Maryland in the American Revolution

The first signs of rebellion against the mother country occurred in 1765, when the tax collector Zachariah Hood was injured while landing at the second provincial capital of Annapolis docks, arguably the first violent resistance to British taxation in the colonies.

Although no major Battles of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) occurred in Maryland itself, (although the British Royal Navy fleet passed through and up the Bay to land troops at the "Head of Elk"), to attack the colonies' capital city, this did not prevent the state's soldiers from distinguishing themselves through their service.

During the war itself, Baltimore Town served as the temporary capital of the colonies when the Second Continental Congress met there during December 1776 to February 1777, after Philadelphia had been threatened with occupation by the British "Redcoats".

In April 1634, Lord Baltimore's younger brother Leonard Calvert, first colonial governor, made a settlement at what was named "St. Mary's City".

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 saw King James II, of the dynasty of the House of Stuart, replaced with his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange.

In the later colonial period, the southern and eastern portions of the Province continued in their tobacco economy, heavily dependent on slave labor, but as the revolution approached, northern and central Maryland increasingly became centers of wheat production.

[2] Heavily capitalised, and taking great personal risks, these men made immense fortunes from the "Clockwork Operation" of fast ships coupled with ruthless dealmaking and the manipulation of credit.

[3] Maryland planters were offered easy credit by the Glaswegian merchants, enabling them to buy European consumer goods and other luxuries before harvest time gave them the ready cash to do so.

But, when the time came to sell the crop, the indebted growers found themselves forced by the canny traders to accept low prices for their harvest simply in order to stave off bankruptcy.

[5] Thomas Jefferson, on the verge of losing his own farm, accused British merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia farmers to take on unsustainable debt loads.

In 1786, he remarked: A powerful engine for this [mercantile profiting] was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves.

One of the "Resolves" later adopted by the citizens of Annapolis on May 25, 1774, would read as follows: Resolved, that it is the opinion of the meeting, that the gentlemen of the law of this province bring no suit for the recovery of any debt, due from any inhabitant of this province to any inhabitant of Great Britain, until the said act [The Stamp Act] be repealed[7]After the war, few of the enormous debts owed by the colonists would never be repaid.

Washington himself was appalled by this decision to protect native property rights, writing to his future partner William Crawford in 1767 that he: could never look upon that Proclamation in any other light ... than as a temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians.

[8]In 1764 Britain imposed a tax on sugar, the first of many ultimately unsuccessful attempts to make her North American subjects bear a portion of the cost of the recent French and Indian War.

[10] Meanwhile, an Annapolis merchant by the name of Zachariah Hood, charged by the British with the task of collecting the new stamp duty, was injured at the dock on his return to Maryland by an angry crowd in what has been called the "first successful, forcible resistance in America to King George's authority".

[12] Writing in the Maryland Gazette under the pseudonym "First Citizen," Carroll became a prominent spokesman against the governor's proclamation increasing legal fees to state officers and Protestant clergy.

It is possible that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution - guaranteeing freedom of religion - was written in appreciation for Carroll's considerable financial support during the Revolutionary War.

He co-founded Anne Arundel County's Sons of Liberty chapter with his close friend William Paca, and led opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act.

In an open letter dated July 18, 1766, Chase attacked Walter Dulany, George Steuart (1700–1784), John Brice (1705–1766), Michael MacNamara and others for publishing an article in the Maryland Gazette Extraordinary of June 19, 1766, in which Chase was accused of being: "a busy, reckless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction, a common disturber of the public tranquility".

He believed that protest rather than force should furnish the solution to America's problems, and that legal process, logic, and the "prudent" exercise of "agreements" would eventually prevail upon the British to concede the colonists' demands.

[16] In 1774, committees of correspondence sprung up throughout the colonies, offering support to Boston, Massachusetts, after the British closed the port and increased the occupying military force.

I firmly believe that they will undergo any hardship sooner than acknowledge a right in the British Parliament in that particular, and will persevere in their non-importation and non-exportation experiments, in spite of every inconvenience that they must consequently be exposed to, and the total loss of their trade.

[20]Despite such protests, and a growing sense that war was inevitable, Maryland still held back from full independence from Great Britain, and gave instructions to that effect to its delegates to the First Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in September 1774.

As enacted by the Maryland General Assembly in 1777, all persons holding any office of profit or trust, including attorneys at law, and all voters were required to take the oath no later than March 1, 1778.

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.

Maryland was the last hold-out; it refused to ratify until Virginia and New York agreed to rescind their claims to lands in what became the Northwest Territory.

After the war, he had to pay triple taxes as did other Loyalists, but he was never forced to sign the loyalty oath and his lands and property remained unconfiscated.

The British, desperately short of manpower, sought to enlist African American soldiers to fight on behalf of the Crown, promising them liberty in exchange.

As a result of the looming crisis in 1775 the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to servants and slaves who were able to bear arms and join his Loyalist Ethiopian Regiment: ...

And I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY'S Troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to His MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.About 800 men joined up; some helped rout the Virginia militia at the Battle of Kemp's Landing and fought in the Battle of Great Bridge on the Elizabeth River, wearing the motto "Liberty to Slaves", but this time they were defeated.