TRIAL BY COMBAT
BOOMTOWN BALTIMORE EXPANDED so rapidly that it had little time to plan beyond the present. There was no accurate map of the city. In 1784, the legislature had authorized the town commissioners to “make a correct survey of the city.” The project was never completed, though one of the surveyors hired to do the job produced a fragment that covered Fell’s Point, the Basin, and parts of the Jones Falls. It was one of a patchwork of maps that covered successive additions to the town. Their disjointedness reflected the situation on the ground. The “streets, lanes, and alleys” of the additions had been laid out with little regard to the existing street system of Baltimore, and Baltimore failed to correct such mismatches. In 1792, the legislature stepped in to authorize the extension of some city streets to the west, because all the traffic from that direction on its way to the Centre Market, or “Marsh Market,” converged on one thoroughfare—Market (now Baltimore) Street—described as “often so crowded with cars, waggons, and drays that there is not sufficient room for the inhabitants to pass and repass to and from said market.”1
The city could not see itself clearly, and it expanded blindly until it encountered some snag, like the one on Baltimore Street. A few commercially produced maps of Baltimore were available in the 1790s, but as Richard Fox points out, they were “not connected with any authorized surveying or planning system” and therefore of “little value for resolving property disputes and of no assistance for city planning.” But once framed, the commercial maps could hang with other works of art that adorned the walls of the town’s parlors and drawing rooms. Shortly after the city received its municipal charter in 1796, the mayor directed the street commissioners to produce a general survey of Baltimore, but the commissioners were preoccupied with the more immediate tasks of adjudicating disputes about property lines or hiring contractors to install water pumps and pave streets. They never got around to the survey. Finally, in 1812, the city council approved a contract with Thomas Poppleton, an Englishman and a stranger to the city, to produce a “Correct Plat of the City as it is at present improved” for a sum not exceeding $1,000, a sum soon exceeded.2
Poppleton was selected by the board of city commissioners and the mayor, but the decision was not unanimous. One commissioner, Henry Stauffer, campaigned strenuously for another candidate—Jehu Bouldin, a local surveyor who had conducted at least 63 surveys in and around Baltimore City, many for the commissioners themselves. He started his company in 1790, but his family had been in the surveying business since the mid-seventeenth century. He underbid the competition by $50, confident that his familiarity with the area would enable him to complete the project more cheaply than out-of-town competitors.3
Richard Fox suggests that Bouldin lost the job to Poppleton because the ordinance calling for the survey specified that it be conducted by “an experienced and skillful artist.”4 Bouldin may have been a solid surveyor, but he was no artist. Poppleton submitted a work sample tinted with watercolors and decorated with tiny depictions of local landmarks and buildings. The council wanted a work of art, like the maps that already hung in Baltimore homes, but a work of art that was also drawn to scale, with details down to the boundaries of lots.
MAPPING POLITICS
Trouble between Poppleton and the commissioners developed almost immediately. A document submitted by Poppleton outlined the procedures that he would follow. Someone—perhaps a commissioner or a clerk—scratched out every provision but one. It said that the commissioners, with the approval of the mayor, “are at liberty at any moment—or in any stage of the Business to stop the proceedings.”5
Poppleton’s first test came a few days after his appointment. He was summoned to meet the commissioners between Charles and Light Streets to establish the boundary between two lots—but not just any lots. One of them belonged to former mayor James Calhoun; the other, to a city councilman, James Carey. Poppleton was to use a compass to locate the corner of Light and Camden Streets, which the commissioners had marked with a wooden peg eight years earlier. Poppleton missed the peg by 11 feet, 5 inches. According to the surveyor, the problem was the compass, which was not a reliable surveying instrument. The meeting moved to Charles Street, where Poppleton was unable to find a property line. The ordeal went on for the better part of three days. The commissioners finally “found the Locations so questionable as to Inaccuracies that they could not find themselves at liberty in Conscience to confirm the same.” Poppleton sent a note to the board declining to serve as a “private Surveyor” for the city. He had signed on to conduct a general survey of the city, not to resolve disputes about property lines.6
