Chapter 3

REVOLUTION

WHEN PARLIAMENT CLOSED the port of Boston after the Tea Party of 1773, appeals went out from Massachusetts seeking support for a new non-importation agreement directed against Britain. The appeal reached Baltimore by way of Philadelphia, though Samuel Adams also sent a copy directly to William Lux in Baltimore, with a request that it “be communicated as his wisdom shall dictate.”¹ This time, Baltimore’s merchants did not lag far behind Boston’s in their response to British coercion. A committee of merchants forwarded Boston’s plea for support to the “Gentlemen of Annapolis” and issued a broadside summoning all “Freeholders and Gentlemen of Baltimore County” to a meeting at the courthouse “to favor us with their Company and Advice.” The Baltimoreans assembled just 18 days after Bostonians had held a meeting of their own.²

The public gathering at the courthouse acted on eight resolutions in support of Boston and in defiance of King and Parliament. Lux, who served as the meeting’s clerk, recorded three dissents to the first resolution, which declared that every colony had a duty “to unite in the most effectual means to obtain a Repeal of the late Act of Parliament” closing Boston’s port. Lux’s minutes also show three dissents to a second measure, which stated that discontinuing trade with Britain “may be the means of preserving North America and her Liberties.” Lux seems to have altered his report on the third resolution. It committed Baltimore County to join with other Maryland counties and American colonies in a boycott of British imports and a suspension of exports to Britain and the British West Indies. A notation of “Nine Persons” in dissent is scratched out and replaced by a report that the resolution passed “Unanimously.”³ The remaining five resolutions also passed unanimously because the dissenters were absent. They had been mobbed and beaten. One of them, “bloody and disheveled,” staggered from the assembly and warned a temporarily absent ally not to return to the meeting.⁴ Baltimore’s tradition of government in the streets, formalized by the Mechanical Company and revolutionized by the Sons of Liberty, now served the cause of independence.

BALTIMORE AND THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

One of the resolutions passed unanimously at the riotous public meeting in 1774 endorsed the appointment of Maryland delegates to attend a general congress of all the colonies. Baltimore’s freeholders thus became one of the first political assemblies to call for a continental congress.⁵ The town also sent representatives to the provincial convention in Annapolis, which had all but displaced the institutions of proprietary government. Its most significant act was to order the formation of a state militia. Baltimore was the first jurisdiction in Maryland to organize such a company—the Baltimore Independent Cadets—which was commanded by Captain (later General) Mordecai Gist.⁶ The Ancient and Honorable Mechanical Company would form its own unit, the Mechanical Volunteers, a year later. Its commanding officer, Captain James Cox, was the “most fashionable tailor in Baltimore town” and a writer of patriotic poems. He was killed at Germantown in General Washington’s attempt to lift the British occupation of Philadelphia.⁷

Together with other Maryland troops, the Baltimoreans in Gist’s command would cover George Washington’s retreat from Long Island and across Brooklyn, suffering heavy casualties in the process. Gist commanded 200 men in the engagement. He and eight others survived.⁸ Their firm defense would be commemorated in Maryland’s identification as the Old Line State.

The general outrage provoked by Parliament’s action against Boston inspired a mood of solidarity between Baltimore’s leaders and the notables of Annapolis. Putting aside old disputes, Baltimore’s Committee of Correspondence made a show of consulting with colleagues in Annapolis before convening a mass meeting in Baltimore to discuss responses to the Boston Port Act. The Baltimoreans looked forward, they said, to “harmonizing” with the leadership in Annapolis “and all our brethren, through the province, in the present crisis.” Robert Alexander, a member of the Baltimore Committee of Correspondence, delivered his colleagues’ harmonizing letter to Annapolis and reported that it had successfully overcome apprehensions in the provincial capital that Baltimore might be “lukewarm in the cause.” The leaders in Annapolis may have had in mind Baltimore’s reluctant support of the non-importation agreement adopted in response to the Townshend Acts four years earlier. They were reassured by the Baltimoreans’ forthright protest against the Boston Port Bill. The Annapolis committee responded with a pledge that it would “gladly harmonize with you in all possible measures.”⁹ Beneath the expressions of harmony, however, there was a sharp difference in revolutionary spirit between Baltimore and Annapolis.

