BALTIMORE TRIUMPHANT
MAJOR GENERAL SMITH COMMANDED the Maryland militia’s Third Division, embracing four brigades of uneven quality. Two of them consisted of men from the rural counties west of Baltimore. Smith made no use of these in the defense of his city against the British. The better prepared of the two remaining brigades was the Third, commanded by Brigadier General John Stricker and made up of men from Baltimore City. Its 4,500 members were prepared to mobilize for the defense of the city with only an hour’s notice—if they chose to respond to the summons. The men of the Eleventh Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Tobias Stansbury, were drawn from parts of Baltimore County outside the city, and while they were not as well prepared to fight as the Third, Smith decided that they would improve with training.
Neither the state nor the federal government had officially called up the militia in response to the British threat, and the soldiers could not be paid for service. But militiamen were obliged to mobilize without pay for short periods of duty each year. Smith called a different regiment to active duty every week for training and preparation. Cavalry units patrolled both shores of the Patapsco to familiarize themselves with the terrain, and artillery companies trained on Fort McHenry’s big guns.1
The fort’s garrison consisted of regular army troops commanded by Major Lloyd Beall. As a regular army officer, he was not obliged to obey the commands of a militia officer, even a major general. Smith worried that the fort might be vulnerable to a night attack and wanted to station some of his men there. Beall refused to allow them to remain in the fort after nightfall. His soldiers were living there with their families, and the barracks were needed for wives and children. There was no room for the militia. Smith could not afford to object too vehemently. Beall controlled funds needed to improve the defenses of the fort, and Smith cooperated with him in the effort. Work gangs composed of both militiamen and civilians rebuilt the two batteries that once faced the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor, and a team of carpenters built gun carriages for the cannons that lay unmounted. Army Secretary John Armstrong ordered Beall to turn over to Smith 500 unused weapons stored at the fort.2
Work went forward on other fortifications as well. The eastern approaches to Baltimore were not protected against a possible British land attack made from North Point. Civilian laborers were conscripted to construct trenches and earthworks at Hampstead Hill, just east of the city (in today’s Patterson Park), as a last-ditch defensive line against a British land attack. The city was divided into four districts, and work crews from each district were to show up at the construction site one day in four. Those expected to serve as laborers were white men exempt from militia service and free black men, who were excluded from bearing arms as members of the militia. In addition, Baltimore slave owners were required to send their slaves to work on the defenses. Wheelbarrows, pick axes, shovels, and lumber were also conscripted.3
While General Smith prepared for the defense of Baltimore, the British fleet moved slowly up the Chesapeake, conducting raids on shore as they went. It gained little from these attacks, except to demonstrate to communities on the Bay that their government was incapable of defending them. Their larger purpose—consistent with the burning of Washington the following year—was “to bring the Republican government into such disrepute and scorn that it would have to make peace on British terms, or yield to a revolution favorable to British interests.” The raids, however, only seemed to stoke Americans’ hatred of the British. Even some British officers objected to the conduct of their troops. After a raid on Hampton, Virginia, Captain Sir Charles Napier complained that his superior officer “ought to have hanged several villains at Little Hampton; had he so done, the Americans would not have complained; but every horror was committed with impunity, rape, murder, pillage; and not a man punished!”4
AD HOC GOVERNMENT
On April 13, 1813, after several weeks of raids and destruction, the British fleet moved from the mouth of the Potomac toward Annapolis and Baltimore. On the same day, Baltimore’s mayor and city council voted to create a Committee of Public Supply. Its job was to serve as General Smith’s “purchasing agent”—to raise the money needed to arm, equip, and pay the soldiers under his command. Mayor Edward Johnson was the only elected official on the committee. One of its other members was Smith’s business partner, James A. Buchanan. The mayor and council immediately appropriated $20,000 for the use of the committee. General Smith had sent his aide, Major Isaac McKim, to meet with Armstrong to convey Smith’s request that the secretary call up part of the Maryland militia to meet the threat of British attack on Baltimore. Armstrong was not persuaded that the British fleet carried sufficient troops to make such an attack. He was probably right. But he sent Major McKim back to Smith with a letter promising to request that Governor Winder provide 2,000 of the state’s militiamen for the defense of Baltimore. Since the request was made in the name of the federal government, the federal government would be responsible for paying and provisioning these troops. Until the “drafted” militiamen were assembled and prepared for their duties, 2,000 soldiers from Smith’s division would stand in for the new troops.5
