Comptroller of the Treasury– The Early Years

Laura Schaefer

Introduction

The office of Comptroller of the Treasury was created by the Maryland State Constitution of 1851. It was a radical departure from the former structure of the Treasury Department, with its two appointed Treasurers, one for the Western Shore and the other for the Eastern Shore. Under the new 1851 Constitution those offices were abolished and replaced by the structure the State still has today: the directly elected Comptroller, having the “general superintendence of the fiscal affairs of the State”, and the Treasurer, elected by the Legislature, a ministerial functionary who dispenses and receives funds “upon warrants signed, by the Comptroller."^[1]

The four men who were Comptroller during the office’s first decade were in some ways diverse and in others homogeneous. They were all white, male Christians. However, they varied in age, the youngest being twenty-seven and the oldest being forty-six, and also in political ideology, as three were Democrats and one was a Know-Nothing. They all left their mark on the office, though, and helped to shape the office into the form it still has today.

Chapter One – Constitutional Prelude

The 1851 Constitution, which created the office of Comptroller, was the result of almost two decades of campaigning for reform and eventually for a new constitution. Previous to 1851, Maryland had been governed by its original Constitution dating to 1776. By the 1830s, serious deficiencies had become apparent. The most obvious, and arguably the most severe and exasperating, were in the area of representation. 

Maryland became an acutely mal-apportioned state soon after independence.^[2]  The 1776 Constitution gave each county, regardless of physical size or population, four delegates in the House of Delegates, and gave Baltimore and Annapolis each the right to send two delegates.^[3] However, the population and wealth of the northern and western areas of the State grew dramatically, even while the counties’ physical borders remained vast. In contrast, population levels stagnated in the south and east where county borders were, in general, already small.^[4]  This situation allowed smaller counties to wield a disproportionate amount of power in the House of Delegates.^[5]

The situation in the Senate was even worse. The 1776 Constitution set out a system of indirect election of State Senators. The people would vote for electors who would then proceed as an Electoral College to elect all of the senators. When the Constitution of 1776 was written, this was seen as a very good method of election. Samuel Chase in Federalist No. 63 argued that it was “virgin gold.” However, the partisan practices which developed led critics to refer to the system as “a tarnished whore.”^[6]

Just as in the House elections, each county was allotted the same number of delegates; in the case of senatorial electors, two per county and one each for Baltimore and Annapolis. Once again the southern and eastern areas had an advantage. In addition, the unforeseen rise of political parties made the system even worse. If any one party could gain a majority in the Electoral College, that party could then proceed to elect all fifteen Senators from that party.^[7]

In 1836 this point caused a constitutional crisis for Maryland. Long before, the two major parties had divided on regional lines. The Whig party was preeminent in the south and east and generally anti-reform, seeing their best interests in the present system. The Democrats were prominent in Baltimore City and western areas and generally argued for reform to increase their main areas’ electoral power. Therefore the mal-apportionment, that gave some areas more electoral power than others, had a direct effect on the party in control of the government.^[8] The Senate Electoral College was a prime area of contention.

By 1836, the Democrats were extremely frustrated by continually being shut out of power due to a mal-apportioned system. In that year the Democratic Party received 53.4% of the statewide vote in senatorial elections, a plurality of about three thousand votes more than the Whig party. Nevertheless, because of the apportionment, the Whigs elected a majority of the electors and were poised to elect a fully Whig Senate for a five-year term.^[9] This was, indeed, the last straw for the Democrats. In response, Democratic electors devised a scheme of defiance to disrupt the proceedings, highlight their calls for reforms, and – they hoped –  force the Whigs to elect some Democratic Senators.^[10]

The Whigs had elected twenty-one electors, the Democrats nineteen. The Democratic electors used a little known provision in the Constitution of 1776 that required a quorum of twenty-four electors to conduct business.  The Democratic electors’ strategy was “disarmingly simple:” if no Democrat was present the Electoral College could not elect anyone. They proposed to stay away until the Whigs promised to elect “at least eight reform Democrats in recognition of the mandate for reform reflected in the tabulation of popular votes in the recent election.”^[11]  Clearly the Democrats believed the public would support them.