CITY REBELS AND STATE TORIES

Self-described moderates identified Baltimore as the colony’s hotbed of protest where “the most violent incendiaries resided.”¹⁰ The political mismatch between Baltimore and the rest of the colony may have made Maryland the unguided missile of the War for Independence. John Adams claimed that “Maryland is so eccentric a Colony—sometimes so hot, sometimes so high, then so low—that I know not what to say about it or expect from it . . . When they get agoing I expect some wild extravagant Flight or other from it. To be sure they must go beyond everybody else when they begin to go.”¹¹ In the end, they did not go very far.

Elsewhere, the Revolution was not just a war of independence but a struggle to reshape American society by overthrowing a colonial aristocracy and advancing the claims of a solid middle class—but not in Maryland. “In that colony,” writes Philip Crowl, “the masses of inarticulate citizens remained, on the whole, inarticulate.” The colony’s social elite led the Revolution and kept it from becoming too revolutionary.¹² As late as January 1776, the provincial convention was not ready for independence. On the contrary, it closed its session with a declaration of “affection for, and loyalty to, the house of Hanover.” The convention’s resolution held that Maryland’s inhabitants were “connected with the British nation by ties of blood and interest, and . . . thoroughly convinced, that to be free subjects of the king of Great Britain . . . is to be the freest members of any civil society in the known world.” Accordingly, they “never did, nor do entertain any views or desires of independency.”¹³

Some Baltimoreans agreed. Robert Alexander, a member of both the provincial convention and the Baltimore Committee of Observation, expressed his support for the convention’s views from Philadelphia, where he was about to begin his service as Baltimore’s only member in Maryland’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress. He was “much pleased” with the convention’s sentiments: “they intirely coincide with my line of judgment & that Line of Conduct which I had determined to persue.”¹⁴ Alexander left Philadelphia and the Continental Congress six months later, without adding his signature to the Declaration of Independence. He later abandoned his public offices, his country, and his wife to join the British, and eventually moved to London. Maryland’s moderates in Annapolis had done their best to keep the Revolution well in hand by entrusting it to conservatives like Alexander rather than his more radical colleagues in Baltimore.¹⁵

When the provincial convention announced its opposition to independence, two-thirds of Baltimore may have agreed. William Lux, an early advocate of separation from Britain, estimated that the town was “two to one against me.” But some of those in favor of independence, like Lux, occupied strategic leadership positions in Baltimore. William’s brother, George Lux, was both a proponent of independence and secretary of the town’s Committee of Observation.¹⁶ The committee’s chairman, Samuel Purviance, was also ready for independence. Purviance’s ability to mobilize Baltimore’s merchants against British authority was obvious well before creation of the committee that he now headed.

In 1773, when the town’s merchants and sea captains had resorted to mob violence to prevent customs officials from seizing a ship in Baltimore’s harbor, they acted on behalf of Purviance. The ship’s cargo was consigned to him. Customs officer Robert Moreton had prohibited unloading of the vessel on the suspicion that contraband goods were concealed beneath a shipment of salt. Purviance ignored the prohibition and ordered his men to unload the ship. Moreton returned to find not only that the cargo was being unloaded in violation of his instructions but that several casks of claret had appeared from beneath the salt. He ordered that the ship be seized. But then he saw “a number of people coming oft in Boats from the shore,” and he decided to retreat. Several days later, a mob of merchants and ship captains beat, tarred, and feathered two of Moreton’s assistants.¹⁷

In Baltimore, resentment against British authority was explosive, and Purviance seems to have been a leader of the Anglophobes. In April 1776, he would open a public rift between Baltimore and the semi-revolutionary elite in Annapolis that would move his town decisively toward independence from Britain. As chairman of Baltimore’s Committee of Observation, he ordered the kidnapping of the proprietary governor, Robert Eden.

The capture of a Loyalist courier in Virginia had yielded letters addressed to Eden by the British colonial secretary, indicating that the governor had been providing information on the feasibility of landing British troops on the shores of the Chesapeake. The captured courier is described variously as a Pittsburgh or Baltimore merchant, Alexander Ross. His friend, congressional representative Robert Alexander, had attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a pass so that Ross could cross through the American lines to meet with Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia. Ross had risked the trip without a pass. The papers that were captured with him on his return journey were sent to General Charles Lee, commander of the Continental Army in the South. He forwarded the documents to Purviance and the Baltimore Committee of Observation, deliberately bypassing the Council of Safety in Annapolis because he regarded its members as “namby pambys.” Purviance may have seemed sufficiently aggressive to act on Lee’s urgent plea that Eden and his papers be taken into custody. Purviance sent copies of the documents to John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, along with a cover letter accusing Maryland’s Council of Safety of being “afraid to execute the Duties of their Stations” and being “timorous and inactive.” Congress issued its own orders to seize Governor Eden.¹⁸

