
1864, 24 December 1864; “A Few Remarks Addressed
to the Sober Consideration of Reflecting People
in Kent County,” unknown author, in Kent News,
17 December 1864; The abuses of apprenticeship
system were eventually ended, much to the
efforts of Major-General Lewis Wallace, whose
“General Orders No. 112” established a
“Freedmen’s Bureau” and forbade the binding out
of black youths. The new state
constitution of 1867 officially abolished the
practice. See Clark, Politics in
Maryland, 197-98; Wagandt, The Mighty
Revolution, 264-65.
Kent News, 1 July 1865, 14 October 1865,
28 October 1865, 4 November 1865; For more on
the Registry Law see Richard O. Curry, ed.,
Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment: The
Border States during Reconstruction
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969) 162-63.
Baltimore went from less than 11,000 voters to
over 24,000 upon the change of registrars.
Curry, Border States, 162-174; In March
1868 George Vickers was chosen by the General
Assembly to represent Maryland in the United
States Senate, where he would cast the deciding
vote for acquittal in President Johnson’s
impeachment trial.
The 1776 Constitution of Maryland allowed free
blacks to vote in elections for the lower house
of the General Assembly, but this right was
rescinded in 1810. Clark, Politics in
Maryland, 10.
C. Christopher Brown, “Democracy’s Incursion
into the Eastern Shore: The 1870 Election in
Chestertown,” Maryland Historical Magazine,
Vol. 89, no. 3 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical
Society, Fall 1994) 339-340.
That Chestertown election saw some newly
enfranchised black voters display calculated
political manipulation, hardly winning over
skeptical whites. Chestertown only allowed
landowners to vote in municipal elections,
inspiring African-American landowner Isaac
Anderson to sell, for $15, forty-five inches of
his property to forty-four black voters, thus
giving all of them the ability to vote for town
commissioners. The story was reported
across the country. Brown, “Democracy’s
Incursion,” 343; “The Amendment in
Maryland––Forty-four Negroes Owners of
Forty-five Inches of Ground,”
New York Times, 15 May 1870, online via
ProQuest <www.proquest.com>.
Brown, “Democracy’s Incursion,” 343-44; Curry,
Border States, 159.
Kent News, 17 June 1865; Cottom, A
House Divided, 119-125; Historians disagree
over Maryland’s wartime sympathies.
Charles Lewis Wagandt tends to view the
elections of abolitionist Unconditional
Unionists in 1864, and the approval of the 1864
Constitution, as largely legitimate exercises,
and is at times enthusiastic about the level of
approval abolition had with the public.
Lawrence M. Denton conversely makes a strong
case for Maryland’s Confederate impulses.
The state was forced to stay in the Union by
military force alone, he contends, and post-war
elections that saw overwhelming Democratic
majorities make clear the state’s sentiments.
“[F]rom April 1861, to the very end of the war,
Lincoln and his administration treated Maryland
as if she had seceded,” and if the data which
Denton presents is indeed reflective of
Maryland’s sympathies, this was all Lincoln
could do to keep Washington, D.C. from being
surrounded by Confederate territory.
Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution, passim;
Lawrence M. Denton, A Southern Star for
Maryland: Maryland and the Secession Crisis,
1860-1861 (Baltimore: Publishing Concepts,
1995) 195-210
Scharf fought for the Confederacy in the First
Maryland Artillery Company, and was wounded in
three battles. Later in the war he was
sent on a secret mission to Canada by the
Confederate government, but was arrested on his
trek north in Port Tobacco, Maryland, and was
held in federal prison until March 1865.
Francis B. Culver, “The War Romance of John
Thomas Scharf,”
Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 21
(1926) 295-302.
George William Brown, Baltimore and the
Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1887; 2001); J. Thomas Scharf, History of
Maryland From the Earliest Period to the Present
Day (1879; Hatboro, PA: Tradition, 1967)
289-701; Matthew Page Andrews, History of
Maryland: Province and State (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1929) 473-566, 539; Harry Wright
Newman, Maryland and the Confederacy
(Annapolis: Harry Newman, 1976); Bart Rhett
Talbert, Maryland: The South’s First Casualty
(Berryville, VA: Rockbridge, 1995).
Marcia C. Landskroener, ed., Washington: The
College at Chester (Chestertown: Lit House
Press, 2000) 43, 44. Ex-Confederates had
regained much of their public stature in
Maryland by 1870. In 1867 Washington
College chose as its new President Robert Carter
Berkeley, who had served with the Confederate
Army and was wounded in the Battle of Seven
Pines in 1862.
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