it seems to me, that it should be presented
to the Constitutional Convention of Mary-
land, one of the original states, by the
oldest silversmith still in active business
in the United States.
It is a handsome piece. It will be with
us daily, and its place on this rostrum
will signify that the Constitutional Con-
vention of Maryland is in session.
Again, on behalf of the delegates and on
behalf of the State of Maryland I thank
you most sincerely.
Address by the President.
On August 17, 1867, the fourth Consti-
tutional Convention of Maryland adjourned
after 75 daily sessions, and submitted to
the people of the State a Constitution
which endured for 100 years. Today, 100
years, 26 days and something more than
200 amendments later we assemble as the
fifth Constitutional Convention of Mary-
land.
It seems to me that before we begin our
work as the elected delegates to that Con-
vention it behooves us to reflect for a mo-
ment on the task before us, to consider
the conditions and circumstances which
bring us here today, and to think a bit
about the problems to be solved and the
possible methods of their solution.
Today we live in a great stream of
change, a stream which moves so rapidly
and with such force that sometimes we
are at our destination before we realize
that we have started, and ofttimes we have
begun our journey before we have charted
our course.
One hundred years ago the people of
Maryland and of the nation were living in
a period of great social unrest, a period
of great stress and strain. Today we are
again living in a period of great social un-
rest, another period of great stress and
strain, but there is a tremendous difference
between the two eras. Then our nation was
at the end of the most bitter and heart-
rending conflict it had ever known, either
before or since, a period which saw brother
pitted against brother in cruel and agoniz-
ing fratricidal warfare. Maryland, as a
border state between the opposing social
and economic forces and torn asunder by
its own inner conflicts, had become a bat-
tieground for the armies of the Union and
the Confederacy. But although the wounds
had not been healed and although there
were many bitter memories of excesses
committed in the name of military neces-
sity, of a great city living under the |
shadow of the guns on Federal Hill, and
of soldiers at the polls supervising the
elections, nevertheless, the armed conflict
had ended and we were looking forward
hopefully to a future of peace and quiet,
liberty and contentment, and economic and
cultural rehabilitation and progress.
Today we are not at the end of a period
of conflict. We are in the midst of it. We
live not only in a period of great social
unrest amidst all the stresses and strains
produced by such unrest, but in a period in
which conflict and strife are again preva-
lent. We are no longer a BORDER=0 state
caught between the opposing forces of the
North and South, but an island in a sea of
hatred and violence. We do not have armies
pitted against armies in mighty battles on
our soil, but more frightening, perhaps, we
see all about us throughout our nation citi-
zen pitted against citizen, in scenes of
equal violence which seem to erupt almost
spontaneously and perplex and plague us
all. We grope blindly for solutions to prob-
lems which appear to be insoluble and,
through it all, the swift current of events
seems at times to be carrying us to the
brink of disaster.
We cannot in this Constitutional Conven-
tion of Maryland in the space of the next
90 or 120 days, or even longer if we had
the time, solve the problems of the world,
of the nation, or even of our State, but we
can and we must, within the time allotted
to us, provide the framework of a govern-
ment for our State which is capable of
grappling with the problems confronting us -
today, and with at least a possibility of
being able to solve those problems in such a
way as to prevent our State from being
caught up and destroyed in the inferno of
hate and conflict and bitter defiance which
we see all about us.
We must forge a document which the
people of our State will adopt on May 14,
1968, and thus make it a constitution, and
not a mere exercise in semantics, a scrap
of paper. We must draft a constitution
which will guarantee to every citizen the
right to pursue his own goal of personal
happiness and seek his own level of
achievement as free from interference by
government or his fellow citizens as the
complexities of a modern society can permit
and allow, and we must draft a constitu-
tion which can meet these objectives, not
only for us, but for our children and our
grandchildren and their children, a consti-
tution which can survive as a meaningful,
operative document, even when subjected
to the continuing assaults of changing con-
ditions and of problems and situations |
