26 Board of Public Works

in its 1849-50 session the legislature reluctantly enacted the necessary legislation
providing for an election to determine whether a constitutional convention should be
called and, if the vote favored a convention, for the election of delegates. The plebiscite
was held on 8 May 1850. Although the turnout was light, the voters overwhelmingly
opted for the convention.³

W. Wayne Smith describes the convention, which assembled on 4 November 1850,
in the following terms:

The convention probably lasted longer than anticipated and became a tedious affair. Ab-
senteeism was high, tempers flared, and men of patience undoubtedly moaned in despair.
Still the delegates thoroughly examined all facets of Maryland's government and laws.
Questions of representation, gubernatorial powers, budgetary questions, elective judges,
restrictions of freedmen and slave—all came under the scrutiny of the convention. Given
the scope of their task, and sectional tempers and the clash between progressives and
conservatives, it is not surprising that the finished document was regarded as a patchwork
of compromises. Disappointment with the new constitution was deep, and most delegates
accepted it only because they believed it was the best document they could obtain.⁴

Among the major objectives of the convention was ensuring that the state's credit
would never again be so ruinously extended as it had been in the previous two decades
and that the state would cease being a capitalist and divest itself of its holdings in
the internal improvement companies. Thus the convention determined to place in the
new constitution a flat prohibition against any further state financial involvement in
works of internal improvements, a general ban against the lending of the state's credit
to private entities, and a requirement that "so soon as public debt shall have been
fully paid off' the legislature should "cause to be transferred to the several counties
and the city of Baltimore, stock in the internal improvement companies, equal to the
amount respectively paid by each towards the erection and completion of said works,
at the then-market value of said stock."⁵ In the same context considerable discussion
arose as to the proper role of the state in managing, during the interim before their
disposition, the internal improvement projects in which it already had a major finan-
cial interest.

Part of the impetus for this secondary concern arose from the toll-rate wars in
which the C & O Canal Company and the B & O Railroad Company had engaged
during the preceding decade. This pernicious rivalry was not only endangering the
companies themselves but was causing problems for those dependent on the canal and
the railroad and was reducing the return on the state's investment in those enterprises.
Each company, and its adherents and supporters, blamed the other for the warfare
and the problems it caused.

At the beginning of the convention a motion was made for the Committee on State
Debt and Public Works to consider provisions for a board of public works, the president
of which was to receive the state's votes for the presidency of the C & O Canal

3. Acts of 1849, ch. 346; Harry, Maryland Constitution of 1851, p. 32; Smith, "Politics and Democracy," p.
295. The vote was 23,423 for, and 4,935 against.

4. Smith, "Politics and Democracy," pp. 296-97. See also Harry, Maryland Constitution of 1851, p. 36: "Ele-
ments of discord abounded in the convention. Party feeling was very strong, and perhaps to this cause may
be attributed in a great measure the difficulties and differences which were encountered in the progress of
the session. An entire week was consumed before the convention was able permanently to organize, owing
to political division and sectional jealousy."

5. Maryland Constitution (1851), art. 3, secs. 22, 42.