I. overview
 
 

We will first look at how Maryland moved from a Province to a State, 1765-1777; and then ask how it was that Maryland and the other 12 loosely confederated states moved towards a 'more perfect union.' The format will be to cover the period 1765-1777 in the first half of the class, turning to the era of what I call From one to one of Many, 1776-1833, in the second half. With each half, I will begin with an overview of what I think are the most important aspects of the period, followed by a closer look at the record as suggested by the Document Packets.
 

II. From Province to State, 1765-1777

In the years from 1700 to 1765, Maryland, like the rest of the American Colonies, was left mostly to its own devices. External Factors contributed to what has come to be known as "Salutary or Benign Neglect" to use the words of a well-known member of Parliament from Bristol, Edmund Burke. It was a time when the Proprietor consolidated his hold on Maryland through a careful monitoring of his interests and the selection of progressively better governors who learned to work well with the local planter elite while maintaining the flow of revenue to the Proprietor. There were squabbles to be sure, and any history of the period will tell you of the tension between the lord Proprietor's supporters (known as the Court Party) and the local gentry (known as the country party). The cost of maintaining the empire was too great by 1765, however, and Parliament began to make noises about the colonies footing a more equitable share of the bill for defense. The first effort, the Stamp Act, was a failure, but successive ministries did not fail to try other plans. Most only affected Maryland incidentally, but the time came when the political elite in Maryland could no longer ignore the plight of its sister colonies to the northward. Indeed we had our own tea party of sorts in 1774 as we shall see when we get to the first of the document packets.
 

There is no question that from 1765 onward, Annapolis was a small cauldron of political unrest, but raving revolutionaries, Marylanders were not.

Tonight we will ook closely at the 'Revolutionary Generation' and how they came to accept the notion of an independent Maryland, loosely associated with twelve other 'independent' colonies in a war for their political freedom. It was not an easy decision, nor was it forordained by earlier episodes, or outbursts of political anger such as the Stamp Act, 1765, the Fee Controversy, 1770-1773, or the Burning of the Peggy Stewart in 1774. Once we have placed the Revolutionary Generation firmly on the Road to war and what they hope is independence from Great Britain, then we will turn to the business of forming a government that would work, first by itself, and then in concert with the other newly independent states. Indeed you could say that the two-fold problem of the Revolutionary Generation, the careers of a few of the more important of whom I noted on the board last week, their problems were twofold:
 

1) creating a government that worked
 

2) finding that government's place in the union of all the states
 
 

Creating a government that worked in 1776 was a remarkable achievement that made the painful task of strengthening the Federal Republic much easier than it looked in 1787, but the very strength of the state government that was created in 1776, also provided the context for a broadening of the political base upon which both the state and the Federal republic stood.
 

The Revolutionary Generation created a political framework in the State Constitution that was flexible enough to absorb pressures for greater participation in the political process, pressures that in many ways emanated from, or were in reaction to an urban presence, Baltimore, that owed its very strength and vitality to the accident of war.
 
 

If Bob Brugger misses one important point in the history of Maryland it is that Baltimore's history begins in 1776 when its growth is fueled by the adversity faced by every other urban center in America of consequence.
 

explain, use Thomas Doerflinger, a spirit of enterprise, as model

What happens to Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Charleston.
 

What does not happen to Baltimore?
 
 

In 1776, Baltimore is big enough to demand two representatives in the General Assembly. The Constitional Convention is sceptical and grants the request with the proviso that if the population of Baltimore declines, then the city would lose is representation in the General Assembly.
 

The Revolution gives Baltimore the impetus, the momentum it needs to compete with Philadelphia, the mercantile establishment, strengthened by the postwar years of trade, that it needs to handle the phenomenal growth caused by the re-export trade of the first decades of the 19th century.
 
 

In addition to being the most dynamic aspect of the economy in Maryland after 1776, Baltimore plays a key role in the politics of the state

with regard to
 

a) the Constitution
 

b) the broadening of the suffrage by 1802
 

c) defining the relationship of the State of Maryland with the Federal Government it was so favorable towards in 1787-1788. Indeed Maryland plays a crucial role in defining the relationship of the Federal Government to that of the States and their citizens: In particular make note of two supreme court cases that figure prominently in Maryland and U.S. History:
 

McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316 (1819-)
 

John Barron v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, (1833) [Bill of Rights does not apply to the States; City can do what it needs to do without compensation if empowered by State law to do so, which it was through its 1797 charter.
 