The Committee of Public Supply soon decided that it needed much more than the $20,000 appropriated by the city government. Instead of turning to the city council, the committee asked Baltimoreans to convene at the customary polling places, where the voters of each ward were to select four of their neighbors to attend a meeting in the city council chambers. The assembled representatives unanimously recommended that the mayor call the council into session to pass an ordinance “authorizing the borrowing of whatever sum of money may be required for the defence of the City of Baltimore not exceeding $500,000.” The city’s leaders undoubtedly hoped that authorities in Washington and Annapolis would reimburse them for expenditures made in defense of state and nation. But they were not certain and allowed that “a part may not be reimbursed by the General or State Governments.” If the city was left burdened with war debt, it was “but just and reasonable that all the property in the City” should be taxed to pay for Baltimore’s defense. Three of the assembled delegates drafted a petition to be circulated in the city, then submitted to the city council, and finally presented to the General Assembly with a request for “a Law to authorize the laying of a tax on all property aforesaid.”6
Mayor Johnson called the city council into session and explained that the Committee of Public Supply, “well knowing the restricted powers vested in you by your charter,” had convened a representative body—an ersatz city council—to recommend that the city incur up to half a million dollars in municipal debt to underwrite the defense of the city. “The monied institutions of our City,” the mayor reported, “with a liberality highly honorable to them have offered to loan any reasonable amount that the present exigency may require upon receiving such guarantee as for its reimbursement as we are able to give.”7
The “monied institutions” of Baltimore agreed to finance the city’s defense on the understanding that the mayor and council would petition the General Assembly for a significant extension of the municipality’s taxing authority. The condition promised something for everyone. It gave the banks a source of revenue to secure their loans; the state acquired a means to immunize itself against the war debts of Baltimore; and Baltimore would gain a substantial addition to the taxing authority it exercised under the charter granted by the General Assembly.
The General Assembly declined to play its assigned role in this arrangement, but the need to concoct such a scheme demonstrates the limitations of Baltimore’s municipal charter. Its restrictions led the council to cede authority for the defense of the city to the Committee of Public Supply instead of assuming the responsibility itself. It was clearly the reason for creating a shadow city council to endorse an extraordinary loan from the city’s banks—and to propose an extraordinary increase in the city’s taxing powers to generate the revenue needed to cover the debt. The pattern was familiar. Given the shortcomings of official institutions, Baltimore created unofficial institutions outside the limitations imposed by the city charter and state law.
While the municipality attempted to stretch its powers to meet the British threat, Samuel Smith faced a challenge to his position. The 2,000 militia troops “drafted” into service at the request of the secretary of war needed a commander. Governor Winder nominated a Baltimorean, Brigadier General Henry Miller, a regular army officer. Like the governor, Miller was a Federalist, and he was a close friend of Secretary Armstrong, who approved Miller’s nomination. When he did, it was no longer clear which general was in charge in Baltimore. Miller tried to get the Committee of Public Supply to acknowledge his authority, but its members responded with a pledge of support for Samuel Smith. Miller and Smith appealed to Armstrong to settle the question of command. Armstrong decided that Miller should be in charge unless Smith could show that Governor Winder had called him to active service before Miller’s appointment. Smith dispatched Major McKim on another political mission: to get the governor to confirm that Smith had been called to active duty in March, when the governor had asked him to make arrangements for the militia’s defense of Baltimore. Winder hesitated, but decided in favor of Smith, even though none of his orders had explicitly called Smith to active duty.8 To do otherwise might well have sparked a rebellion in Baltimore’s militia, Smith’s loyal political base, and would have gone against the clearly expressed wishes of the Committee of Public Supply, whose work was essential to Baltimore’s defense. Miller would command the “drafted” militia, but Smith would exercise overall command.