Poppleton next wrote to the mayor suggesting that the task assigned him by the commissioners had been contrived to portray him as professionally incompetent. But he charged that the test of his abilities had been rigged because he was not allowed to use his own surveying practices “founded on an improved & scientific method now in general use in civic & military surveying in Europe.” He proposed that the mayor “allot a section of the City as the trial.” He would map the area, and when he was finished, the council could judge the results.7
Mayor Edward Johnson called the city council into special session to address “the difficulties which have occurred in attempting to carry into effect the law authorizing . . . a survey of the city.” The mayor pointed out that Poppleton’s surveying practices differed from those specified in law and required “a special reference to the wisdom & decision of the City Council.” He added that “however anxious we may be to encourage an artist of superior talents,” the essential consideration was whether the project could “be made to serve a useful & valuable purpose.”8
The city’s attempt to form a clear picture of itself dissolved in conflict. According to the mayor, “Such a contrariety in the sentiments of the board existed as to the proper mode of effecting the views and wishes of the city council as to render it impossible to proceed.” In the meantime, someone had apparently taken up Poppleton’s offer to show what he could do on a part of the city. Relying on “the patronage of a few individuals,” the mayor reported, Poppleton “commenced the undertaking and has sent me a specimen of the work for your inspection.”9
A joint committee of the council attempted to resolve the “contrariety” that impeded the survey. Its report, which repeatedly referred to Poppleton as “the Artist,” was a one-sided vindication of the English surveyor. The committee implied that the commissioners’ hostility toward Poppleton erupted because the surveyor found errors in some of the board’s old “establishments.” The committee attributed such mistakes to the commissioners’ employment of different surveyors using different instruments instead of relying on one man operating “in the best manner the latest improvements in surveying admit.” That man, they concluded, should be Poppleton. Extending his expertise to the entire city would achieve an accuracy and consistency not previously attained. The committee drafted an ordinance requiring the board of city commissioners to provide Poppleton with all the data that he needed for his survey of the city. The commissioners, however, would no longer supervise his work, which he was to perform under the direction of the mayor. When he was done, his map of the city would be reviewed not by the commissioners but by “three Persons to be appointed by the Mayor.”10
The proposed ordinance was defeated. The commissioners then asked the mayor to approve their decision to replace Poppleton with Jehu Bouldin. Poppleton’s refusal to work on anything but the “general Survey” seems to have been the chief justification for their decision. They argued that making “establishments” to clarify disputed property lines was essential to the larger project of mapping the city as a whole. The original contract had not required Poppleton to make such “private” surveys, but commissioners subsequently drafted a “Stipulation of Contract” that added this duty to Poppleton’s responsibilities.11
Poppleton, however, was still in the game. In July 1812, he wrote to the board of assessors (appointed and overseen by the commissioners) to inform it that he had completed a survey of a portion of the city soon to be affected by the opening of a new street. It may well have been the work he had done “under the patronage of a few individuals” while the council considered his contract. Poppleton offered to provide this survey to the assessors at almost no cost if they would retain him to make “a general Plan of the whole district.” But the assessors did not hire him for the larger survey. Poppleton surrendered. He wrote to the board claiming that “it is therefore your Body Gentlemen who have declined entering into the engagement, which consequently falls to the ground.”12
Baltimore’s failure to produce a map of itself in 1812 was symptomatic of the city’s chronic incapacity to conceive of itself as a whole, rather than a collection of “streets, lanes, and alleys.” Under the city charter, the mayor appointed the board of city commissioners, but he seems to have exercised almost no control over it. The city council was clearly divided about Poppleton’s work, and though Commissioner Stauffer may have swayed his colleagues to fire Poppleton, there was plentiful “contrariety” among the commissioners themselves.