Purviance turned to Major Mordecai Gist, the highest ranking military officer in Baltimore, to recommend an officer to carry out the mission against the governor. On Gist’s advice, Purviance sent a young captain of the militia, Samuel Smith, to apprehend Eden. Smith sailed to Annapolis with a detachment of militiamen, secured the port so that no ship could leave the harbor, and then presented a letter to the chairman of the Maryland Council of Safety explaining his mission. The council reacted with fury. Smith was its immediate target, but he was spared further reproach because he had merely been following orders, which the council countermanded.¹⁹ It accepted Governor Eden’s word that he would not attempt to flee Annapolis, and then turned its rage against Purviance for the part he played in slighting the council’s authority and political reputation.²⁰

The council called home Maryland’s delegation to the Continental Congress and wrote to John Hancock complaining that Purviance’s action endangered public order. The council, it claimed, had thwarted the governor’s kidnapping in order to avert “immediate anarchy and convulsion.” Purviance was formally censured by the Maryland convention. But only a month later, the convention ordered Governor Eden to leave Maryland. The colony thus took a further step toward independence. Baltimore’s merchants, unlike most of their colleagues in other commercial centers, had already committed themselves to the cause.²¹

REVOLUTIONARY SURVEILLANCE

Purviance may have seemed a threat to public order in Annapolis, but as chairman of the Baltimore Committee of Observation, he was a pillar of public authority. For the first time in its existence, Baltimore Town had its own elected government, albeit one with uncertain authority and few officers to carry out its edicts. It had been created under the authority of the Continental Congress, and Maryland’s provincial convention gave it oversight of Baltimore County’s Association of the Freemen of Maryland. The association formed in January 1775 at a meeting of Baltimore County’s voters, who unanimously approved the appointment of 14 committees to oversee residents in each of the “hundreds” of Baltimore County. The committees were to solicit all freeholders in their districts to sign on as members of the Association of Freemen, signifying their willingness to stand in defense of American liberty. As a tangible token of support, each “associator” was to contribute financially to that defense. Able-bodied men were to be enrolled in militia companies. The committees were instructed that “the name of every person, who shall . . . refuse or decline to subscribe or contribute for purchase of arms and ammunition, be taken down and laid before the committee at the next meeting . . . together with the reasons of such refusal.”²²

Government authority had undergone an abrupt expansion in Baltimore. Under the embargo of British goods, Baltimore’s Committee of Observation oversaw the cargoes entering and leaving the port. Now the committee was empowered to scrutinize the political conduct and loyalties of individual residents. The body’s sweeping powers stood in sharp contrast to the sorry struggles of the town commissioners to regulate pigs.

The Committee of Observation was not a small or covert organization. Its membership included 29 representatives of Baltimore Town, along with another 38 elected from the “hundreds” of Baltimore County. It held its meetings in public. Since these meetings convened in Baltimore, the town’s representatives probably attended more regularly than those from the rest of the county. The committee served as the judicial and executive arm of the Association of Freemen. The “non-associators,” those who refused to sign, were required to pay fines, and their movements could be restricted. Non-associator Abram Evening, for example, wanted to collect all of his books and papers and transport them to a place well outside Baltimore so “that in case I cannot stay in such a violent place, they may be safe.” Evening attempted “to go in the schooner to Cambridge, and two or three more places, to get the papers to send home.” But he was not permitted to leave Baltimore unless he posted security of £350 to guarantee his return and promised that he would not communicate with officers of the Crown. He agreed to both conditions. But he was also required to pay his fine as a non-associator, which he refused to do as a matter of conscience. Evening was detained in Baltimore.²³

Other subjects of the Committee of Observation’s attention proved more malleable. Just one day after the general meeting that created the Association of Freemen, the committee took up the case of an Anglican clergyman, Rev. William Edmiston. An informant reported that Edmiston had publicly asserted “that all persons, who mustered, were guilty of treason; and that such of them as had taken the oath of allegiance, and took up arms, were guilty of perjury.” Edmiston was called before the Committee of Observation, where he explained that no opinions were expressed “with greater warmth and intemperate zeal than those in politicks . . . which in cool moments of reflection men would disavow.” For the future, Edmiston promised to avoid expressing any opinion at variance with the decisions of the revolutionary authorities. The committee dismissed him without punishment, but had his apology published in the Maryland Journal.²⁴