Just as Smith’s command solidified, the British fleet sailed past the Patapsco and headed for the Upper Bay. The local militia was demobilized, and Smith became a commander without troops. But the British presence had created the sense of urgency he needed to mobilize his forces and prepare the city’s defenses. In addition to the earthworks on Hampstead Hill and the rebuilding of Fort McHenry, Smith had ordered the construction of a battery at the Lazaretto and two other sites that would prove useful in case any British ships or barges tried to circumvent the fort by approaching Baltimore on the Middle Branch, or “Ferry” Branch, of the Patapsco. A row of hulks had been anchored next to Fort McHenry. In the event of a British attempt to get past the fort, the hulks could be sunk to block the channel. Booms made of ships’ masts would block other creeks and inlets that might get British ships or barges within cannon range of Baltimore. Smith had also obtained arms for his troops. When the British made their first appearance in the Bay, one-third of Smith’s Third Brigade had no weapons. The 500 muskets from Fort McHenry and another 1,500 provided by Armstrong helped to remedy the deficiency.9
Smith organized a warning system to alert Baltimore’s defenders to the approach of the British fleet. The commander of the only navy gunboat defending the harbor established a lookout post at the end of North Point. A string of guard boats between the Point and the city would relay the lookout’s flag signals to Smith and his forces in Baltimore. North Point itself was defended by a detachment of Baltimore City troops encamped at Bear Creek. The force was instructed to slow down a British offensive on North Point and withdraw toward the defensive works on Hampstead Hill.10 When the British came back, they would find Baltimore much better prepared than on their first encounter.
TAKING COMMAND
In June 1813, General Smith became Senator Smith. Leaving General Stricker in charge in Baltimore, he went to Washington. His assignments on the Naval Affairs and Military Affairs Committees gave him frequent opportunities to meet with the secretaries of the army and the navy. Not surprisingly, he used these encounters to lobby strenuously on behalf of Baltimore’s needs. He even brought the Committee of Public Supply to Washington to add volume to his requests. But the federal government had given the city about as much as it was going to get. Armstrong agreed to consider reimbursing some of the supply committee’s expenses, provided some additional muskets for the Maryland militia, and replaced Fort McHenry’s uncooperative commander, Major Beall, with Major George Armistead. But he refused to order a further mobilization of the Maryland militia, which would have made the federal government responsible for pay and provisions.11
A British flotilla had meanwhile been leveling towns at the head of the Chesapeake. When it had finished bombarding, looting, and burning buildings and docks in Frenchtown and Havre de Grace,12 it sailed down the Bay to rendezvous with a British squadron at the mouth of the Chesapeake. This united fleet began to move north, now carrying reinforcements, including more than 2,500 new troops. Napoleon’s defeat and exile to Elba meant that Britain could now transfer soldiers and ships from its European war to fight its American war.13
Smith was back in Baltimore by mid-July. By August 1, the British fleet neared Annapolis, and Secretary Armstrong supported General Smith’s decision to mobilize part of the militia. About 15 warships approached Baltimore a week later, but withdrew without attacking. The British summer offensive concentrated instead on the Eastern Shore and left Baltimore unmolested. But the alarm—and the ability to charge the federal government for the troops’ pay and provisions—gave Smith the opportunity to put Baltimore County’s Eleventh Brigade through the same sort of training he had given the city’s Third Brigade earlier in the year. The following summer, regiments drawn from the Eleventh Brigade were among the few units that gave a good account of themselves at the disastrous battle of Bladensburg.14
One day before the defeat at Bladensburg, Baltimore formed a larger citizen committee to replace the Committee of Public Supply. The Committee of Vigilance and Safety was elected by wards. It met almost daily and functioned as the city’s de facto wartime government.15
As Baltimore drew itself together for what seemed the certainty of a British assault, General Smith found his authority under attack once again. The War Department had divided the country into 10 military districts and appointed a regular army officer to command each of them. Maryland, together with the District of Columbia and part of northern Virginia, made up the tenth district, under the command of Brigadier General William H. Winder, the nephew of Maryland’s governor. General Winder was a native of the Eastern Shore who had moved to Baltimore in 1807 to begin a successful law practice. He had served as a captain and company commander under Samuel Smith in the Maryland militia. At the start of the war he had volunteered for duty as a regular officer and was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in command of a regiment that participated in the campaign against Canada. Shortly after being promoted to brigadier general, Winder was captured, and he remained a prisoner of war for a year. But he was not idle. Under parole, he traveled between Montreal and Washington to negotiate a prisoner exchange. He was one of its beneficiaries.16