ANGLO-ANIMOSITIES
Baltimore abruptly abandoned its disputatious attempts at mapmaking in order to make war. For many Baltimoreans, the hostilities could not come soon enough. In 1807, the USS Chesapeake had sailed out of the Gosport shipyard near Norfolk, Virginia, its guns still not mounted. The British frigate Leopard intercepted it. A messenger from the Leopard demanded that a party from the English ship be permitted to board the Chesapeake to search for British deserters. The Chesapeake’s commander refused. The Leopard fired a broadside into the American ship, killing three seamen and wounding others. The Chesapeake struck its colors. The Leopard’s commander refused the Chesapeake’s surrender. He had three men removed from the Chesapeake, leaving the ship to limp back to Norfolk with its dead.13
Baltimore’s merchants called a town meeting that resolved to support whatever actions President Jefferson took in response to the outrage.14 Other meetings in other towns registered similar sentiments. And there would be further provocations. Baltimore’s merchants, seamen, and ship owners had sailed into the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Jefferson administration had been determined not to antagonize the combatants. But Senator Samuel Smith was willing to risk their enmity on behalf of his city’s merchants. He recast a bill to protect American shipping against Morocco’s Barbary Pirates into a measure requiring naval protection of American merchant ships against any nation—meaning Britain in particular. The administration also attempted to curb American trade with Haiti to avoid offending the French, who were trying to win back their former colony. Baltimore merchants resented the threat to their trade with the new nation, and Smith spoke up for them.15
Two years later, however, Smith was a leading advocate of Jefferson’s trade embargo that kept Baltimore’s ships in port. The embargo came at a time when it added little to the burdens borne by the city’s mercantile class. French privateers and British warships were devastating the town’s merchant fleet. Senator Smith’s own firm suffered serious losses. He argued that total cessation of American commerce would starve French and British Caribbean colonies and force both nations to treat American shipping more respectfully.16
Baltimore’s Republican merchants initially welcomed the embargo. They continued to support it even when it failed to alter British and French policies.17 There was much talk of turning to manufacturing as a substitute for diminished trade. William Patterson, a local merchant whose 12 ships lay idle in port, wrote to a New York newspaper inviting any persons with knowledge of cotton or woolen manufactures to turn their expertise to practical account in Baltimore.18 The enthusiasm for manufactures helped to sustain local support of the embargo. But enthusiasm was not actuality. Though a few factories appeared in and around the city, the embargo brought only small steps toward its industrial future.19
As the city’s economy declined, support for the embargo faded, but animosity toward Britain thrived. An English journeyman shoemaker expressed views partial to his homeland. A mob tarred and feathered him, then hauled him in a cart from the center of the city to the tip of Fell’s Point and back. Some members of the mob were arrested and sentenced to fines and imprisonment. All were pardoned. In 1809, some British seamen jumped ship in Annapolis and traveled to Baltimore, where they were arrested at the request of the English consul. Amid public clamor, the court released them on a writ of habeas corpus.20 Hostility toward Britain was soon blunted by the attacks of French privateers on American ships—all the more galling since Baltimore shipyards had outfitted some of the French commerce raiders.21
In 1812, one month before Congress declared war on Britain, exasperated Baltimoreans were ready to fight, and not especially particular about the choice of an adversary. Delegates elected in a town meeting sent a resolution to President Madison urging that the country go to war with Britain or France or both, with a slight preference for Britain.22 As soon as war was declared, local merchants lined up for the letters of marque that authorized them to arm their ships and operate as privateers. Within six months, 42 privateers had sailed from Baltimore. By war’s end, Baltimore had sent out more privateers than any other US port. About a fifth of the city’s population had investments or livelihoods in legal piracy.23 Other cities avoided association with privateers because they recognized that it invited British attack. The New Bedford Mercury advised against welcoming privateers to its town’s port: “Let them fit and refit at that Sodom of our country, called Baltimore.”24
URBAN WARFARE
Baltimore’s most immediate act of war, however, was another riot—the most deadly so far.25 The spark was an editorial attack on the American declaration of war against Britain, written by Alexander C. Hanson, Federalist publisher of the Baltimore Federal Republican. Hanson’s paper denounced the war: “ ‘Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep.’ Without funds, without taxes, without an army, navy, or adequate fortifications . . . our rulers have promulgated a war against the clear and decided sentiments of a vast majority of the nation.”26
A crowd destroyed the paper’s press and demolished its office building. The first fatality occurred when a member of the mob, tearing out a window, fell from an upper story. Mayor Johnson wandered ineffectually through the mob, addressing the rioters one by one, trying to dissuade them from further violence.27 Hanson fled, but continued to publish his paper from Georgetown, stoking the fury that had triggered the original attack. In the meantime, mobs sought out others suspected of English sympathies. One tradesman whose shop sign included the words “from London” fled the city, and rioters demolished several ships at Fell’s Point thought to be carrying provisions to Britain or its allies.28 None of these acts of destruction exceeded the limits implicit in earlier riots. But the mob took on a life of its own. It reassembled almost every night for more than a month, roaming the streets and attacking targets that sparked its members’ racial, class, ethnic, and religious animosities.29
