History of Maryland

[1][2][3] Like other colonies and settlements of the Chesapeake Bay region, its economy was soon based on tobacco as a commodity crop, highly prized among the English, cultivated primarily by African slave labor, although many young people came from Britain sent as indentured servants or criminal prisoners in the early years.

This long process was held up for three years by objections from smaller states led by Maryland until certain issues and principles over the western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River.

When Europeans began to settle in Maryland in the early 17th century, the main tribes included the Nanticoke on the Eastern Shore, and the Iroquoian speaking Susquehannock.

Furthermore, The Susquehannock, already incorrectly considered savages and cannibals by the first Spanish explorers, made massive moves to control local trade with the first Swedish, Dutch and English settlers of the Chesapeake Bay region.

As to when they arrived, some early records detailing their oral history seem to point to the fact that they descended from an Iroquoian group who conquered Ohio centuries before, but were pushed back east again by Siouan and Algonquin enemies.

[13][14] Also, as Susquehannocks began to abandon much of their westernmost territory due to their own hardships, a group of Powhatan split off, becoming known as the Shawnee and migrated into the western regions of Maryland and Pennsylvania briefly before moving on.

The region was depicted in an earlier map by Estêvão Gomes and Diego Gutiérrez, made in 1562, in the context of the Spanish Ajacán Mission of the sixteenth century.

The English name was preferred due to the undesired associations of Mariae with the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, linked to the Inquisition.

[24] After purchasing land from the Yaocomico Indians and establishing the town of St. Mary's, Leonard, per his brother's instructions, attempted to govern the country under feudalistic precepts.

Based on an incorrect map, the original royal charter granted to Maryland the Potomac River and territory northward to the fortieth parallel.

When they publicly bet a large fraction of their wealth on their favorite horse, they expressed competitiveness, individualism, and materialism as the core elements of gentry values.

The articles had initially been submitted to the states on November 17, 1777, but the ratification process dragged on for several years, stalled by an interstate quarrel over claims to uncolonized land in the west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River.

Hanson was the first person to serve a full term with the title of "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.

The geography of the Baltimore area made building a similar canal to the west impractical, but the idea of constructing railroads was beginning to gather support in the 1820s.

[4] After John Brown's raid in 1859 on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, some citizens in slaveholding areas began forming local militias for defense.

The political alignments of each group generally reflected their economic interests, with slaveholders and people involved in trade with the South most likely to favor the Confederate cause, and small farmers and merchants outside the major cities and in western Maryland allied with the Union.

President Abraham Lincoln's strong hand suppressing violence and dissent in Maryland and the belated assistance of Governor Hicks played important roles.

[citation needed] He landed his troops of Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island militia over the protests of Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks (1798–1865).

[citation needed] Maryland's naval contribution, the relatively new sloop-of-war USS Constellation was flagship of the US Africa Squadron from 1859 to 1861 and continued in this role during the war.

The last of the ships was captured at the outbreak of the Civil War: Constellation overpowered the slaver brig Triton in African coastal waters.

The order indicated that Lee had divided his army and dispersed portions geographically (to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Hagerstown, Maryland), thus making each subject to isolation and defeat in detail if McClellan could move quickly enough.

McClellan waited about 18 hours before deciding to take advantage of this intelligence and position his forces based on it, thus endangering a golden opportunity to defeat Lee decisively.

It provided for the reapportionment of the legislature based on population, not counties, which gave greater political power to more dense urban areas (and, by extension, to freedmen), but the new constitution deprived African Americans of some of the protections of the 1864 document.

[44] Businessmen Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, George Peabody, and Henry Walters were philanthropists of 19th century Baltimore; they founded notable educational, health care, and cultural institutions in that city.

[clarification needed] The council, which had a virtually unlimited budget, was charged with defending the state, supervising the draft, maintaining wage and price controls, providing housing for war-related industries, and promoting support for the war.

Statistically, Maryland held tightly to the middle ground– in population, value of manufacturers, percentage of native whites, the proportion of Catholics, the first and last annual frost.

He also won approval for a civil service system, long been sought by reformers who wanted positions given on the basis of merit and not patronage; reduced the number of state elections by extending legislative terms from two to four years; and appointed citizens' commissions to advise on nearly every aspect of government.

In addition to the nationwide New Deal reforms of President Roosevelt, which put people to work building roads and park facilities, Maryland also took steps to weather the hard times.

The 1935 case Murray v. Pearson et al. resulted in a Baltimore City Court's ordering integration of University of Maryland Law School.

In 1952, the eastern and western halves of Maryland were linked for the first time by the long Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which replaced a nearby ferry service.