They found that, for the most part, this was not the case. A grand jury in Cumberland went so far as to indict the Democratic electors for subversion.^[12]  While the Democrats had their supporters, notably Phillip Francis Thomas, later the first Comptroller, the population as a whole was quite hostile, concluding, as the Cumberland grand jury did, that the electors were “unfaithful public servants and disturbers of the public peace.”^[13]

Whether the electors were “unfaithful public servants” could be debated but their actions certainly disturbed the public peace. Their tactics set off a constitutional crisis, which some feared would bring down the entire government. This was not paranoia, as the refrain of “Reform or Revolution” was heard frequently.^[14]  The Senate, then in session, would conclude its term imminently and if no Senators had been elected to replace its members, the General Assembly would not be able to function. The Governor threatened an executive order to keep the former Senate in power and full authority until new Senators could be elected. However, this move would have been of dubious legality and some feared that such a move would itself bring down the government of the State.^[15]

In fact, that was the very effect for which some radical Democrats began to hope.  It seemed to them that if the crisis over the senatorial electors could hold on long enough the State would “revert to a state of nature” with no Constitution in effect. Once this happened, some Democrats thought, they could call a Constitutional Convention and write a new Maryland Constitution that would include the reforms for which the Democrats had been campaigning. A Reform Convention was even planed for Baltimore City in November.^[16]

This was going too far for the vast majority of people in the State.  The Democratic electors, facing constant pressure to attend the Electoral College, began to lose solidarity when it became clear that their constituency had abandoned them.  One after another Democratic electors attended the Electoral College and as soon as there were enough electors for a quorum, fifteen Whigs were elected to the Senate.^[17]

The electorate responded to the Democratic scheme by giving the popular vote to the Whig party in the October House of Delegates election and in the November Presidential election.^[18]  The Whig paper, the Hagerstown Torch Light and Public Advertiser, stated, “There is not… in our whole political history a more singular instance of prompt and emphatic rebuke, administered at the hands of the people, to derelict public servants, than that which the results of our late election furnishes.”^[19]  Despite their victory, however, the Whigs had finally gotten the message; they could no longer put off all calls for reform.

In the 1836 legislative session, the controlling Whig party passed an Omnibus Constitutional Amendment containing many of the reforms Democrats had been advocating.  The number of senators was increased and they were to be elected by popular vote, as would be the governor.  A sliding scale of representation alleviated some of the most acute areas of mal-apportionment.^[20]  Though these were major and important reforms, the Democratic Party had decided that the only way the problems of the Constitution of 1776 would be fixed was by its abolishment and the institution of the new constitution.  A constitutional convention was the “war cry” of the Democratic Party from 1836 until a convention was held in 1850.^[21]

Chapter Two – The Constitutional Convention

In the 1849 session the General Assembly of the State of Maryland passed an act on a reform measure.^[22]  Reform of the State government had been a hot topic for years growing out of the economic disaster of the 1830s and 40s, and the convoluted series of constitutional amendments that left even the most educated persons vague about the law.  In response to this need, a bill calling for a referendum on the issue of calling a Constitutional Convention was passed by the General Assembly.  In the fall of 1850, voters responded by approving the measure and electing delegates to write a new constitution for the State.^[23]

On the 4^th of November 1850 the Constitutional Convention, or the Reform Convention, was officially convened.^[24]  However, the public soon became frustrated with the Convention as it was delayed by the lack of a quorum for several days and then by the failure to elect a president for over a week due to partisanship.^[25]  It seemed that no real reform would occur.  In fact one member proposed that the body adjourn sine die if a president was not elected quickly.^[26]  The convention eventually elected John Chapman of Charles County, a Whig whose party and district were generally hostile to reform. Chapman, however, declared his willingness to keep an open mind and to do his job as President without partisan bias.^[27]

The most difficult issue for the convention to resolve was that of representation. Regardless of size, each county in Maryland sent four representatives to the House of Delegates and two representatives to the Senate.  Baltimore City and Annapolis had the right to send one representative to the House of Delegates and two representatives to the Senate.  The City of Baltimore in 1850 had a population of 169,054 including 141,440 whites. The next largest county, Baltimore County, had a population of only 41,599 which included 34,354 whites. The largest of the southern and Eastern Shore counties was Anne Arundel, with a total population of 32,388, of which 16,542 were white.^[28]

Economic concerns were also prominent in the issue of representation. The western counties, in addition to having a larger population, were by 1850 bringing in more money to the state treasury than the poorer and less economically diversified southern and eastern counties. Yet their money bought them no extra say over its expenditure.^[29]

The Convention did most of its work in committee.  Each committee would study a particular area of the government or an issue of concern and provide the Convention at large with an in-depth recommendation as to how that area or issue should be handled.  There were, however, many recommendations and suggestions from the floor to the committees.^[30]

