Chapter 4

BALTIMORE AT WAR

IN 1776, IT MUST HAVE SEEMED INCONCEIVABLE that Tories such as Henry Stevenson could ever live in peace with Baltimore’s revolutionaries. In Baltimore and much of Maryland, Loyalists and Revolutionaries were engaged in something just short of civil war. The Loyalists were too numerous to imprison and not as easily intimidated as Rev. Edmiston or Captain Button. The Committee of Observation’s authority may have seemed fearsome at first, but it lacked the muscle to enforce its revolutionary pronouncements. Defiant “non-associators” refused to pay the fines levied for their refusal to enroll in the Association of Freemen.

The Committee of Observation might have acted with greater efficacy if it had inherited a more efficacious political system. But Baltimore’s unelected town commissioners had lacked the authority to govern even in relatively tranquil times. The Mechanical Company compensated for some of the limitations of township government, but its usefulness to the committee was limited. Many of its able-bodied members were away fighting the British, and those who remained in town could not provide a respectable alternative to the Whig Club because, like Robert Purviance, they were members of the Whig Club.

In November 1776, Samuel Purviance sent a letter to the Council of Safety in Annapolis concerning the circumstances that his committee faced in Baltimore Town and County. “We are sorry to inform you,” he wrote, “that the spirit of opposition to the measures which have been adopted for our common safety, grows extreamly daring and outragious in this county, so that the officers appointed to carry into execution the Resolves of the convention dare not proceed without further assistance: And the militia threaten to lay down their arms unless the fines of non-enrollers who daily insult them are strictly collected.”¹

Captain James Bosley was one of the officers appointed by the Committee of Observation to collect the fines owed by non-associators. In November 1776, Bosley’s duties took him to the farm of Vincent Trapnell outside Baltimore Town. According to Bosley, as soon as Trapnell caught sight of him, “he swore he would blow my brains out.” Trapnell ran to his house to get his gun, but his wife stood in the doorway, and her “urging and begging” deterred him. Instead, Bosley testified, Trapnell “picked up a large stick swearing and cursing and with both hands struck my head. I fended it off as much as I could with a small cane I rode with.” At this point, Bosley announced that he would leave the property and refer Trapnell’s case to the Committee of Observation, but Trapnell chased him across his fields, throwing rocks and declaring that “he was fully determined to kill” Bosley. A neighbor opened a gate in Trapnell’s fence so that Bosley could escape. At a safe distance, Bosley reined in his horse and repeated his warning that he would report Trapnell’s defiance to the committee. Trapnell “answer’d the committee and I might kiss his arse and be damned, pulling his coat apart behind, for a parcel of roguish damn’d sons of bitches.”²

In some quarters the committee got no respect, and its inability to discipline Tories seems to have reduced its ability to maintain the discipline of the militia. Samuel Baxter, one of Captain Bosley’s colleagues as a collector of fines from non-associators, wrote to the Maryland Council of Safety requesting the assistance of the militia in carrying out his duties because “it cant be expeted that any won man can manag such a set of toreys . . . they have all swore to kill me if I persist to distres them.” If help were not forthcoming, “plees to let me now,” he asked, “that I may resine my warent.”³

In Baltimore Town itself, Loyalists and members of the Whig Club fought gun battles in the streets.⁴ The local Committee of Observation did little to rein in the club, perhaps because it lacked the capacity to do so, or because the club performed essential political tasks, though by means inconsistent with the committee’s civic respectability as a pillar of public order. The Council of Safety in Annapolis seems not to have understood this. On the same day that they responded to Samuel Baxter’s plea for help, the council wrote to Baltimore’s Committee of Observation complaining, once again, about the Whigs’ use of threats to banish Baltimoreans of doubtful loyalty. This time the Whigs’ target had been a member of a militia company “who is regularly inrolled and otherwise well behaved,” yet the Whigs ordered him to leave town. The council’s intent, it said, was “not to countenance Tories or disaffected persons, but we wish the peace of the State to be preserved, and that all offenders should be punished according to the law of the land.”⁵ The council members seemed unaware that they were presiding over a revolution in which the law of the land might occasionally cease to operate. The council’s response to Baxter’s request for militia support was no more helpful. The committee could do nothing, it wrote, because Baxter had provided “no proofs or depositions to lay a foundation for our proceeding.”⁶

