Maryland

D

Local Government

There are 23 counties in Maryland, of which 15 are governed by boards of county commissioners. The others are administered by county councils. County commissioners and county council members also are elected to four-year terms, as are treasurers, circuit court clerks, registers of wills, state’s attorneys, sheriffs, and surveyors. Most other county administrative officials and board members are appointed either by the governor or by the county government. The city of Baltimore is administratively independent of any county.

Most of the municipalities in Maryland, including Baltimore, have the mayor and council system of municipal government. Many large unincorporated suburban communities in the state are administered directly by the county governments.

E

National Representation

Maryland has eight representatives and two senators. It casts ten electoral votes in presidential elections.

VIII

History

A

Early Inhabitants

Pottery, axheads, and burial sites indicate that Native Americans lived on the upper Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding lands for many centuries. At the beginning of historic times in the early 17th century, various peoples were present who spoke languages of the Algonquian group: the Conoy and Patuxent lived on the Western Shore of the bay; and the Choptank, Nanticoke, Assateague, and Pocomoke maintained villages on the Eastern Shore. The Susquehannock, a people who spoke an Iroquoian language, lived near the mouth of the Susquehanna River. They hunted and raided to the south along Chesapeake Bay.

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Eventually nearly all of these peoples moved away to escape the pressure of white settlement. Those who remained were scattered or much reduced in population, either as a result of conflicts with white settlers or with other Native Americans or as a result of European diseases, to which they had little resistance. By the end of the 18th century almost no Native Americans remained in Maryland.

B

European Exploration and Settlement

Spanish explorers sailed along the Maryland coast in the 16th century. In the early 17th century, fur traders from Virginia colony traded with Native Americans in the area. Under a commercial license issued by Virginia, William Claiborne built the first white settlement in the area in 1631. It was a fur trading post on Kent Island, east of modern-day Annapolis.

In 1632, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, induced King Charles I of England to grant him the land north of the Potomac River, which had been part of the grant to Virginia colony. Calvert, a former high adviser to the king and recent convert to Roman Catholicism, wanted to establish a community where fellow Catholics, who were persecuted in England, could worship freely. In addition, he anticipated a financial profit from his colonial enterprise. Calvert died before Charles completed the charter, and the grant went to his son Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. It included the land from the south bank of the Potomac north to the 40th parallel, as well as all but the tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. Maryland’s western boundary ran from the “fountain” (source) of the Potomac northward until it met the 40th parallel. Cecilius Calvert proceeded to organize an expedition of about 200 settlers under the leadership of his younger brother Leonard Calvert, who was to serve as provincial governor. The settlers reached the province in March 1634, first setting foot on Maryland soil at Saint Clements Island. They established Saint Marys (later Saint Marys City) on the site of a former Native American village—which they bought from its inhabitants—near the mouth of the Saint George’s River (now Saint Marys River).

The settlers cultivated the land previously cleared by the Native Americans, planting corn and tobacco. Their first harvests were good, and they remained at peace with the Native Americans. But they had difficulties of other sorts. Claiborne refused to recognize Lord Baltimore’s jurisdiction over Kent Island, which he claimed was part of Virginia. As a result, petty warfare broke out in 1635 between Claiborne’s and Baltimore’s forces. In 1638 the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations ruled that Kent Island came under the jurisdiction of Maryland.

Another early conflict occurred between Lord Baltimore and the provincial legislature. Under the terms of the charter, the legislature was restricted to approving legislation proposed by Baltimore. The legislature soon demanded the power to initiate legislation. After resisting its demand, Baltimore yielded on this important point in 1638, when he agreed that laws enacted by the legislature and approved by the governor should be temporarily valid pending his own approval.

B

1

Civil Strife

During the 1640s, Maryland was shaken by a succession of conflicts related to the civil strife occurring in England. At that time the king was engaged in a struggle for power with Parliament, the English legislature. Lord Baltimore supported the king, while many Maryland colonists were sympathetic to Parliament, which was controlled by conservative Protestants known as Puritans. Even though complete religious freedom prevailed in the province, Baltimore’s adherence to Catholicism was a cause of unrest among the settlers, a majority of whom were Protestants. The differences between proprietor and settlers tended to make the proprietary authority unstable, and in 1644 Claiborne seized power and drove Governor Calvert into exile in Virginia. In 1646 Calvert reasserted proprietary authority with troops supplied by the governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley.

Governor Calvert died in June 1647. The struggle between the king and Parliament had become a civil war in England, and it was by that time apparent that the Parliamentarians would prevail. To gain favor with the strongly anti-Catholic Parliamentarians, as well as to placate the Protestant majority in Maryland, Lord Baltimore appointed a Protestant, William Stone, as governor and named other Protestants to important positions in the government. At the same time he sought to ensure that the religious freedom of the Catholic minority would not be compromised by the Protestant majority. Largely as a result of his prodding, the legislature passed the Act Concerning Religion in 1649, assuring freedom of worship to all who believed in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Although limited to Christians and repealed in 1692, this was one of the earliest statutes of religious liberty.

Lord Baltimore’s adroit political maneuvers were of no avail. Parliament appointed commissioners for Maryland, one of whom was his old enemy Claiborne. In 1654 the commission reorganized the provincial government, eliminating the proprietor’s political authority and removing Governor Stone. Subsequently, the Puritan-controlled legislature passed anti-Catholic legislation. Baltimore refused to accept the loss of his authority and doggedly worked in England for its restoration. In March 1655, Stone led a force of 130 soldiers to try to recapture the government, but was thoroughly beaten and most of his force captured. The Puritans executed four of Stone’s lieutenants. Baltimore meanwhile secured the assurance of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, who ruled England in the name of Parliament, that he was still the proprietor of Maryland. Finally, in November 1657, he reached an agreement with the Puritan commissioners to restore his former authority over the colony.

During the 1660s and 1670s, proprietary authority was largely unchallenged. However, the Protestant farmers scattered along the shores of Chesapeake Bay resented the province’s Catholic leadership in Saint Marys City. In 1688 English King James II, a Catholic, was succeeded by the Protestant monarchs William and Mary. By an accident of fate the provincial governor delayed in proclaiming the new monarchs, giving new life to the suspicion, long held among Maryland Protestants, that insidious anti-Protestant plots were afoot in the province. The suspicion renewed old grievances. In 1689 Protestant rebels, led by John Coode, overthrew the proprietary government and asked King William to place the colony under royal control. This was accomplished with the arrival of the first royal governor in 1692. In the same year the Church of England was made the official church of the province. The change in regimes also resulted in the shifting of the provincial capital in 1694 from Catholic-dominated Saint Marys City to Protestant-dominated Anne Arundel Town (now Annapolis).

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