In a similar case, ship’s captain Richard Button of Fell’s Point was accused of discouraging George Helms from joining the militia. Helms was a constable and had taken an oath of loyalty to the proprietary government. Button claimed that he had “no design to dissuade him from learning the military exercise.” Like Rev. Edmiston, he promised not to oppose the resolutions of the Continental Congress or the provincial assembly, and apologized “if, by my conduct, I may have appeared inimical to the cause of American liberty.”²⁵

Public confession was one ritual that the Committee of Observation employed to disarm resistance to the Revolution.²⁶ In this respect, at least, Baltimore’s revolution seems to have anticipated the “show trial” spectacles of twentieth-century revolutions in Russia and China.²⁷ But Baltimore County’s new government had other responsibilities in addition to the regulation of political expression.

The committee routinely interviewed ships’ captains to determine whether their cargoes fell under the proscriptions that barred British goods from the colonies. In March 1775, for example, the committee summoned Captain William Moat, master of the brig Sally, which had sailed from Bristol with 100 tons of salt. Appearing with him before the committee was Baltimore’s entrepreneurial physician Dr. John Stevenson, the designated recipient of the Sally’s cargo. The captain testified (implausibly) that he had taken on the salt before December 12, 1774—the date on which the Maryland convention had voted to support the embargo on British goods proclaimed by the Continental Congress. Dr. Stevenson asked that he be given permission to land the salt, arguing that it was just ballast, not the kind of cargo that the Continental Congress intended to exclude. In fact, demand for salt was so strong that the committee had already posted a “recommended” price for the commodity, and it imposed price controls on salt in November 1775.²⁸ It was expensive ballast.

The committee rejected the arguments of both men and ruled that the salt could not be landed. A week later, the committee again required the presence of Captain Moat and Dr. Stevenson. Stevenson had sold the salt to purchasers outside Baltimore County under the impression that the committee’s ruling did not extend beyond its boundaries. Stevenson must have recognized that he was in trouble. He offered to “return an Account of the Proceeds of the Salt, and the same will freely give for the Relief of the Poor of Boston; and that the remainder of the Salt now on board the said Brig, shall not be landed in any Part of America, between Nova-Scotia and Georgia.” The committee voted to accept his apology.²⁹

Three months later, Dr. Stevenson appeared once again before the committee, which had intercepted a letter addressed to him from Henry Lloyd, an agent for contractors who procured supplies for British troops in Boston. Lloyd’s letter noted that a “stoppage of provisions from the Southern Governments” had made it necessary for him to “get supply by concealing from the publick eye the destination of provisions” shipped to His Majesty’s army. He proposed that Stevenson load a ship with flour, ostensibly for the West Indies, and then divert it to the British troops in Boston. Lloyd also suggested third-party payment schemes that would mask Stevenson’s involvement in supplying the British army, and he cautioned Stevenson to take care that his reply to the proposal not fall into the hands of the “provincials,” who were apparently just as likely to violate the security of the postal system as the British had been. Presented with the letter at the committee hearing, Stevenson acknowledged that he recognized Lloyd’s handwriting. In other words, he must have had previous correspondence with Lloyd. But Stevenson swore that he had never received the letter and that he would never execute any order “contrary to the Resolves of the Continental Congress or the Provincial Convention.” The committee delivered no verdict concerning Stevenson, but found Lloyd “knowingly and willfully violated the Association of the American Congress.”³⁰

Dr. Stevenson managed to avoid such charges until June 1776. Committees of Observation throughout Maryland had been confiscating arms and ammunition from non-associators. Stevenson had written to the Council of Safety in Annapolis complaining that Baltimore’s committee had confiscated two casks of gunpowder without compensation. But Stevenson’s letter came to the attention of the Baltimore committee, which ruled that since Stevenson had neither signed as an associator nor enrolled for service in the militia, “he stands in the light of an enemy to America, and therefore it would be dangerous to trust so much powder in his hands.”³¹