The committee that would eventually suggest the institution of a Comptroller had been appointed to look into reforms of the Treasury Department.  Other delegates offered suggestions on limiting the power of the Treasurer in some way, such as adding a State Auditor. Many suggestions were offered but only one actually called for a Comptroller, who was to be elected by the Legislature.  It is clear, however, that the committee took the recommendations seriously.  The final product of their time included a well-reasoned compilation of many elements suggested by various delegates.^[31]

The committee on the Treasury Department reported to the Convention on Friday, 31 January 1851.  It proposed a Treasury Department “consisting of a Comptroller chosen by the qualified electors of the State” and “a Treasurer to be appointed by the two Houses of the Legislature.”  The Comptroller would “have a general superintendence of the fiscal affairs of the state; and prepare plans for the improvement and management of revenue.”  The Treasurer would “keep the monies of the State, and disburse them on warrants of the Comptroller.”^[32]

The delegates accepted the report with only minor changes in phrasing.^[33]  In all, the Treasury Department itself was dealt with rather quickly and easily. The new system was a radical change from the old one, though. The people, through an elected Comptroller, would have a direct effect on the running of the Treasury Department.  In the past they had only had an indirect effect through the Treasurer, who was elected by the legislature.  Yet the delegates retained an indirectly elected Treasurer to balance the interests of the legislature and of the people.^[34]

Chapter Three – Phillip Francis Thomas

Phillip Francis Thomas had the distinction of being the first Comptroller of the Treasury for the State of Maryland.  Though he served less than eighteen months of a four-year term, he had a tremendous impact on the office.

Thomas was born in 1810 to an Easton family that supported the Whig party.^[35]  His father was Dr. Tristram Thomas, a former Federalist, and his mother was Maria Francis, whose family was connected to the Goldsborough family, prominent Whigs.^[36]  Thomas was educated at Easton Academy and Dickinson College.  After being dismissed from Dickinson, he studied law under the tutelage of William Hayward, an Easton attorney.^[37]  He was admitted to the bar in 1831.^[38]

In 1834, Thomas ran for the Legislature as a Democrat.^[39]  His choice of a party was unusual.  All of Thomas’s family members were Whigs, and it was expected that he would join the same party.^[40]  At the time the Democratic Party was very much the minority party in Talbot County.  Thomas lost the election but was not deterred from politics.^[41]

A year later, in 1834, Thomas married Sarah Maria Kerr, who was also from a Whig family.^[42]  Yet Thomas still remained a Democrat despite all of his family connections pressuring him to become a Whig.^[43]  He again ran for office in 1836 calling for a constitutional convention, a movement that Thomas would support throughout his early career.  He lost the election again, but had narrowed his margin of loss.^[44]

In 1838, Thomas finally won a seat in the House of Delegates.^[45]  Here he would find a government coming apart at the seams over the actions of Democratic senatorial electors.  Despite general public condemnation, Thomas campaigned for the “glorious nineteen” electors and renewed his call, along with the rest of his party, for a constitutional convention.^[46]

Also in 1838, Thomas attended the Democratic Convention in Baltimore.  He promised to win Talbot County for the gubernatorial candidate, William Grason, and delivered on that promise.^[47]  This was an achievement in mostly Whig Talbot County and probably contributed to the Democratic Party’s notice of Thomas.

The Party’s notice was evident in Thomas’s 1839 nomination for Congress.  He was considered a long shot candidate facing James Pearce, who had held the position for over ten years.  Despite this, Thomas was elected by a narrow margin. Thomas declined re-election in 1841.^[48]  That year, he was appointed a judge of the Land Office in his native Talbot County.^[49]  The court was abolished in 1842 and Thomas was reelected to the House of Delegates in 1843.^[50]

Thomas was again reelected to the House of Delegates in 1845. He served with such distinction that by 1846, his name was already mentioned as a possible nominee for governor.^[51]   Under the Constitutional Reforms of 1836, the governor was elected by the whole people of the state; however, the state was divided into three geographic districts from whence the governor would be elected.^[52]  The 1847 election was the Eastern District’s turn to provide the governor.   In June of 1847 Thomas received the nomination of the Democratic Party.^[53]  The Whig candidate was William Tilghman Goldsborough of Dorchester County.