Winder’s negotiations brought him into contact with President Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, and, though he was a Federalist, he won appointment as district commander in charge of the defense of Washington. Secretary Armstrong had opposed the appointment, and subsequently did little to support Winder’s efforts to protect the capital. There were reasons for choosing Winder, however, that had nothing to do with his capabilities as a commander. The defense of Washington would require energetic support from the citizens and militia of Maryland. Maryland was sharply divided concerning the war, a division evident in Baltimore’s riot of 1812 and the state’s response to it. Entrusting the capital’s defense to the Federalist nephew of Maryland’s Federalist governor could mobilize those Marylanders most likely to harbor doubts about the conflict with Britain and rally them to support the defense of Washington and its Democratic-Republican administration.17
Samuel Smith wasted no time in trying to establish his status in relation to General Winder. He wrote to Governor Winder, noting the practice that militia officers, no matter what their rank, were subordinate to regular army officers unless the militia officers had been called into the service of the United States. Smith asked the governor for instructions. The governor temporized. Smith wrote to Armstrong, asking to be granted the power to call militia troops into federal service as he had the previous summer. A positive response would clearly demonstrate that Smith was in the service of the federal government. Armstrong never replied.18
Brigadier General Winder also wrote to Armstrong, expressing “astonishment” that Smith “still conceives himself in command and persists to exercise it.” Winder suggested that Smith’s pretensions to command could be stifled if the secretary promoted Winder from brigadier to major general. Armstrong sent Winder an evasive response and ordered him to return to Washington with his troops, apparently to guard against attack by a British force that had captured Alexandria. Armstrong’s role in the defeat at Bladensburg cost him his job soon after President Madison returned to Washington. He was replaced as secretary of war by James Monroe, who would simultaneously head the Department of State.19
General Winder’s humiliating defeat at Bladensburg may have damaged his military status, but in his eyes, at least, it had nothing to do with his status as commander in Baltimore. A day after the Bladensburg rout, however, the Committee of Vigilance and Safety received a petition delivered personally by Brigadier General John Stricker, commander of Baltimore’s Third Brigade; Major George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry; Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry, in Baltimore to take command of a new ship; and Master-Commandant Robert T. Spence of the US Navy. They asked that Major General Samuel Smith assume overall command of the forces defending Baltimore. Immediately after receiving the petition, the committee sent a delegation to ask General Smith if he was willing to accept command. His response came so quickly that he may have been waiting nearby. He said that he would accept command, if Governor Winder approved his appointment. For the governor, there remained no choice. To force his nephew on the military forces of Baltimore against the will of their commanders might have created another disaster like the one that left Washington open to British incendiaries. Governor Winder’s problem was that Smith remained a militia major general, outranked by regular army Brigadier General Winder. The governor retrieved a mobilization order issued by President Madison more than a year before, which called for one major general from Maryland. The governor designated Smith, not his nephew, as that major general. As Ralph Robinson points out, “Baltimore had selected the man it wanted to assume the defense of the city.” The enemy was preparing to attack. This was no time to squabble about military rank and status.20 Smith was in charge, and Baltimore was ready.
PERILOUS FIGHT
The British were uncertain. Their commander, Major General Robert Ross, was at first persuaded by his aides that an assault on Baltimore would be unwise. The burning of Washington surely alerted the forces in Baltimore to the imminence of attack, and the shallowness of the Patapsco would handicap the fleet in providing support to Ross’s troops once they landed. Though victorious at Bladensburg, the British soldiers were in poor condition, not only from the stress of battle but from months of life aboard crowded ships and long marches in the heat of August. Admiral George Cockburn argued for the offensive. Baltimore’s ships, warehouses, and naval stores made the city too tempting to pass up, and its privateers made it a target of revenge. The vulnerability of Washington reinforced reports on the lack of protection for Baltimore’s harbor. Unfavorable winds also detained the British fleet in the Chesapeake, “thus requiring something to do until the weather cleared.”21
British hesitation allowed Baltimoreans more time to prepare, and the proximity of the enemy intensified their efforts at defense. In a letter to her brother in New York, a young woman in Baltimore wrote, “White and black are all at work together. You’ll see a master and his slave digging side by side. There is no distinction whatsoever.” General Smith’s 11-year-old nephew disappeared from home during the uproar. He was found digging trenches on Hampstead Hill. Other citizens needed inducements to mobilize. The Committee of Vigilance and Safety paid a dollar a day, provisions, and liquor to each of 150 men hired to build earthworks on North Point.22 The British threat brought Baltimore’s public to life, as nothing else in the city’s politically inhibited history had done. Its mobilization extended to free blacks and slaves.