In January 1777, the Council of Safety wrote to the Baltimore committee on behalf of Melchior Keener, founding president of the Mechanical Company. Three soldiers from the company of Captain Nathaniel Smith, “and others who came without any authority or warrant,” had searched and ransacked Keener’s home “and committed divers irregularities.” The council added that it took “for granted that the Whig Club had no hand in this riot.” The council may have taken too much for granted. Captain Smith was a member of the Whig Club.⁷ Complaints about the club’s outrages continued to reach Annapolis. The Council of Safety dispatched a new letter to the Baltimore Committee of Observation complaining about the club’s threat to public order. This time the complaint was backed up by three companies of militia. The committee responded that it was doing all it could. The militia companies, all commanded by Baltimoreans, refused to take action against the Whig Club. Most of the Whigs were members of the militia.⁸

The Whig Club may have miscalculated when it targeted the editor of the Maryland Journal. William Goddard was no Tory, but an article published in his newspaper over the name “Tom Tell-Truth” had offended the Whigs because it seemed to approve a peace proposal offered to the Americans by the British general William Howe. In fact, the piece was a derisive send-up of the general’s offer. The Whig Club, apparently, did not appreciate irony, even though an article on the page opposite Tell-Truth’s denounced the British peace offer. The Whigs demanded that Goddard reveal “Tom’s” identity. Goddard refused. The club sent armed men to conduct Goddard to the club’s meeting room at a local tavern, but the editor remained defiant. The club voted to banish him from Baltimore.⁹

Goddard left town after issuing a broadside naming 18 of the Whig Club members who had ordered his exile. He announced that he would petition the state legislature “for Protection against the Miscreants, who have been guilty of the flagitious Practices by which I am now suffering.” The Maryland Journal continued to publish under the supervision of Goddard’s sister and de facto coeditor, Mary Katherine. In Annapolis, Goddard presented a “memorial” to the Maryland Council of Safety demanding its legal protection and the censure of the Whig Club. The council referred the case to the state assembly. A committee of the assembly found that the “proceedings [of the Whig Club] are a manifest Violation of the Constitution, directly contrary to the Declaration of Rights.” One of Goddard’s advocates in the assembly was Samuel Chase, later a prominent Federalist politician and a justice of the US Supreme Court. Chase was also Tom Tell-Truth. With the assembly’s assent, the governor issued a proclamation declaring that “bodies of men associating together . . . for the purpose of usurping any of the powers of government [are] . . . unlawful assemblies.” The Whigs’ attacks soon subsided, but the proclamation may have played a smaller role in this result than the fact that many of the militiamen in the club were called to active military service.¹⁰

CONGRESS COMES TO BALTIMORE

By the end of 1776, Philadelphia was under threat of British occupation, and the Continental Congress abandoned the city for Baltimore. It held its sessions in a tavern at the west end of Market Street.¹¹ John Adams enjoyed the sumptuous dinners at the country seats of Baltimore’s merchants, but noted in his diary that the residents seemed too concerned with making money: “Landjobbers, speculators in land; little generosity to the public, little public spirit.”¹²

Delegates also had criticisms of a more tangible nature. Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut wrote to his wife expressing the hope that Congress’s time in Baltimore “might not be long for it is infinitely the most dirty Place I was ever in. No One can Walk about here but in Boots.”¹³ John Adams noted that “the Streets [are] the muddiest I ever saw. This is the dirtiest place in the World—our Salem, and Portsmouth are neat in Comparison.” But Adams, at least, understood why Baltimore made such a poor appearance. “The Inhabitants are excusable because they had determined to pave the Streets before this War came on, since which they have laid the Project aside . . . This place is not incorporated. It is neither a City, Town, nor Burrough, so that they can do nothing with Authority.”¹⁴ Adams, of course, was mistaken about Baltimore’s status as a town, but he may have had in mind the self-governing townships of Massachusetts that had an authority over local matters far exceeding Baltimore’s.