The main focus of the campaign was on state finances and the very large matter of how to solve the problem of the state debt. Thomas was accused by his opponent of wishing to repudiate the debt. In reply, Thomas took great care to explain and clarify every point of his financial views.^[54]  On Election Day in October 1847, Thomas prevailed over Tilghman by about seven hundred votes.^[55]

Thomas used his inaugural address in January 1848 to call for a constitutional convention. In the address, Thomas laid out the reforms needed and the reasons why a new constitution would be the only way to implement them.^[56]  While he did not specifically call for changes in the

Treasury Department, it seems clear that Thomas desired to keep a financial debacle, such as the voluminous state debt currently being dealt with, from happening again. 

Thomas would see his wish for a constitutional convention within his own term. At the close of his term, in 1850, the Constitutional Convention of 1850 began its work on drafting a new Constitution.  Thomas left office during the middle of the convention, but was certainly not unaffected by it. 

The next office to which Thomas was elected was Comptroller of the Treasury.  Thomas won on 5 November 1851, by a plurality of just less than 1800 votes over his opponent, George C. Morgan.^[57]  Thomas was commissioned 8 December 1851 and after paying the bond required by the Constitution qualified for office on 24 February 1852.^[58]

The Comptroller, a new position created by the 1851 Constitution, was to have “general superintendence of the fiscal affairs of the State;” however, for the most part, the boundaries of the office were vague.^[59]  Thomas, as the first Comptroller, would greatly influence the way business was conducted.

The Comptroller’s office was first housed in the State House.  The Office of the Comptroller was given a room on the ground floor, which had previously been used for the storage of records.^[60]  The legislature provided for one clerk to help with the business of the office.  Thomas had asked for an additional clerk, but the legislature turned down his request.  He reported to the legislature in his Comptroller’s Report of 1852 that he found “it impossible to execute the revenue laws of the State with the aid of a single Clerk,” and so “was obliged to procure an assistant.” Thomas proceeded to ask that the extra clerk be paid by the legislature.^[61]

Thomas resigned the office of comptroller in April of 1853 to become the Collector of Customs at the port of Baltimore, a post to which President Franklin Pierce appointed him.^[62] Henry E. Bateman replaced him as comptroller, but Thomas’s influence on the office was not yet over.^[63]

On 15 April 1853, five days before leaving office, Thomas issued a warrant to the treasurer, James S. Owens, for a salary payment of $1111.11 to himself.  The Treasurer refused to pay, believing that Thomas was not entitled to the money.  The dispute soon escalated into a lawsuit in which Thomas asked the Court for a writ of mandamus ordering the treasurer to pay.^[64]   The dispute was fundamentally a question over the date that Thomas actually became comptroller.  Thomas argued that for salary purposes, he had been comptroller on the day he was elected, 5 November 1851.  The treasurer, backed by the governor and the State, argued that Thomas should be paid from the day he qualified and paid his bond.  They believed that only when Thomas had completed those constitutional requirements did he become comptroller and thus eligible for the comptroller’s salary. The Circuit Court of Anne Arundel County agreed with the treasurer and the State and correspondingly refused to issue the writ of mandamus.  The case was appealed and quickly came before the Court of Appeals.^[65]

This was an important case for all involved.  The governor and the treasurer were very concerned that if the Court found for Thomas, other officers would demand a recalculation of their salaries.^[66]  Thomas obviously wanted the salary he believed was his. However, the most important part of the case may well have been a side issue that directed the course of the Treasury Department and the relationship between the comptroller and the treasurer.

Thomas’s lawyers made an argument before the Court of Appeals that the treasurer should have paid Thomas, regardless of whether he believed Thomas was due the money.  This argument was based on an interpretation of the Constitution that saw the Treasurer’s office as a ministerial position.  Under this interpretation the treasurer merely accepted and paid out money; the comptroller was the one responsible for keeping the accounts and deciding how much money was due to be paid out and taken in.^[67]

The treasurer’s position was that his office was more of a coequal to that of the comptroller.  He saw the responsibility of keeping track of the State’s monies as part of his duties as well as the comptroller’s. The treasurer also felt he had the power to refuse payment of Thomas’s warrant, because Thomas had not provided satisfactory evidence of a legislative appropriation.^[68]

The Court of Appeals found that neither argument was completely correct.  They ruled in favor of the State in regards to Thomas’s salary and refused to grant a writ of mandamus to issue the payment. They decided that a person technically becomes comptroller only after the oath is taken and the bond paid, as the Constitution required.