When the British attack came, it was almost exactly the assault that Samuel Smith anticipated. A British fleet assembled off North Point, and on September 12, 1814, a force of 3,270 men disembarked under the protection of their ships’ cannons, the most powerful being the 74-gun Royal Oak. They had not marched far from their landing place when they encountered gunfire. It was during this initial skirmish that the British commander, Major General Robert Ross, was killed. By some accounts, his death demoralized the British forces and left their command to a less confident officer, Colonel Arthur Brooke, who did not press the attack as Ross might have. But Ross himself had been uncertain about attacking Baltimore, and the defenses of the city would probably have defeated the British no matter who was in command. Observing the American lines at Hampstead Hill, Lieutenant G. R. Gleig concluded that an attack was feasible only with naval support, but the British fleet—checked by Fort McHenry’s artillery—was out of range. A council of war convened by Colonel Brooke “decided that all idea of storming the enemy’s lines should be given up.” The British returned to their ships.23
The bombardment of Fort McHenry
An American military surgeon, James McCulloh, received permission to cross the British lines to treat the American wounded on North Point. “The reason the British did not attack our trenches,” he wrote, “was that they considered the position too strong & the hill being slippery in consequence of the heavy rain.” But the decision had not been unanimous. “Some officers told me that Admiral Cockburn wished to storm our lines & that the seamen had volunteered for the purpose, but Gen [sic] Brooke would not acquiesce in this arrangement.” The rough treatment that the British encountered on North Point may also have figured in their decision to break off the offensive. McCulloh reported that he had “passed over the ground where the British had met the most serious opposition”—where General Ross had been killed—“I think I saw at least 300 killed & wounded on my view with the red uniform.”24
The British were not finished. They planned a night attack on the Middle (Ferry) Branch of the Patapsco. General Smith had ordered the placement of two artillery batteries on the Middle Branch to counter just such a maneuver. They opened up in the dark on the British barges and their oarsmen and forced them to turn back—with more casualties.25
General Smith had given a new dimension of meaning to the maxim that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Smith’s political influence and military skill had given Baltimore the capacity to wage war against its British attackers and to defeat them. But Baltimore’s struggles were not over. Its next mission was to get either the federal government or the State of Maryland or both to reimburse its expenditures for defense.
GIVING PROOF
Not long after the British forces gave up on Baltimore, the Committee of Vigilance and Safety sent three of its members to Washington to “wait upon the President of the United States and the heads of Departments.” Since the British were still lurking in the neighborhood, the defense of both cities was a prominent subject of discussion, but money was clearly a pressing concern. According to the Baltimore delegation’s report, President Madison assured them that Baltimore’s expenditures for fortifications “which can be brought under the appropriation laws would be immediately paid,” and that costs not covered by existing appropriations “would be included in an equitable arrangement . . . and that the Government was disposed to be liberal.” In a subsequent meeting, the secretary of war told the visitors from Baltimore that he had already informed General Smith that the federal government would cover “the bomb-proof fortification in the Fort and other works.” Armstrong (not yet dismissed) echoed the president’s assurance that the government would be “liberal” in reimbursing other expenditures, but it could not provide ready cash; “the City would have to advance the money.”26
A month later, Treasury Secretary A. J. Dallas deposited $30,000 in a Baltimore bank, a first installment in the federal government’s reimbursement for the city’s expenditures.27 When the deposit was made, however, the city was still spending its own money to perfect its defenses. The British might return, and expenses were still mounting from their last visit. The Baltimore City Hospital was caring for 26 sick and wounded combatants. Property owners wanted the city to pay for the damage done by fortifications and entrenchments, and ship owners whose vessels had been sunk to block the harbor channel expected compensation.28
The city needed much more than $30,000 to cover its costs. The state government offered no help, and years after the retreat of the British, Baltimore would still be wheedling the federal government to compensate the city for its contribution to national defense. The initial obstacle was the War Department’s contention that it had “never recognized the authority under which the principal part of the amount asked for had been paid.” By 1818, the persuasive exertions of senator and major general Smith finally induced the secretary of war to take responsibility for some of these expenses. The War Department’s accountant, however, insisted that the secretary’s approval carried no weight unless Baltimore could produce documents attesting to the expenditures. The department also wanted to know what happened to durable goods, such as artillery pieces, for which it was to pay.29
The strict accounting required by the federal government after the war ended was a far cry from its handling of military expenditures when still threatened with invasion, when General Smith had been assured that under the threat of British invasion, “we may venture expenditures which till then would be indiscreet.” Baltimore’s spending was “very proper under the circumstances. You are making yourselves ready.”30
