occasions, 1829 and 1831, would have been a great favorite of many
today for he abhorred the political spoils system and patronage on the
grounds that it tended to increase the size of government. The dif-
ficulties Governor Martin encountered in combatting the patronage
system become evident when one realizes that this statesman of a by-
gone era died in office.
Another Somerset Countian, Thomas King Carroll, who served
in 1830, both succeeded and preceded Martin as the fortunes of
Presidents Jackson and Adams waxed and waned. He was known as
a public servant who labored quietly in behalf of the people and the
State. As a note of historical interest, Governor Carroll climaxed his
career in public service by serving as Maryland's lottery commissioner.
Thomas W. Veazey, of Cecil County, elected in 1836, was the last
Governor elected by the Legislature under the original State Constitu-
tion of 1776, and the two succeeding Eastern Shore governors, William
Grason (1839) of Queen Anne's county and Philip Francis Thomas
(1848) of Talbot County, were fiscally prudent men who insisted that
Maryland pay her debts rather than cancel them.
Thomas, perhaps, had one of the most varied political careers of
any former Maryland Governor. After he stepped down as chief execu-
tive, he followed Horace Greeley's advice and went west, settling in
St. Louis. Later, President Buchanan offered him the job as Governor
of the Territory of Utah but Thomas refused, accepting instead the
President's offer of the position of Secretary of the Treasury. Pro-
southern in sympathy, Thomas counseled Maryland to join the Con-
federacy and his son subsequently fought in southern ranks. Following
the Civil War, he was elected to the United States Senate but, be-
cause of his pro-southern sympathies, he was refused a seat. To my
knowledge, he is the only Marylander to be refused a seat in the U. S.
Senate in our history. But seven years later, he was elected to and
seated in the United States House of Representatives.
The man who presided over our State's fortunes at its most critical
juncture in history was Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks, of Dor-
chester County, who served during the Civil War. While he abhorred
certain actions of the federal government, he, nevertheless, professed
pro-Union sympathies and the Legislature, meeting in Frederick,
adopted a resolution barring secession. It should be pointed out, how-
ever, that all legislators and employees of the General Assembly who
favored secession were arrested by the federal government, incarcerated
aboard a packet in the Chesapeake Bay, and, therefore, did not attend
the Frederick session.
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