AMERICAN TERROR

Some of Baltimore’s Tories were less subtle than Dr. Stevenson. In May 1775, the Committee of Observation considered the case of James Dalgleish, who had repeatedly declared that “as soon as the English troops land here, he will join them against the Americans.” Dalgleish had already been called before the committee for announcing that the “King ought to be damned if he repealed the late oppressive Acts respecting America, and that said Acts were equitable.” Dalgleish explained that he had made the incriminating statements while “much intoxicated with liquor” and assured the committee that “to disapprove of the resolves of the continental congress, or the proceedings of the publick was quite foreign to my sentiments when sober.”³² The committee adopted a new approach to deal with Dalgleish. It decided “to publish said Dalgleish to the world as an enemy of the liberties of Americans.” The announcement provoked an immediate response. The Maryland Journal reported that as soon as Baltimoreans knew “that the Protection of the Committee was withdrawn from this imprudent Man,” they regarded him as a “proper Object of their Resentment.” Dalgliesh, “apprehending Danger from the People,” fled Baltimore.³³

The treatment of Dalgleish marked a new phase in Baltimore’s rendition of the Revolution. A year later, the use of terror had become standard practice in Baltimore. The Whig Club, a new and secretive organization, proposed to deal with the “secret and disguised enemies, whom we have fostered in our bosoms” who were allied with “a cruel and foreign foe doing everything in their power to effect our destruction.” The club claimed that it was merely acting to support the public authorities, whose best efforts might fail to apprehend “artful villains . . . and dignified Tories, under the cloak of moderation.” The Whig Club did not specify how it would deal with these elusive traitors, but pledged that no one “shall be convicted . . . without being heard in his defence.” Conviction required a two-thirds vote of the members, who were enjoined to “keep secret the proceedings of this Club.”³⁴

The Whig Club was more proletarian than earlier nongovernmental organizations in Baltimore. Militia membership had triggered political activism among laborers and tradesmen who had been too obscure to claim political standing. But, like the Mechanical Company, the Whig Club included prominent merchants and professionals. One of them was Robert Purviance, Samuel’s brother and business partner.³⁵

Soon, however, the Whig Club and the Committee of Observation seemed at odds with each other, at least in public. One of the club’s more prominent targets was Baltimore County sheriff Robert Christie. The club’s complaint against Christie was ceremonial. To solemnize the county’s support of the Declaration of Independence, the Committee of Observation had planned a ceremony that would culminate with the county sheriff’s reading of the Declaration from the courthouse steps. The committee informed Sheriff Christie about his role, and he had promised to perform his part in the pageant, but when the time came, he failed to appear.³⁶

The sheriff soon received anonymous letters so threatening that he sought the protection of the Committee of Observation, claiming that he “had reason to be apprehensive of violence being offered to him . . . on account of his not attending to read the Declaration of Independence on Monday last.” He feared that he might be forced to resign as sheriff. The committee expressed its “utter disapprobation of all threats or violence being offered to any persons whatever” and called on the town’s citizens “to assist them in their endeavors to preserve the peace and good order of society, and to prevent all riots and tumults, and personal abuse and violence to individuals.”³⁷

Sheriff Christie had family and business connections that compounded the suspicions of disloyalty aroused by his failure to read the Declaration. A year earlier, a letter had been intercepted from James Christie, Jr. (a business partner and probably a cousin of the sheriff) addressed to another kinsman—Lieutenant Colonel Gabriel Christie of His Majesty’s Sixtieth Regiment, stationed at Antigua. The letter complained about the “terrible confusion here with our politicks . . . and that, added to other things, makes me wish myself out of the Province . . . We have some violent fanatical spirits among us, who do every thing in their power to run things to the utmost extremity, and they are so far gone, that we moderate people are under the necessity of uniting for our defence, after being threatened with expulsion, loss of life, &c. for not acceding to what we deem treason and rebellion . . . A part of yours or any other Regiment, I believe, would keep us very quiet.”³⁸ This was the portion of the incriminating letter entered in the committee’s records. The full text did not appear until James Christie gave it to the Maryland Journal about a week later. It began with Christie’s apology to his cousin in Antigua for not responding to earlier letters. He would have written sooner, he said, “had I not met with the greatest misfortune in the power of fate to inflict on me, in the loss of the wife of my soul, on the 15th of December last, that has almost put me out of my power to mind any thing for some time past, and all my fortitude is scarce sufficient to bear me up.” His wife had died in childbirth, “and the dear little infant died a few days after its mother.”³⁹ At the time of his alleged offense, in other words, Christie may have been too disabled by grief to conspire against the revolutionary authorities.