However, the Court, while ruling that Thomas was not entitled to the $1111.11 he claimed, found that despite this, the treasurer should have paid out the money.  The Justices had agreed with Thomas that the treasurer was a “mere ministerial officer.”  They stated in very strong language that the treasurer must “respect such adjustment and settlement” of the State accounts calculated by the comptroller.^[69]

Though he lost his court case, Thomas continued as the Collector of Customs at the port of Baltimore until the Pierce Administration ended in 1857.  At that point Thomas left the state for St. Louis.  President James Buchanan tried to convince him to take on the governorship of Utah, but Thomas refused.  In February of 1860, President Buchanan succeeded in luring Thomas to take the position of Commissioner of Patents in Washington D. C.  Later, in December of the same year, Thomas was made a member of the President’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury for the United States.^[70]

He only stayed in office for a month.  Thomas was a Confederate sympathizer and the coming of the Civil War forced Thomas to leave the employ of the Federal Government.^[71]  Thomas had long supported States Rights and the expansion of slavery.^[72]  He retired to his farm in Talbot County, while his son joined the Confederate Army.^[73]

Once the war was over, Thomas returned to public life.  He ran for and was elected to the House of Delegates in 1866.  The legislature promptly, in 1867, elected Thomas as a senator to fill a congressional vacancy.  The United States Senate, however, was at that time controlled by the radical Republicans.  They refused to seat Thomas based on the fact that he had aided his son, a Confederate soldier, during the War.^[74] The Senate passed a resolution that made Thomas ineligible to qualify as a senator for having “voluntarily giving aid, countenance, and encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the United States.” This outraged many in Maryland, and Thomas’s friends encouraged him to run for the seat in the general election anyway. Thomas refused the idea and returned to Easton.^[75]

In 1874, however, Thomas again ran for and was elected to the House of Representatives. He had last been in that position thirty –five years before.  During this time Thomas remarried, his first wife having died in 1870.  The widow Clintonia Wright May became the second Mrs. Thomas in 1876.  On the completion of his congressional term, Thomas again refused re-election to seek a seat in the House of Delegates.  Twice more he would seek to become a Senator and lost both times.  Thomas was last elected to public office in 1883, again as a delegate from Talbot County.^[76]

In early 1890, Thomas became ill with, among other things, bronchitis and heart problems.^[77]  By June, his illness was serious enough that Thomas moved to Baltimore City to receive medical treatment.^[78]  Thomas died in Baltimore City four months later on 2 October 1890 and was buried in Easton.^[79]

Chapter Four – Henry E. Bateman

Henry E. Bateman became the second Comptroller of the Treasury in 1853.  He was appointed to the office by Governor E. Louis Lowe to fill the vacancy created by Philip F. Thomas’s resignation.^[80]  Bateman was the oldest of the early comptrollers, having been born in 1807 and being 46 years old at the time of his appointment.  He would only serve as comptroller for a few months until January of 1854 when an elected successor would replace him.^[81]

Bateman had been born in Baltimore to a family from Anne Arundel County.  He received a good education and began a career in newspaper work.  In the 1830s he moved to Talbot County to become editor of the Easton Star.  Bateman left this job in 1842 to become Clerk of the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore, which was based in Easton.^[82]  He held this position for nine years until 1851 when the new Constitution of 1850 abolished the Court and with it Bateman’s position.  In the interim, Bateman married a local woman from Talbot County, Ariana Hopkins, on 11 January 1844.  They had a son, James Marcel Hopkins Bateman, later in that year.^[83]  By the time he became comptroller in 1853, Bateman and his wife had four living sons, James, Henry A. born in 1845, Charles born in 1850, and Franklin born in1852. They apparently only lost one son, John W. Bateman, who was born in 1847.^[84]

When the Court of Appeals for the Eastern Shore was abolished in 1851, the family moved to Annapolis so that Bateman could take up the position of State Librarian, to which the legislature elected him in 1852.^[85]  Then in April of 1853 the governor appointed him comptroller. He served the state in this capacity for less than a year, turning the office over to William Pinkney Whyte, his elected successor, in January of 1854.^[86]  This was not, however, the end of Henry Bateman’s career in public service.

After he was replaced as comptroller, Bateman and his family moved again, this time to Washington D. C. where a sixth son, Wilfred, was born in 1859.  Here Bateman took on the position in the United States Treasury Department of Chief of the Department of Commerce and Navigation.^[87]  He apparently kept this position until 1860 and the coming of the Civil War.