The state assembly tried to minimize the muck with yet another act making it illegal for geese and pigs to wander the town’s still unpaved streets. It also ordered some of the streets widened to accommodate increased wartime traffic.¹⁵ But the persistently swampish condition of Baltimore’s thoroughfares remained. The assembly in Annapolis lacked the capacity to make Baltimore presentable and denied Baltimore’s government the power to do so itself.¹⁶

Apart from the mud, the chief congressional complaint about Baltimore was the cost of living. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania wrote to his wife that “every article of provision—cloathing and the common conveniences of life are 100 percent higher in this place than in Philadelphia.” But Rush seems to have been particularly impressed with the rapidity of Baltimore’s growth. “The town used to contain some 5000 inhabitants before the present war . . . It has for some years past vied with Philadelphia in commerce, and bids fair for being the most wealthy spot on the Continent.”¹⁷

The member of Congress who felt most at home in the town was Samuel Adams, principal event planner for the Boston Tea Party. He was a master of politics in the streets and a supporter of William Goddard’s American postal system. But in Samuel Purviance, Adams found a kindred spirit. To his wife, Elizabeth, Adams wrote that he was “exceedingly happy in an Acquaintance with Mr. Samuel Purviance a Merchant of this Place.” He and Purviance had corresponded previously, “but I never saw him till I came here. He is a sensible, honest and friendly Man, warmly attached to the American cause, and has particularly endeard himself to me by his great Assiduity in procuring Relief in this part of the Continent for the Town of Boston at a Time when her Enemies would have starved her by an oppressive Port bill.”¹⁸

Baltimore may have seemed a trial to members of the Continental Congress, but the congressional descent on Baltimore also created headaches for their hosts. Congress came to Baltimore with a retinue of civilian prisoners, Loyalists of sufficient importance to warrant congressional detention. Congress requested the local Committee of Observation to secure the prisoners “in a convenient room, under a guard . . . except the two Goodrich’s, who are to be committed to Gaol.”¹⁹ The Goodriches were members of a notorious family of Virginia turncoats who discovered that they could make more money as provisioners and privateers for the British than by supplying gunpowder to the rebels. An unspecified number of North Carolinians later joined them in jail.²⁰

A week after the Goodriches’ imprisonment, Congress received a report “that the present situation of the Prisoners is very disagreeable and dangerous to their health, on account of the Prison being much out of repair.” It responded with a resolution that “until the apartments in the Jail of Baltimore Town shall be repaired,” the prisoners should be removed “to different rooms in the Court-House, or wherever else safely locked up and secured.” Within only a week, an unspecified number of the congressional prisoners remaining in Baltimore’s jail had escaped. Congress resolved “that the Committee of Observation for Baltimore County be requested to direct immediate and strict search for the Prisoners . . . and to offer a reward for apprehending and securing said Prisoners, and that said Committee make inquiry into the conduct of the Gaoler, or any other person suspected of permitting or assisting their escape.”²¹ Baltimore did not make a good impression.