Hanson slipped back into Baltimore, determined to take a stand against the city’s pro-war Republicans and convinced that the mob would disintegrate if met with the stern response that the Republican city government had been unwilling to adopt. Hanson and as many as 30 well-armed allies occupied a building on Charles Street, converting it into a combined fortress and distribution center for his paper. The next issue of the Federal Republican carried an attack on municipal officials for their failure to contain the rioters. The paper’s masthead stated that it was published at “No. 45 So. Charles St.,” inviting an attack on the building where Hanson and his friends waited, armed and barricaded.30
A rock-throwing mob gathered outside the building as night fell. Hanson’s force responded by firing blank cartridges or warning shots. The mob scattered, but only temporarily. When it reconvened, the confrontation escalated into an exchange of real gunfire. One of the Federalists in the house was wounded, and two members of the mob were killed. The rioters positioned a cannon in front of the house. General John Stricker, the city’s militia commander, called out a squadron of cavalry. He and the mayor persuaded the barricaded Federalists that their best hope of survival was to allow the troops to escort them to the city jail. On the following day, General Stricker called out a force of nearly 1,000 men to protect the jail from a rumored mob attack. Fewer than 50 soldiers reported, almost all of them Federalists. Stricker dismissed them, since they were not numerous enough to protect the jail, and their known political affiliation might only inflame the antifederalist mob. Mayor Johnson tried to block the entrance to the jail, but was swept aside. The rioters stormed in and killed General James Lingan, an aged veteran of the Revolution, and beat eight other Federalists unconscious with clubs. Among the wounded was Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee, father of Robert E. Lee. The elder Lee later published an account of the riot, hinting that local civil and military officials were cooperating or conniving with the rioters. He was one of those left in a pile on the street, where the injured were repeatedly stabbed. Members of the mob poured hot candle wax into victims’ eyes. Some survived only by pretending they were dead; others, by mingling with the mob. Some of those who played dead were rescued by physicians who claimed that they needed the “cadavers” for instruction or experimentation.31
Even at the time, there were those—such as the eulogist at General Lingan’s funeral—who believed that the riot opened a new and ominous stage in public conduct. The actions of the Baltimore mob had prompted protest meetings far from Baltimore, and in the elections three months later, reaction to the riot helped Federalists take a majority of the Maryland House of Delegates, the governorship, and one seat in the US Senate. Alexander Hanson was elected to the House of Representatives. The riot, wrote Scharf, “left a stigma on the city, which bore for a long time the name of ‘mobtown.’ ”32
TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING
Baltimore had come through the Revolution virtually untouched. In the War of 1812, it stood in the thick of the fighting. In 1814, English troops and ships arrived outside Baltimore, fresh from their rout of the American militia at Bladensburg and their unopposed entry into Washington, where they burned the Capitol, the White House, and other public buildings. Baltimore, with its warehouses and merchant ships, would make an even richer prize, and there was a score to settle. The city’s privateers had captured or sunk about 500 British ships since the start of the war. The British also knew that several American warships were under construction in Baltimore. The most significant was the Java, important not just because it carried 60 guns but because it was to be commanded by America’s naval hero of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry.33 Waiting for them in Baltimore was Samuel Smith, a Revolutionary veteran who was now a major general in command of a militia division.34
Francis Scott Key would never have been able to proclaim that “our flag was still there” had it not been for an extraordinary mobilization of Baltimore’s civilians to make their city defensible. The town was unprepared because the threat seemed remote. Even Samuel Smith assumed that most of the war would be fought at sea. A local regiment had been sent off to support the American invasion of Canada. At the end of 1812, the British had declared a blockade of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, but it was only when British ships entered the Chesapeake and dropped anchor at Hampton Roads in February 1813 that Baltimore’s peril became tangible. In fact, the threat may have been less than it seemed. The British ships carried insufficient troops to occupy any cities, only a raiding party intended to create enough panic on the Chesapeake to induce the Americans to divert their forces from the invasion of Canada.35
As a military venture, the enterprise was sensible enough, but its political consequences worked against British interests. The presence of an enemy fleet in the Chesapeake engendered a sense of threat that aroused Baltimoreans to improve the defenses of their city. It also lent urgency to their pleas for assistance in Washington and Annapolis. By itself, however, the atmosphere of alarm would have accomplished little without Major General Samuel Smith, US senator, who had the political sensibilities and connections to exploit it.