Like many Marylanders, Bateman was apparently a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War.  He retired from public life to become a farmer in Easton, where he owned a good deal of property.^[88]  In 1866, Bateman also became a manufacturer of ships when he became a partner in a ship building business with William Benson and Nathaniel Leonard.^[89]  They even produced a ship named the Ariana Bateman, after Henry Bateman’s wife.  He owned his share of the Benson & Co. business for the rest of his life.^[90]

Bateman returned to public life in 1867 when he was elected as a Talbot County delegate to the 1867 State Constitutional Convention, a convention composed almost entirely of former Confederate sympathizers.  They wanted to abolish the State Constitution of 1864, which had been written during the Civil War by Unionists and was very harsh on southern sympathizers.^[91]  During the convention, Bateman used his past experience in state government in lending support and criticism to changes in state offices, specifically the office of State Librarian.^[92]

In 1870 Bateman was elected to local office as a Talbot County Commissioner and was reelected in 1871.^[93]  In December of the same year, his wife Ariana, to whom he had been married for twenty-seven years, died.^[94]  On the completion of his term, Bateman retired permanently from public life.  He did, however, continue to be active in church organizations and business affairs.^[95] Bateman sold off much of his real estate to increase his monetary holdings, a process he began in the late 1860s.  After the death of his wife, Bateman began divesting what was left of his property by making land gifts to his sons.^[96]  By 1880, Henry E. Bateman was 72 and living with his eldest son James, and his family.^[97]  Bateman was not, however, in complete retirement.  He still owned an interest in the Benson & Co. ship building business, and was still interested in land, as he listed his profession as a farmer on the Federal Census of 1880.^[98]  Bateman died at the home of his son James on the 30^th of November 1893 at the age of 86.^[99]

When Bateman was appointed comptroller it must have been a daunting prospect for him. The office was still brand new, having only been in existence for two years and in full operation for only one.  The office was still trying to find its bearings.  Bateman’s predecessor had been a famous and well-respected former governor, while Bateman was a relative unknown who had only been a minor figure in state government for two years.

In addition, Thomas, his predecessor, handed Bateman more than one difficult situation. The former comptroller had defied the legislature by hiring an extra clerk to manage the business of the office.^[100]  Bateman did not have nearly enough clout to keep the extra employee if the legislature would not appropriate funds.  Apparently the office did lose its extra clerk.  The Comptroller’s Report filed by Thomas in 1852 shows an expense line for “Clerks to Comptroller;” Bateman’s 1853 Report shows an expense line for “The Clerk to the Comptroller.”^[101]

Most importantly the former comptroller sued the treasurer after leaving office.^[102]  The case, although it was primarily about the payment of salary, would most definitely affect the balance of power between the two offices.  When Bateman took over as comptroller, the results of this lawsuit, and correspondingly the breadth of the comptroller’s power, were far from clear.

The Constitution of 1851 called for the comptroller to submit a financial report annually to the legislature.^[103]  Bateman was responsible for only the second such report, which was complicated by a change in the fiscal year.  The fiscal year had previously coincided with the calendar year and run from December to December.  The legislature passed a bill in 1853 that would end the fiscal year on the thirtieth of September.  This meant that fiscal year 1853 started in December and ended in September, leaving only ten months of revenue collection and payments, in contrast to past years, which would have twelve full months.  This change showed up in the Comptroller’s Report as a short fall of nearly $280,000.  In his report, Bateman, took care to point out this unusual occurrence and to assure the legislature that there was “no reason whatever for supposing, that the general revenue of the State will be to any considerable extent lessened.”^[104]

Chapter Five – William Pinkney Whyte

In 1853, William Pinkney Whyte was elected the third comptroller in the third year of the office’s existence. The first comptroller, Phillip Francis Thomas, had resigned his position in April of 1852 and the governor appointed Henry E. Bateman to the position.^[105]  The Constitution of 1851 stated that such an appointment should “continue until another election by the people,” which was a legislative election in 1853.^[106]  Therefore even though the comptroller had a four-year term, which would call for the next comptroller’s election to be held in 1855, the comptroller’s office was added to the ballot in 1853.  William Pinkney Whyte ran as the Democratic candidate while J. Hanson Thomas ran as the Whig candidate.^[107]  Whyte won the election, and the popular vote in his native Baltimore.^[108]  The comptroller’s office would remain in the hands of a Democrat.

