| Volume 48, Preface 7 View pdf image (33K) |
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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.
BALTIMORE, December 1, 1931.
To the Maryland Historical Society:
GENTLEMEN:
This volume of the Archives of Maryland is the forty-eighth of the general
series and the eighth of the sub-series dealing with activities during the Revo
lutionary period of the Council of Safety and its successor, the State Council.
It covers the Journal and Correspondence of the State Council for the three
years from November 19, 1781 to November 11, 1784, thus furnishing a com
plete record of the proceedings of the Governor and Council, and the letters
emanating from them, during the last two years of the Revolution and the
year following the conclusion of the peace. This volume is a direct continuation
of the Proceedings of the Council which appeared in Volume Six of the State
Council sub-series (Archives of Maryland, Volume XLV).
With the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, and the
cessation of active hostilities on a large scale, the volume of business handled
by the Council began to decline, but until the news was received of the signing
of the preliminary articles of peace at Paris, November 30, 1782, the Council
found its hands more than full with matters relating to the war. In addition
to the civil administration of State affairs, it was called upon to furnish and
expend the funds needed to keep the Maryland troops supplied with food and
clothing, to stimulate recruiting, to guard effectively the British and German
prisoners captured at Yorktown and imprisoned at Fredericktown, to send
money and food to the wretched Maryland prisoners confined in the British
prison ships at New York, to suppress the incessant depredations of small
enemy vessels in the bay, to conciliate the disbanded soldiers clamoring for
their pay, and to do all these and innumerable other things, not with “hard
money” which was well nigh unobtainable, but with bills of credit, dubiously
secured, and paper currency, rapidly depreciating in value.
The great bulk of the entries are orders from the Council to the treasurers
of the Eastern and Western shores to pay sundry individuals for their services
or for supplies furnished, the orders specifying whether payments are to be
made in bills of credit, in paper currency, or in specie. Payments in specie were
rarely ordered, for “hard money” was scarce, and consisted of gold and silver
foreign coins circulating at fixed ratios of value as determined by the Assembly.
There was no State or Confederation coinage, and the silver coins issued in
1783 from the private mint of John Chalmers, an Annapolis silversmith, ap
parently with the tacit approval of the State authorities, probably did not have
a wide circulation.
The journals of the Council also record the issuance of commissions to
various county officials, such as justices, judges of the orphans courts, sheriffs
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Journal and Correspondence of the Council of Maryland, 1781-1784
| Volume 48, Preface 7 View pdf image (33K) |
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