III. But to understand how Maryland found its place among the rest of the States, we must turn to the emergence of the Revolutionary Generation, and examine in some detail how we got to the point of Revolution, returning after the break to how Maryland moved from an independent state among 13 to but one of thirteen united in an increasingly powerful national government.
 
 
 
 

When we last met, we had just finished looking at the Stamp Act Crisis in Maryland, where I suggested that it served as a learning exercise for aspiring young politicians, members of the already well-established planter elite, but not necessarily as as a major milestone on any inevitable path to Revolution and Independence. I suggested that the main dispute was between Parliament and a relatively united colonial opposition consisting of both young radicals (for their day) and the proprietary establishment. As we looked at the accounts in the Annapolis Newspaper, we saw that the crisis escalated to the point where some of the more eloquent leaders of the crowd, such as Samuel Chase, then 24, found themselves criticized for going too far. Indeed Chase became so carried away with his own importance and his own oratorical skills, which were considerable, that he penned a diatribe against his enemies that even Jonas Green, himself a promoter of opposition to the Stamp Act, refused to print. 
 

I gave you a hint last week of what the Annapolis printer  Jonas Green thought unpublishable; here is another quote from Chase's broadside relating to one of his Annapolis critics, Michael Macnemara (who, by the way, was Catholic and could not vote or participate in the poltical process):
 
 

The Consequences of a bad life, Mr. Macnemara, which have reduced you to a servile dependency, prevent may observations upon your conduct. Are you too, Sir, amolng the number who proclaim me, "unworthy of every kind of public Trust?" Certainly that Man, who can discard the trust of nature for abrothel, can have as little merit for the public confidence. And do you too, sir, infamously charge me with want of virtue and integrity? And with a Versatility of principles? It is with pain, I remind yhou of the unhappy circumstances of your Children, reduced to Beggary, by your continued round of vice, and follyh, drunkenness and debauchery. Driven from the bosom of that parent, who from the ties of nature, should nourish and sup[port them, they eat their bread under the roof of the charitable stranger! Is it Virtue, or Integrity, or a Versatility of Principles, that have extinguished the feelings of nature and deadened all sensibility of the Fathber? What pleasures, can you find in the harlots embraces, to induce you fling from your arms your nfants in distress, and weeping at the feet of charity? Peace be to your Heart, if Peace can find existence there."

I return to this what Jonas Green considered an unprintable response by Samuel Chase to the critics of a speech he gave against the Stamp Act, because it brings into clear contrast the two levels on which the Stamp Act controversy operated: The high road was the noble political contest between parliament and the colonies in which Maryland took a strong and well-articulated stand in favor of only those laws passed by Parliament in which representatives from Maryland had a hand in creating. The low road was the political bickering at the local level that had less to do with the Stamp Act and more to do with who should run local government. On the high road a whole generation of Maryland Polticians honed their rhetoric about home rule and who should rule at home, while in the little town of Annapolis which had about 1,068 people of which approximately 1/3 were slaves, the political debate sank into the mire of personal mud slinging which was previously, and has ever since been a characteristic of the American Political World.
 

There is a radical transformation of the American political world that takes place between 1765 and 1802 in which Maryland plays a very important, I would even argue, critical role. In the lifetime of the generation that led the revolution, three concepts fundamental to understanding american government today were dramatically reshaped into a form that we easily accept to day:

1) the definition of what constituted the ideal representative changed from that of someone who held office by virtue of his station in life and the community to someone who would be responsive to the demands of the electorate, regardless of any great wealth or social status
 

2) the definition of who should choose the rulers changed from men of property to all white men over the age of 18, thus radically altering the concept of participatory democracy from that of a republic to that of a system that increasingly resembled democracy if not, as its critics claimed, mobocracy
 

3) the degree to which it was believed government should involve itself in the shaping of the lives  and welfare of its Citizens.  The Revolutionary generation began to think in terms of a stronger staet and a stronger central government of the all the states moving beyond defense to internal improvements and any number of public investments that were intended to benefit the public good and foster private economic development