THE WAR BUSINESS

Baltimoreans, however, were making a great deal of money. Some small portion of it may have come from overcharging members of Congress for food and accommodations. But the Revolutionary War itself provided Baltimoreans with their most lucrative business opportunities. The embargo on trade with Britain eliminated some of the usual paths to profit, and Congress narrowed them further when, to secure a food supply for the Continental Army, it imposed a general embargo on the export of flour, grains, rice, bread, pork, bacon, livestock, and other items. Though exceptions were later permitted for shipments among American states—and though merchants tried to create their own exceptions by smuggling—governmental and military customers were among the few significant clients remaining to Baltimore’s commercial community.²² The only alternative to the business of warfare was the trade in tobacco. Once the mainstay of Maryland’s economy, tobacco was one of the few commodities for which the military and political authorities had no immediate use. Some merchants fell back on Maryland’s old standby to sustain themselves.²³

Feeding and equipping the Continental Army and Navy almost certainly yielded more profit than the tobacco trade. Baltimore became a major provisioner of the army, a depot for supplies of flour, iron, and salt, and premier shipbuilder for the navy.²⁴ The brothers Purviance became agents of Congress for “financial operations” essential to the revolutionary effort in the South.²⁵

Baltimore merchants Abraham and Isaac Van Bibber did business for the new republic far from their Baltimore base. Abraham moved to St. Eustatius, an island in the Dutch Antilles, notable for having fired the first salute to the new American flag. Its renown was well earned. Along with a love of liberty, the island’s merchants treasured the munitions business that came their way because of the American rebellion. Abraham’s brother, Isaac, owned The Hero of Baltimore, an armed sloop that also carried cargoes—in other words, a privateer. In November 1776, the Hero captured an English brigantine just beyond the guns of St. Eustatius, entered the harbor with its prize, and left not long after, its hold full of gunpowder, cannons, blankets, and assorted munitions to carry back to Baltimore. Abraham probably arranged the shipment for Isaac. He also arranged others, with a marked mercantile ingenuity. John Spear, a trader on the British island of Antigua, was the son of William Spear, a merchant of Baltimore and member of its Committee of Observation. Abraham Van Bibber served as middleman for a cargo of lumber and provisions from the elder Spear to the younger (patriotically forgoing the usual commission and sidestepping the embargo on exports to Britain or its possessions). In return, John Spear helped Van Bibber to assemble a cargo consisting of British manufactured goods, arms, and gunpowder to be shipped from Antigua through St. Eustatius to Baltimore.²⁶ The revolutionaries would use British munitions against British forces.

Abraham Van Bibber’s work at St. Eustatius ended abruptly. In 1777, the commander of the British squadron in the West Indies registered a complaint with the governor of St. Eustatius, alleging that Van Bibber was directing the operations of American privateers. Though the charges were never proven, Van Bibber remained in custody until he managed to escape and return to Baltimore.²⁷ But Baltimore’s trade with St. Eustatius would continue until the British invaded the island in 1781. In one 10-day period in January 1780, 18 of 22 ships clearing Baltimore harbor were headed for the Dutch island.²⁸

Baltimore’s shipbuilders stayed put in Baltimore, where they turned out both warships and merchant vessels. The first American cruisers were converted merchant ships, renamed the Wasp and the Hornet. They were fitted out and armed in Fell’s Point shipyards and sailed under local officers with local crews. The Hornet was the first ship to fly the American flag. Its unfurling, on October 29, 1775, was accompanied by fifes and drums; a crowd gathered, and by evening the Hornet had signed up a full crew.²⁹ The Continental Congress had created the American navy only 16 days earlier, but had not yet authorized the construction of any warships. The Hornet and Wasp belonged to the navy of Maryland. Fell’s Point also produced the first ship built expressly for the Continental Navy, the frigate Virginia, with 28 guns. As an agent of Congress, Samuel Purviance oversaw construction of the Virginia and secured the materials needed to build it.³⁰

The Americans had no large ships that could match those of the British navy. Their vessels had to carry their cargoes through a British blockade and were therefore designed to be fast and maneuverable. If the fast vessels were armed, they could also overtake and capture slow-moving British cargo ships. Building ships for running blockades and privateering became a Baltimore specialty.