William Pinkney Whyte was born in Baltimore on 9 August 1824, the son of Joseph White and Isabella Pinkney and the grandson of William Pinkney, a well-known statesman who died two years before Whyte’s birth.^[109]  As a young man, he began spelling his name Whyte to avoid being confused with an uncle, with whom he had a disagreement.^[110]  Though his parents were of only of modest means, Whyte was given a good education under the supervision of R.M. McNally, a former private secretary to Napoleon.^[111]  However, in 1842, when he was eighteen, it was no longer possible for Whyte to attend school due to his father’s financial difficulties.  Whyte secured for himself a position as a clerk in the counting house of Peabody, Riggs and Company.^[112]  Although he left this position after two years, the work gave him “an experience and knowledge that were [of] invaluable service to him.”^[113]

Whyte then embarked on the study of law in the law offices of Brown and Brune, “at that time perhaps the leading lawyers of Baltimore.”^[114]  In the winter of 1844 he was able to study at Harvard Law School where he graduated in 1845.^[115]  Whyte then returned to Maryland where he was admitted to the bar. The same year he entered public life when he was elected to the House of Delegates but left after one term and returned to his law practice.^[116]

Towards the end of his term in the House of Delegates, Whyte married the daughter of a Baltimore merchant, Louisa Hollingsworth.^[117]  In 1848 they had a son, William H. Whyte, and in 1849 another named Joseph, probably named after his grandfather.^[118]

In 1851 Whyte ran for a congressional seat but was defeated in the Democratic primary. His next election was for comptroller in 1853.^[119]  When he won, at the age of twenty-nine, he was the youngest person to hold the office.

Whyte served as comptroller for the two years of his shortened term. At its conclusion, however, he decided to leave and not seek reelection. On leaving the office, Whyte was rewarded by the legislature with a resolution passed praising him for having greatly improved the office of the comptroller.  The legislature resolved that “The system adopted is one of admirable character, and that the details of the office have been so simplified, that mistake or confusion hereafter in the official business pertaining to the Comptroller’s Department  is almost impossible.”^[120]  Whyte had applied the bookkeeping practices with which he was familiar with to the task of simplifying the bookkeeping of the comptroller’s office.^[121]

After leaving the comptroller’s office, Whyte ran for Congress in 1857. He did not expect to be elected, but he felt that he could expose election fraud by contesting the election after he lost.  The case came before the House of Representatives, where Whyte lost by only a few votes.  His campaign and the subsequent case in the House did bring the exposure he had hoped for and led to new, fairer election laws.^[122]

Whyte was a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War, and was disenfranchised under the 1864 Constitution.  Whyte had been drafted by the Union Army, but obtained a deferment as he was physically unfit.^[123]  He remained in Baltimore practicing law for the duration of the War.^[124]

Whyte reemerged in 1868, when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate of the United States. Unlike Phillip Francis Thomas, Whyte qualified and was seated.  Despite his Southern sympathies and the political climate, Whyte defended President Johnson during his impeachment hearings.^[125]

In 1871, the Democratic Party nominated Whyte as a gubernorial candidate.  Whyte defeated the Republican challenger, Jacob Tome, by fifteen thousand votes, and served just over two years as governor. Whyte resigned the governorship in 1874 when he was again appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate of the United States.^[126]

During his term, Whyte help to form the District of Columbia plan of government and was the “victorious counsel” for the State of Maryland in a boundary dispute with Virginia.  Otherwise his term was unremarkable.  Arthur Pue Gorman defeated Whyte in an election for the Senate seat in 1881.^[127]

Whyte’s political career recovered quickly and in the same year, 1881, he was elected mayor of Baltimore.  In 1887 he was elected attorney general of Maryland, a position which he filled until 1891.  He then returned to his law practice.

In 1906, Arthur Pue Gorman died while a member of the Senate, and Whyte was appointed to fill the vacancy.^[128]  Whyte himself died two years later, on 17 March 1908, while still a member of the Senate.^[129]  Both the Senate and the House of Representatives adjourned out of respect on hearing the news.  Both Houses then allowed members to give memorial addresses on Whyte’s life and career which were subsequently printed.^[130]

Chapter Six – William Henry Purnell

William Henry Purnell became the fourth Comptroller of the Treasury in 1855.^[131]  As a candidate for the American Party, more commonly known as the Know Nothing Party, Purnell defeated his Democratic opponent, Walter W. Bowie of Prince George’s County, by slightly less than three thousand votes.^[132]  He was the first non-Democrat to be elected comptroller since the office was established in 1851.

