[NOTE: This Lecture actually begins with T032]
 

In 1832 Baltimore was a city of 80,990 people. For thirty years the population had been growing at about 18,000 a decade and would continue to do so for another. (in 1840 the population would reach 102,000). In the first third of the 19th century, the slave population of the city, after an initial rise, was on the decline, while the free black population had increased five fold from 2,771 in 1800 to 14,783. [see Varle for details].

In all the city was both manageable and optimistic about its future. Despite some debilitating outbreaks of disease such as yellow fever and Cholera (in 1832 3,572 people died from Cholera alone), city government seemed to function reasonably well and the business community was excited about the prospects of its new internal improvement venture, the B & O railroad, which would open up the commerce of the midwestern United States to the Port of Baltimore, although it had not yet entirely given up its dream of a canal link as well, a dream that would not be entirely abandonned until nearly a decade later. On balance even the lowest level of the economic and social scale, the Free Black population, was able to find a place for itself and some slaves in the City were even able to rise above their station and learn to read:

[quote from Frederick Douglass's narrative]

In 1832 Frederic Douglass was a slave in a Fell's Point Household. About 15 in 1832, Douglass would take the time thirteen years later to write eloquently about his life in Baltimore and relate in graphic detail how he had learned to read:
 

Frederick Douglass came to Baltimore in 1826 at the age of 9. He left in 1833 a the age of 16, able to read and write, cognizant of what abolitionist meant, and longing for freedom. [quotes taken from 4-33, pp. 36, 37, 38-46;

"Very soon after I went to live Mr. and Mrs. Auld [in Fells Point], she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe to teach a slave to read." [note 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion]

"I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed in the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation. He is very much better fed and clothed, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation." "I lived in Master Hugh's family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else.

...She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. ...

The plan which I adopted , and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom Imet in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and at different places, I finally succeed in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread withme, .... I was much better off in this regard thanmany of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. ...

I was now about twelve years old [1829] ... I got hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator" ... I found in it a dialogue between a master an his slave...

If a slave ran away and succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did any thing very wrong in themind of a slaveholder, it was poke of as the fruit of aboliton. Hearing the word in this connection very often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was the "act of abolishing;" but then I did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was something they wanted me toknow very little about. AFter a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the number of petitions from the north, prying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the States. From this time I understood the words aboliton and abolitionist. ...

... I looked forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so immediately; besides I wished to learn how to write, as I might have occasion to write my onw pass. ...

... The idea as to how I migh learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship carpenters, after hewing, getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. ...["L" for Larboard, "S" for Starboard SF for Starboard forward, LA for Larboard aft] I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I don't beileve you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons inwriting, .... I then commenced copying the italics in Webster's Spelling Book [Published by Noah Webster in 1783; Webster lived and taught for a time in Baltimore]

....[when left alone in the house] I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas's copy-book, copying what he ahd written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thgus after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write...."
 

In 1832, cholera excepted, Baltimore was not such a bad place to live. To be sure, it was somewhat unhappy with its political power in the State, (Baltimore still had only two delegates in the Legislature and no Senator), and it did offer a home to minority points of view that could be seen as harboring the seeds of subsequent turmoil and discontent. For example Frederick Douglass and the rest of the reading population of Baltimore could subject themselves to the publications of an increasingly strident minority press that preached the total abolition of Slavery. In 1829 a young William Lloyd Garrison had come to Baltimore from New England to aid in the publication of a "struggling anti-slavery monthly entitled the "Genius of Universal Emancipation." The editor favored gradual emancipation; Garrison demanded immediate abolition. While the editor was out of town he published some articles that a Baltimore County jury found libilous and Garrison fled town to publish the LIBERATOR elsewhere, never to return.

Although the first generation of American Heroes was gone (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826), America at least had one national leader of stature that inspired hatred or hope. Andrew Jackson was truly a symbol for his age, as one historian has phrased it. By 1832 there were three political parties in Maryland: Jackson, Anti-Jackson, and Anti Mason. All three held their National conventions in Baltimore.

"The Election of 1832 was ... unique in that it was the first contest in which the major parties held national nominating conventions to select the presidential candidates. Moreover, it marked the emergence of the first third party in American politics: the Anti-Masonic party." Robert V. Remini in Schelisinger , History of American Presidential Elections, vol I. p. 300.

Anti Masons met first, September 26, 1831, selected Marylander William Wirt;

Anti-Jackson (National Republicans), December 12, 1831, met in same saloon as the anti-Masons, selected Henry Clay

Democrats (May 21, 1832), selected Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren

All three payed homage to one man: Charles Carroll of Carrollton who happened to be the sole surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence and loved very minute of the attention.

Fall election: Jackson: 688,242; Clay: 473,462; Wirt: 101,051. Wirt only carried Vermont (7 electoral votes); Maryland's electorl vote: 5 for Clay, 3 for Jackson, none for Wirt.
 
 
 

Baltimore would again host all national party conventions in 1844, but by then the political world would be vastly more complicated and laced with strain. The National Republicans were by then called Whigs. They met on May 1, 1844 and their candidate was again Henry Clay. The Democrats met May 27th and chose James K. Polk. Maryland gave her votes to Clay and the Whigs while a majority, both popular and electoral went to Polk.

In the futile search for political concensus that was the predominate story of Maryland Politics from 1833 to 1858, Baltimore and the changing preception of what constituted participatory democracy played an increasingly important role in ultimate collapse of the local political structure. In Many respects Maryland's efforts as holding on to a middle course politically, socially, perhaps even economically, were doomed from the very beginning. Once Othello's complaints were taken seriously, once slavery could no longer be addressed as a matter of property and dispassionately treated as just another personal asset of of a planter or farmer, but instead was became an issue upon which there was no common ground, then any efforts at seeking such a mythical state were doomed. I suspect that point was reached by 1844 when the first murmurings of the Know Nothing party were heard in Maryland, but definitely was the case by 1850. For a decade Marylanders tried their best to avoid the slavery issue and bury themselves in local political controversy that focused on anti-immigrant and anti-catholic platform of the Know-nothing Party. By 1858 when Maryland had its first Knownothing governor and Knownothing's controlled the legislature, the moral issue of slavery simply could not be avoided. That old Federalist turned Jacksonian, Roger B. Taney, had made that clear in the unenforceable Dred Scott Decision of 1856 which said that slaves were slaves whereever they were found, even in Free States, and John Brown had sealed it forever with his raid on Harper's Ferry in October of 1859. In 1857 Taney was only trying to apply the practice of Maryland Politics to an A National issue: He hoped to clarify the rights of those slaveholders whereeverthey may be in the mistaken assumption that slaves could still be considered first and foremost property; in this he was badly mistaken, just as he would be a few short years later when he tried to tell President Lincoln that (civil) personal rights ought not to be trampled in the name of prosecuting a war.
 

In sum, to understand Maryland History in the years from the Revolution to the Civil War, it is necessary to understand how concientiously and persistently Marylanders pursued the elusive middle ground. They did so constitutionally, politically, and, after a self-indulgent spending spree of magnificent proportions that brought the state to near bankruptcy in the 1840s, economically.