Had the British attacked Baltimore in 1813, they would probably have destroyed the city. Fort McHenry, at the tip of Whetstone Point, guarded the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor. It was held by 52 officers and men, and critical elements of its defenses had deteriorated since its construction in the 1790s. The earthworks and artillery batteries that would have faced an invading fleet had washed away. There were at least 60 cannons in the fort, but most were scattered on the ground, not yet mounted on gun carriages, and the carriages had yet to be built—a project that required tons of seasoned oak or mahogany and skilled carpenters. If a British fleet got past Fort McHenry, Baltimore could be leveled by naval bombardment.36
Major General Samuel Smith
The Northwest Branch of the Patapsco converges with Back River as it enters the Patapsco’s main channel to form a peninsula, North Point. The Point reaches out to the shipping lane in the Chesapeake, where merchantmen once anchored to unload their cargoes into lighters. The deep water that accommodated these merchant ships also served the 74-gun ships of the line that were the most intimidating vessels in the British fleet. The end of the Point, 16 miles east of Baltimore, provided the British with a place to land troops under the protection of their naval guns. A day’s march up the Point would place British forces in position to attack Baltimore from the east. Samuel Smith recognized the threat. He paid Jehu Bouldin $20 for the surveyor’s map of North Point.37
The proximity of the British aroused concern, which Smith exploited to get attention in Washington and Annapolis. A month after the enemy fleet entered the Chesapeake, Smith took Governor Levin Winder on an inspection tour of the city’s defenses. Winder authorized Smith “to take the earliest opportunity of making the necessary arrangement of the militia for the defense of the Port of Baltimore.” The order was ambiguous. It did not clearly call Smith or his militia to mobilize in the active service of the state. But Smith used it to seize the greatest possible discretion. Even before Winder had returned to Annapolis, Smith wrote to Secretary of War Armstrong demanding reinforcements for Fort McHenry. He noted that the proximity of the British fleet had “caused apprehension for the safety of this important City and has induced Governor Winder (now here) to issue an order directed to me to ‘make the necessary arrangements for the defence of the Port of Baltimore.’ ” Winder had actually ordered Smith to prepare the militia for the defense of Baltimore. By omitting this detail, Smith conveyed the impression that he had been placed in overall command of Baltimore’s defenses, including Fort McHenry and its garrison.38
It is doubtful whether an ordinary major general could have carried off this arrogation of authority so deftly. But Smith was a practiced politician, and his militiamen were a substantial part of his political base. Their loyalty reinforced his military authority. As a US senator, Smith also had influence in Washington. He was chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Naval Affairs and a member of the Military Affairs Committee. When he pled Baltimore’s case for money or munitions before the secretaries of the army or navy, he got a respectful hearing.39
The federal authorities, however, had little to offer. Alexander Hanson had not been far wrong in charging that the government had started its war “without funds, or taxes, without an army, navy, or adequate fortifications.” Baltimore would have to provide for itself. Above all, it needed funds to fortify the city and to equip and pay troops to defend it. In this respect, Smith the businessman was in a position to be useful. A successful merchant, he sat on the boards of two local banks and held stock in several others.40
Smith drew his influence from his institutional connections, but his power was personal rather than institutional. Baltimore’s public institutions had never commanded much authority in any case. They had been unable to reach agreement on how to map the city, and their officers stood by helplessly as fellow citizens turned homicidal in the riot of 1812.41 Baltimore’s leaders could not reliably command their own people. Smith could—partly because of the cause to which he summoned them and partly because he was Samuel Smith.