Baltimore shipyards built 248 vessels commissioned as commercial predators.³¹ The vessels were early versions of the Baltimore clipper ships, though still known as “Virginia-built schooners.” The ships’ speed came at a cost. Not only was their cargo capacity limited, but they put their crews at greater risk than other ships of the time. The hull design, tall masts, heavy spars, and large sail area gave the clippers a disconcerting tendency to capsize bow-first and end-over-end when they ran before the wind. The weight of cannons increased this danger. By the early nineteenth century, sailors referred to such ships as “coffins.” Oddly, the risk of capsizing remained even when the clippers lay at anchor. If they were caught between a tidal current in one direction and a strong wind in the other, the ships were in danger of going bottom-up.³² To minimize weight, the clippers’ hulls were not strongly reinforced by timbers or bulkheads.

The seafaring population of Fell’s Point had more grievances against the British than most Baltimoreans. British commerce raiders and blockaders had already made victims of American ships and seamen before Baltimore started turning out privateers. For that reason, Robert Brugger suggests, the Point may have been a distinct stronghold of American patriotism,³³ which may have moved the Point’s sailors to take chances that most British seamen would never tolerate. But if patriotism were not a sufficient motive to serve at sea, crew members’ shares of the prizes captured by their fast ships might induce sailors to run risks posed by the flimsy hulls and capsizing tendencies of Baltimore clippers.

Privateering, shipbuilding, military procurement, and shipping all became vehicles of profit for Baltimoreans. The usual trade in tobacco and flour, though diminished, continued. In the Caribbean, flour was exchanged for arms, or for gold and silver that could be used to purchase arms.³⁴ Tobacco shipped across the Atlantic helped to establish the Revolution’s credit with European governments.³⁵ The result was explosive growth. Craftsmen, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and apprentices poured into Baltimore along with merchants, including six French commercial houses opened during or shortly after the war.³⁶ The population of Fell’s Point alone doubled between 1771 and 1783, and the Point’s slave population quadrupled, a reflection of the shipbuilders’ dependence on slave labor. During the course of the war, the population of Baltimore as a whole increased by about 50 percent, from approximately 6,000 to 9,000.³⁷

The wartime surge in wealth and population was due, in part, to Baltimore’s being the only major American port to escape British depredations. Its position near the head of the Chesapeake Bay protected it from sea raids and, since any British invasion fleet would have to travel the length of the Bay before reaching Baltimore, the town would be alerted long before the British arrived at the Patapsco. Other cities were less fortunately situated. New York was occupied by the British for most of the war. The British were forced out of Boston, but were able to disrupt that town’s shipping from their base at Halifax. Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah all experienced occupation at some point during the war. If their troop strength had been sufficient to hold Norfolk, the British might have been able to control both the Chesapeake and Baltimore. But instead of occupying Norfolk, they burned it.³⁸ All the better for Baltimore. The British had eliminated one of its commercial competitors. Johann Schoepf, a postwar visitor from Germany, observed that “the war, which elsewhere had an opposite effect, was favorable to the trade of Baltimore.”³⁹

TOWN IN PERIL

Baltimore did not completely avoid the shooting part of the Revolution. Its first scare came in March 1776, when a small British ship, the Otter, with 16 guns and 130 men, was sent up the Bay from Norfolk along with two armed tenders that could maneuver in shallow water. Its mission, apparently, was to neutralize the newly outfitted Wasp and Hornet. American pilot boats spotted the British force at the mouth of the Patuxent River and sailed up the Bay to alert Annapolis. The news led some residents of the provincial capital to move their families and portable possessions inland. As the Otter passed Annapolis, it was hailed by a man in a small boat. He was William Eddis, the letter-writing customs official, who carried a message from the proprietary governor, Robert Eden, asking what the Otter’s mission was. Its commander, Captain Matthew Squire, sent Eddis back to Annapolis with a disingenuous note in which he expressed regret that “the people of Annapolis should be under any Apprehensions from their Town being burnt . . . down; I must beg Leave to assure you Nothing of that Kind will happen from me; I am on a Cruise to procure fresh Provisions for the Kings Ships and . . . shall most readily pay the market Price.” But Squire had already seized several American ships with their cargoes, and nothing was said about purchase at market price.⁴⁰