Now, however, the government wanted ledgers and receipts and the equipment mentioned in them. Top city officials and leading members of the Committee of Vigilance and Safety set off in search of vouchers, receipts, account books, and artillery pieces.31 A critical item of evidence in justifying the city’s reimbursement was General Smith’s orderly book for 1813, which recorded many of the expenditures that he had authorized for Baltimore’s defense. The book and a substantial trove of other documents turned up in a trunk stored in the mayor’s office, and some artillery pieces were found, unaccountably, at a riding academy.32
At the end of 1820, Baltimore still awaited a final accounting from the federal government. A Treasury Department official acknowledged that documents provided by the city had validated some of its claims, but he added that many others remained unsubstantiated because the city had not yet been able to “perfect the vouchers.” Some months later, the Treasury Department agreed that the federal government still owed Baltimore a bit more than $33,000, but immediately added that the department’s limited funds would not permit full payment. The city would get only $18,273. The sum fell far short of Baltimore’s expectations. Early in its negotiations with the federal government, the Committee of Vigilance and Safety had anticipated that Washington might not have the cash to meet its claims. In correspondence with Secretary of War James Monroe, the committee relayed an offer from Baltimore banks to lend the federal government as much as $613,000 to repay the town for its military expenditures in 1813 and 1814. The banks, of course, expected to profit from the loan. For every $80 advanced to the US Treasury, they expected to be repaid $100.33
The proposal may have been a tactical error. In effect, the city was offering to finance its own reimbursement—with something extra for its leading bankers. Baltimore’s government might be strapped, but the city seemed far from destitute, and the banks that now offered to finance Baltimore’s reimbursement were presumably the same ones that originally made the loans that paid for the city’s defense. Now they would collect interest twice—once on the original loans to the city, and again on the money that the federal government would use to reimburse the city. The proposal seemed another instance of the mercenary grasp for which Baltimore was well known. The federal government declined to borrow in Baltimore.
The banks, in fact, were approaching ruin, and by the time Baltimore received its pittance from the federal government, several of them had already collapsed. The downturn in the city’s economy had begun with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain reimposed mercantilist restrictions on trade with its colonies in the Western Hemisphere. In the meantime, manufactured goods from England and Germany flooded the city, driving down the prices for locally made products. Trade in western agricultural produce suffered from falling prices and the devaluation of currency issued by “country” banks. When the Bank of the United States tried to rein in the surfeit of banknotes and bank loans, Baltimore plunged into the Panic of 1819 along with the rest of the nation—only more so.34
The panic was nationwide, but the shady practices of Baltimore’s merchants and bankers added a local component to the national distress. Some members of the city’s mercantile community, for example, found it impossible to give up the habit of privateering simply because America was at peace. Local traders invested heavily in privateers supposedly sponsored by Latin American revolutionaries; in fact, the ships sailed out of Baltimore. Congress began to crack down on the maritime desperadoes in 1817, and civil suits filed by Spanish and Portuguese ship owners imposed heavy losses on Baltimore’s investors in piracy and fed the larger panic.35
Bank shenanigans further undermined the city’s prosperity. Several mercantile firms took effective control of the local branch of the Bank of the United States and used its assets to finance their speculative ventures without providing any collateral for the “loans” they made to themselves. One of the central figures in the scandal was Samuel Smith’s business partner, James A. Buchanan. A congressional investigation and the dismissal of the president of the Bank of the United States helped to bring the Baltimore irregularities to light. The new president demanded that the Baltimore branch settle up its accounts in specie, forcing the branch to call in loans to other banks. One after another, they collapsed, and the Baltimore branch itself went down in May 1819. In June, the national panic arrived and merged with its local antecedent. The conduct of the city’s leading merchants and the ensuing financial failures led John Quincy Adams to observe of Baltimore “that there is not a city in the Union which has had so much apparent prosperity, or within which there has been such complication of profligacy.”36
In the Adams family’s home state, the national panic had also disrupted the standing order. The organic unity of Boston—still a town and not yet an incorporated city—had begun to break down, and its Federalist regime was forced to adjust to the heterogeneity of a growing community.37 Baltimore, by contrast, had not yet become a fully unified urban community. From 1790 to 1820, its population more than quadrupled. Most of its residents came from someplace else. It was an unsettled settlement where everything seemed to be in motion. Notwithstanding its municipal charter, it was still subject to the authority of a state legislature in everything from tax rates to the opening of new streets and flood control in the Jones Falls valley. Its representation in Annapolis was far less than its population would warrant, and its requests of the General Assembly frequently met with hostility.