William Purnell was born 3 February 1826 in Worcester County where his family had resided for five generations. He was the first born of Moses and Maria Bowen Purnell’s six children.  His education began in Berlin, Maryland at the Buckingham Academy and continued at Delaware College, now The University of Delaware.  Purnell graduated from Delaware College in 1846 at age twenty and returned to Maryland to study law under the mentorship of a Snow Hill judge, John R. Franklin. He was admitted to the bar two years later in 1848.^[133]

In June 1849, not long after the completion of his education, Purnell married Margaret Neill Martin.^[134]  They soon shared a house in Worcester County with Margaret Purnell’s siblings where their first daughter Mary was born in 1850.^[135]  In the next ten years they would have three more daughters and a son.^[136]

The year 1850 also saw changes to Purnell’s professional life.  In that year he was appointed a prosecuting attorney for Worcester County.^[137]  After three years as prosecutor, Purnell succeeded his former mentor and teacher, Judge Franklin, as the attorney general for the State.^[138]  He was only twenty-seven years old.

Purnell had been a member of the Whig party in his youth but became a member of the American party at about the same time the Americans began their political ascendance.^[139]  It was on the American ticket, in 1855, that Purnell was elected comptroller.^[140]  He was the fourth man in only five years to hold the office.^[141]

The office of comptroller was still new to the public; the omptroller still received letters that should have been sent to the treasurer and vice versa.^[142]  As a result of the constant change of personnel, it must have been a great challenge to keep the office performing effectively. Another challenge must have been the change in the physical location of the comptroller’s office. In 1858, a new office building was built on the State House grounds to hold the Comptroller’s Office and the Land Office.^[143]  Nevertheless, every year the Comptroller’s Report was issued as required by law.

Purnell, like his predecessors, had been ready to move on to another position after his term was completed.  In his case, Purnell wanted to be governor.  At the American Party’s Convention in 1857, Purnell received 34 votes on the first ballot but that was not enough to gain the nomination.  The American Party nominated Thomas Holliday Hicks for governor and re-nominated Purnell for comptroller.^[144]  

In 1859, Purnell was reelected to the office of comptroller, becoming not only the first comptroller to serve more than one term but also the only one to have run for a second term.^[145]  Had Purnell served out his second term, he would have been comptroller for eight years. This stability likely would have gone a long way toward putting the office on a consistent footing. Purnell, however, elected to leave the office in 1861, when President Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Baltimore.^[146]

As the Civil War approached, Purnell, along with most of his party, stood firmly for the Union.  After the Union loss at Bull Run, Purnell asked for and received permission to recruit a new military organization. The “Purnell Legion” consisted of infantry, calvary, and artillery and was led by the new Colonel Purnell.  Seven hundred persons were in the Purnell Legion when it was deployed to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to help repel a suspected Confederate invasion of that area.  On its return to Baltimore in 1862, the Purnell Legion’s ranks had swelled to 1,240. At this time, Purnell resigned from the legion that bore his name so that he might return to the post office and politics.^[147]

In 1864, Purnell became the chairman of the Union Party, a post he held until 1866.  The end of the war brought about a reversal in Purnell’s political fortune.  It was said of him: “Mr. Purnell had become a victim of changing political winds, in succession a Whig, a Know–Nothing and a Union Party (State Chairman) member, at the time of the emerging strong Democratic Party.”^[148]  In 1866 the Senate refused to confirm Purnell as postmaster of Baltimore even though he was reappointed.  President Johnson then appointed him as Assessor of Internal Revenue at Baltimore while the Senate was in recess.  In 1867 the Senate also refused to confirm that position.  Purnell returned to the practice of law.^[149]

In 1870, Purnell returned to his alma mater, Delaware College, where he had been elected president.  This was the start of a second career in education.  Purnell taught English literature, political science, and Latin.  By 1875 he had forced the college to become coeducational. This was not a popular policy at the college, but the education of women was a priority for Purnell.^[150] This was perhaps due to the fact that Purnell had only one son and many daughters, one of whom later became a fellow of the American College of Surgeons.^[151]  The same year coeducation was brought about, Purnell was made the ex-officio president of the Delaware school board as part of a public school law that Purnell had advocated.^[152]

In 1885, Purnell left Delaware College to become the principal of the Frederick Female Seminary, later known as Hood College.  He later became the president of New Windsor College in Carroll County.  In 1897, Purnell returned to Delaware College as an instructor.^[153]  He died there on 30 March 1902 at the age of seventy-six.^[154]

ENDNOTES