92                          JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS                         [Jan. 7

shed in large parts of Europe, but in England and America brought more quiet, important popular advances such as the beginning of public schools, reforms in penal and mental health institutions, the growth of labor unions, and the popular election of many officeholders, including the governor. Incidentally, Andrew Jackson was swept into the Presidency under this reform movement.

Two examples of succession through resignation are of interest in the state's history since popular election of the governor came into being in 1838. The first case involves William Pinkney Whyte, a colorful Democratic political figure, who was elected Governor of Maryland on November 7, 1871 by a popular majority of 15,000 votes over Jacob Tome, the Republican candidate.

In those days United States Senators were elected by the members of the Legislature and Whyte wielded much power over that body. Indeed, Whyte really wanted to be a U.S. Senator and saw his influence with the Legislature as a pry. In February, 1874 with his governor's term but half over, he received the election to the U.S. Senate and posted his resignation as chief state executive, to take effect that March. The Legislature then elected James Black Groome, a Democrat, to take Whyte's place. Groome was but 35 years of age when elected in 1874, yet he had already had experience as a Cecil County delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1867 (dominated by those against the 1864 reform Constitution), and as a member of the House of Delegates in 1872.

In the election by the Legislature in 1874, Groome received 75 of the

93  votes cast on the first ballot by that body, with only minor opposition from John E. Smith who had been a delegate from Carroll County to the 1864 Constitutional Convention, dominated by so-called radical Unionists. It was a case of two opposing constitutional philosophies and the '67 one won hands down. Interestingly enough, the Legislature by-passed John Lee Carroll who was then President of the Senate. (Carroll came back in the next popular election in November, 1875 and won a stunning victory over his Republic opponent). Groome's short administration was fraught with intra-party controversy and he failed to be renominated by the Democratic Party in 1875. However, he did get to be elected later by the Legislature to the U.S. Senate where he served from 1879 to 1885.

In March, 1885 Governor Robert M. McLane, a Democrat, was appointed United States Minister to France by President Grover Cleveland and at McLane's resignation, Henry Lloyd, a Democrat from Dorchester County and then President of the Senate, became Acting-Governor. When the Legislature convened for its regular session in January, 1886, it elected Lloyd the official governor on the first ballot and gave him 100 votes to 14 for Robert B. Dixon, the Republican delegate from Talbot County. Lloyd filled McLane's unexpired term of three years. His greatest claim to fame was his constant effort to accord the governor the power to veto a single item in an appropriation bill for then many good and required bills had tacked on to them inappropriate riders which often got through for fear the whole bill would go down.

The third and only other case of succession in the post 1838 period is really an example of expediency, rather than of constitutional procedure. It involved the calling of a special legislative session on January 3, 1947— five days before William Preston Lane, elected to the governorship in November, 1946, was to take office. The session was called in order to move up Lane's inaugural date by five days so that Governor Herbert R. O'Conor