The federal government recognized at least some responsibility for supporting the defense of Baltimore. The Maryland legislature provided nothing and had even denied the city the authority to tax itself to cover the costs of fortification and mobilization. Baltimore’s resentment against the General Assembly had begun to harden at least a year before the British bombs burst over Fort McHenry. In the Baltimore Patriot, a column signed “Pericles” denounced the legislature for denying Baltimore’s “respectful petition” that “simply asked leave for the citizens, to tax themselves for their own defense . . . the privilege of self defense was denied to the city of Baltimore, by the House of Delegates, every federalist voting against it.” There was no justification for “a vote so disgraceful and perfidious.”38
The tension between city and state grew more pronounced. The animosity centered at first on the “precincts”—urbanized extensions of Baltimore that spread outside the city boundaries. In 1809, the General Assembly, acting in response to petitioners living in the “Western Precincts,” appointed three commissioners “to grade and Level the several streets, squares, Lanes and alleys and to Establish the Corners and fix the boundaries thereof.” The precinct commissioners, in other words, functioned much like the street commissioners of Baltimore. In 1811, a similar board of commissioners was created for the “Eastern Precincts.”39
The growing population just outside the city line could no longer get by with unpaved streets and hazy property lines. In an earlier time, Baltimore and the precincts might simply have petitioned the General Assembly to annex these suburban areas to the city. But Baltimore City paid for a variety of services beyond street paving, for which it collected a variety of taxes.40 The residents of the precincts were not ready for the full range of urban services or the taxes that financed them. Baltimore County’s government also had an interest in preventing, or at least postponing, annexation of the precincts to the city. The “precincters” accounted for about a third of the county’s population, and their property represented over 40 percent of the county’s assessed valuation.41
City authorities had long argued that these properties derived “all their high value from their proximity to the commercial parts [of the city], to the markets, to the navigation &c., and consequently ought in justice to contribute to the maintenance and support of these important objects.”42 At the end of 1816, the city sent an annexation petition to Annapolis. It omitted any mention of taxes, but emphasized the need of the city and the precincts to achieve consistency in street alignments and grades. In 1817, the General Assembly voted to consolidate the precincts with the city. But it ruled that the city could not tax undeveloped real estate in the precincts, and it defined undeveloped land as any tract with less than five houses per acre, thus excluding approximately 80 percent of the precincts from the city’s tax rolls.43
Niles’ Weekly Register cited an even more objectionable feature of the annexation, under which “the city acquires a population of 16 or 17,000 souls, and still has only two seats in the house of delegates—a fortieth part of the power of legislation, and a fifth, if not a fourth, of all white persons in the whole state.” “Of the political motives that led to this procedure,” the Register added, “it does not belong to this work to say anything.”44 At the time, the motives were obvious. Voters in the precincts, like those in the city, were lopsidedly Republicans of the Jeffersonian variety. Transferring the “precincters” from Baltimore County to Baltimore City increased the likelihood that Federalists would win all four of the county’s seats in the General Assembly. At the same time, it accentuated the underrepresentation of Baltimore.45
Annexation provoked protests from both city and precincts. An anonymous pamphleteer from the precincts cited as precedent the consolidation of Baltimore Town and Jones Town in 1745, when annexation was achieved “on the joint petition of the inhabitants of both towns.” From the time of this first annexation, “the principle of consent of the owners of property, to any incorporation, with the town, has been invariably observed.”46 In adding the precincts to Baltimore, the General Assembly had substituted legislative fiat for consent of the residents.
STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS
The city’s political leaders had apparently failed to anticipate the way in which the General Assembly would impose annexation. But their response was unhurried. Weeks after the legislature approved annexation, a group of petitioners led by John Eager Howard urged the city council to “suspend taking measures to carry the said act into execution” until the next session of the assembly, when Baltimore could obtain “such relief as they are entitled to claim and expect.” Howard was one of the town’s most prominent citizens—a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolution and a former governor, US senator, and congressman. Howard was also a Federalist, like the state legislators who had approved the conditions for annexation, but Baltimore’s politicians did not take shelter behind him to support his assault on the action of his fellow partisans in Annapolis. Instead, they deferred to their legal counsel, John Purviance, who told them it was “the bounden duty of the Mayor and City Council to proceed to pass the necessary Ordinances and regulations to carry into effect the late Act of the Assembly for Enlarging the bounds of the City.”47
The council’s first step against the annexation statute did not come until mid-October 1817, when it passed a resolution creating a joint committee of its two branches “to draw up a respectful petition . . . to be presented to the Legislature of Maryland,” asking for an amendment to the state constitution “by which the number of its delegates may be increased.” The petition was not ready until December. It was respectful and impassioned, and went on for almost eight closely written pages. Its central point echoed the complaint of the Niles’ Weekly Register, with slightly different arithmetic: “how is a participation in Legislation any Security of Liberty, or indeed of any advantage to those, who notwithstanding they constitute a Seventh part of the whole population of the State, have only the Voice and influence of a Fortieth?”48
Instead of marshalling all of their political force behind the demand for more representation, however, the mayor and city council tossed a mixed bag of petitions at the legislature. A rather cheeky “memorial” offered to provide free buildings for the use of state officials if the legislature moved the “seat of government” from Annapolis to Baltimore. The proposal may have originated with Mayor George Stiles, who heard that some legislators might prefer to govern the state from his city. He added that he knew of “no reason why we would want to have them here, except that . . . if they knew us better, they would be less hostile.”49
Another request asked the General Assembly to authorize Baltimore to increase its property tax to provide “for the support of the Poor of the city.”50 Still another “memorial” presented a disjointed assortment of proposals. It asked that the districts used for conducting state elections within the city be reconciled with the wards used in municipal elections. Without transition, it asked the “sanction and authority of the General Assembly” to carry out flood control projects on the Jones Falls. It continued with a request for authority to offer greater compensation to property owners affected by the extension of Pratt Street across the city—one of the measures to reduce Baltimore’s east-west traffic jams. Finally, it suggested that “an enlargement of the power & duties of the Judges of the City Court would have a beneficial influence on security & peace of the city.”51
This grab bag of requests may have been designed to show the General Assembly what favors it might grant to quiet Baltimore’s complaints about underrepresentation—at least for the present. The legislature’s longstanding refusal to grant Baltimore more delegates must have left the city’s leaders with little hope that their new petition would succeed. The politicians seemed to be using their hopeless appeal for additional legislative representation as a bargaining device, suggesting how the General Assembly might compensate for the expected rebuff by agreeing to other items on the city’s laundry list of requests.
While there is no direct evidence that this was their purpose, the impression is reinforced by the fact that the council sent a committee to Annapolis to observe the legislative session and to negotiate on the city’s behalf. The committee’s lengthy report began by noting that the proposal to grant Baltimore four delegates instead of two “lost by a considerable majority.” As might have been expected, the proposal to move the state capital from Annapolis to Baltimore was also rejected.52 A resolution introduced during the discussion of this measure reflected a legislative perspective on the city. An Annapolis delegate urged that the capital not be moved to Baltimore “where great outrages have frequently occurred, and where mobs the most furious are raised with unparallelled facility, such that might, and very probably would retard and infringe the freedom necessary and essential in legislation, and might cause the enactment of measures destructive of the interest of the more thinly populated parts of the state . . . to the baneful injury of society and corruption of good morals.”53
On other matters the city succeeded. As requested, the legislature approved a bill to facilitate the extension of Pratt Street; it added approval to extend two other streets as well and gave the city full authority to make improvements along the Jones Falls. The assembly also accepted the city’s suggestion that state election districts should correspond to the city’s wards, and it enacted a formula for increasing the number of wards in proportion to the city’s population. The city won approval of its request to increase the authority of city judges. Most important, the legislature granted Baltimore full power to collect property taxes “to such amount as shall be thought necessary for public or city purposes.” Almost as significant was the legislature’s decision to authorize Baltimore to borrow up to $1 million and to grant the city the power of eminent domain. By the end of the legislative session, as Gary Browne observes, Baltimore had gained “a greater measure of autonomy than the city had ever known.”54
Baltimore was still far from full municipal autonomy. It would continue to suffer the interference of the General Assembly, where the city’s voice was grossly underrepresented and scarcely heeded. But the ever-changing boomtown had begun to develop a sense of itself. It was the city that stood up to British imperialism. It had become heroic, if only briefly. It had demanded its due from the federal government to cover the costs of its defense. (Since Washington’s response left it deep in debt, it also seems to have acquired the habit of operating on borrowed money.) Finally, though the city and the precincts had initially differed on the desirability of annexation, they stood together in their opposition to the state legislature’s high-handedness. The legislature’s repeated slights, in fact, may have helped to unify the city at large.
There were other signs of increasing urban awareness. In 1819, the city put up its first street signs “affixed to the corner house of each and every street, lane, and alley.” And in 1822, it again contracted with Thomas Poppleton to make a map of the recently expanded city and a plan for its further expansion. This time, he completed the assignment. Baltimore could see itself and glimpse a possible future.