A week after Captain Squire sent his note to Governor Eden, the Baltimore Committee of Observation interviewed Robert Brown, who had been captured by the Otter while crossing the Bay by boat. According to Brown, Captain Squire had announced that he intended to burn Baltimore.⁴¹ The alarm prompted militia companies from as far away as Pennsylvania to march to the town’s defense. A number of ships were sunk in the narrow channel leading to the Baltimore Basin. (These included vessels owned by Sheriff Robert Christie and Melchior Keener.)⁴² A new ship, the Defence, was still being outfitted at Fell’s Point. Its cannons arrived just days before the appearance of the Otter and were hastily mounted in preparation for the expected attack.⁴³

The Otter ran aground off Bodkin Point at the mouth of the Patapsco. Captain Squire relied on a pilot from Virginia who was unfamiliar with the waters of the Upper Bay. Nor were his men in fighting trim. “Ague and fever” had begun to spread through the Otter’s crew even before the ship left Norfolk. Six of Squire’s men died during passage up the Chesapeake. In Baltimore, hundreds of volunteers converged on Fell’s Point to serve on the Defence—so many that several smaller schooners were called into service to carry surplus defenders out to meet the Otter. Squire had managed to refloat his ship, but went aground again just as the American flotilla came into view. Once refloated, the Otter, its tenders, and their captured American merchant ships retreated down the Bay, leaving behind one of their prizes—the Molly, a ship loaded with flour and grain that had run aground.⁴⁴

Baltimore faced a more formidable invasion force in 1777, when a British fleet under the command of Vice-Admiral Richard Howe sailed down the Atlantic coast from New York and entered the Chesapeake. It consisted of transports for approximately 18,000 men, 300 cannons, and 1,000 cavalry horses. Twenty-five ships of the British navy escorted them. Baltimoreans prepared for an attack. A chain barred entry to the harbor. Behind it stood the frigate Virginia and the Maryland navy’s Defence. The British sailed by without a shot. Their destination was the head of the Chesapeake, where they landed troops to march on Philadelphia.⁴⁵

British operations in the Chesapeake never again extended as far north as Baltimore; Maryland and Virginia were relatively unscarred by the war, and their men and provisions helped to sustain the rebel forces.⁴⁶ General Henry Clinton, supported by Vice-Admiral Marriot Artbuthnot, planned another campaign in the Chesapeake in 1780, but news that a French fleet was sailing to the aid of the Americans led him to abandon his plans and divert his force to defend the British base of operations at New York. The British had long been apprehensive about French intervention on the side of the Americans. General Washington had consistently emphasized that the Revolution’s success on land depended on a “decisive Naval superiority,” which the Americans could not achieve on their own.⁴⁷

The Chesapeake emerged as a critical arena in the war. General Cornwallis left his secure base in Charleston and took his army to Yorktown, where he was boxed in by French and American troops and French ships. The British failure to take control of the Bay was Baltimore’s salvation. Baltimore’s good fortune, and the misfortunes of other American ports, marked the beginning of its golden age as the fastest growing town in the United States and, briefly, its third largest city.

The town’s political development, however, did not keep pace with its economic growth. Its political authorities were now elected, rather than appointed in Annapolis, but their exercise of authority was still restricted and largely unsupported by the powers-that-were in the colonial capital. Baltimore’s circumstances were by-products of location and timing. Its location as the westernmost port on the East Coast made it a vital link between inland markets and Atlantic trade—especially the grain trade. This geographic advantage helped to power its economic expansion, but the town’s timing was politically disadvantageous. It emerged after a colonial government had already taken root in Annapolis and denied Baltimore the capability to govern itself. The result was the underdevelopment of government institutions that might have kept order during the Revolution and provided more decorous accommodations for its residents and for members of the Continental Congress forced to abandon Philadelphia. Baltimore had to resort to unofficial political improvisation to meet essential needs for public order and safety.