The Committee of Observation summoned James Christie to explain his incriminating letter, but he pleaded ill health and asked for a postponement until he was no longer bedridden. The committee sent a delegation to his house to inquire whether the letter to Gabriel Christie was indeed his. He admitted that it was, and again requested that any proceedings on the subject be postponed. But the committee refused his request and “immediately gave him notice” that the proceedings would proceed. He was represented by his kinsman, Sheriff Robert Christie.⁴⁰

At the committee’s next meeting, Sheriff Christie “declared that James Christie was very sorry for the letter he had wrote to Lieut. Colonel Christie, that he did not mean any harm by it.” A delegation of committee members visited James Christie to inquire about those “moderate people . . . uniting for our defence”—a possible act of sedition. Christie responded that there had never been any association for mutual defense and the idea had been dropped because he and his friends believed “that no threats worth notice had been thrown against them.”⁴¹

The Committee of Observation ruled that James Christie’s crime was of “so dangerous and atrocious a nature” that it referred the case to the state’s representatives in the Continental Congress. They also declared him “an enemy of this Country, and all persons are desired to break off all connections and intercourse with him.” In the meantime, the committee placed a nine-man guard at his house; Christie was required to pay each of them five shillings for every 24 hours that they kept him under surveillance. The guards were removed only when five reputable citizens, including Sheriff Christie, guaranteed that he would not leave the province.⁴² The Maryland congressional delegation referred Christie’s case to the provincial convention, which fined Christie £500 and ordered that he “be expelled and banished from the Province forever.”⁴³

Sheriff Christie, who had repeatedly represented his kinsman before the Committee of Observation, remained behind in Baltimore, not only an object of suspicion, but a highly conspicuous officer of county government. The request that he read the Declaration of Independence from the courthouse steps may well have been a test of loyalty. The Committee of Observation’s injunction against “riots and tumults” in July 1776 shielded him for a time, but as the Revolution moved from Declaration to bloody military engagements, animosity toward British sympathizers hardened.

In December, Sheriff Christie received another threatening letter. This one was signed “Legion,” the Whig Club’s code name. It warned Christie that unless he left Maryland “within six days your life shall be sacrificed by an injured people.” Instead of turning again to the Committee of Observation, the sheriff met with some of the Whigs at a local tavern to plead for an extra day, but the club members seemed so close to violence that Sheriff Christie immediately fled to New York.⁴⁴ He left behind a list of the men he had confronted at the tavern. They included a member of the Committee of Observation, a Baltimore County delegate to the provincial convention, and several militia officers.⁴⁵

As the Whig Club expanded its campaign of intimidation, the Council of Safety in Annapolis wrote to Samuel Purviance and his colleagues on the Committee of Observation, urging them to take action against the club before Baltimore was reduced to “anarchy and the end of all regular Government.” There is no record of a committee response. Apparently, Purviance and his colleagues were less concerned about the club’s rampages than were the moderates in Annapolis. By August 1776, the club was conducting full-scale military operations, with two artillery pieces and as many as 100 men, against the barricaded estate of Dr. Henry Stevenson, brother of the pioneering merchant and physician who had shown Baltimore a path to prosperity. Henry Stevenson was a pioneer of a different sort. He had introduced smallpox inoculation to Maryland and turned his estate, “Parnassus,” into a hospital where patients could recover from the symptoms that followed “variolation”—an early method of immunization. It was here, in his mansion, that Stevenson, along with nine of his friends, was barricaded.⁴⁶

An informant, merchant Cumberland Dugan, had accused Henry Stevenson of making uncomplimentary remarks about “all Congresses, Conventions, Councils of Safety, and Committees,” and charged that he “also had been guilty of sundry other practices inimical to American liberty.” The Committee of Observation summoned Dr. Stevenson to explain himself, but had to postpone the hearing because Dugan had left Baltimore on business before he could provide the particulars needed to back up his accusations. Stevenson never faced the committee. He managed to elude the forces that surrounded his estate and reached the British army in New York, where he became a military surgeon. At the end of the war, he turned down a permanent position as a medical officer, and in 1786 he returned to Baltimore, redeemed his estate (which had been confiscated by Maryland’s revolutionary authorities), and reopened his smallpox hospital. He died in 1814 at the age of 93.⁴⁷