The History of Maryland from its first settlement in 1633 to the Restoration in 1660, in two volumes, by John Leeds Bozman, was published in 1837. The manuscript of this work was offered to the State in 1834, after the death of its author, on condition of its being printed within two years. The offer was accepted by the Legislature, and the book was published under its direction. The first volume is introductory, and the history of the Province proper is contained in the second volume. The work is based on an exact study of the original records, and is a very careful and accurate summary in great detail. Bozman did not have access to the papers preserved in the English state-paper office, and much other material has been brought to light since he wrote. His strict pursuance of the chronological order often results in sacrificing the interest of the narrative. The appendix to the second volume has a valuable collection of extracts from the records. The work as a whole may be said to furnish materials for the history of the Province rather than to be the finished history itself.[896]
The History of Maryland from its first Settlement, in 1634, to the year 1848, in one volume, by James McSherry, a lawyer of Frederick City, Maryland, was first published in 1849. It is written in an agreeable style, and, so far as relates to the period under consideration, gives a clear summary of the leading occurrences, but does not appear to have been founded on original investigation of the sources.
In Burnap’s Life of Leonard Calvert, published in Sparks’s American Biography,[897] there is an excellent history of the colony to the death of Governor Calvert in 1647. Dr. Burnap was for many years pastor of the Unitarian Church in Baltimore. His chief authorities were Bozman and Father White’s Relatio Itineris.
To Mr. George Lynn-Lachlan Davis, a member of the Baltimore Bar, who died a few years ago, is due the credit of having settled the vexed question of the religious faith of the legislators who passed the Toleration Act of 1649. His work was based on an examination of wills, rent-rolls, and other records. His conclusions are those stated in the preceding narrative. The result of his investigations was published in 1855 in a volume entitled, The Day Star of American Freedom: or, The Birth and Early Growth of Toleration in the Province of Maryland. It also contains a summary of all that is known of the entire personal history of each member of the Assembly of 1649.[898]
The Rev. E. D. Neill’s Terra Mariæ: or, Threads of Maryland Colonial History, published in 1867, is a digressive account of the career of the first Lord Baltimore, with some notices of men more or less connected with the Province in its early days. He quotes many letters of the seventeenth century, but rarely refers to the source from which he drew them.[899] What the volume contains relative to the internal affairs of the Province is not always accurate. Mr. Neill has published several pamphlets and articles on the early history of Maryland, in which he endeavors to show that Maryland never was a Roman Catholic colony, that a majority of the colonists were from the beginning Protestants, and that the Church of England was established by the charter.[900]
The latest and most comprehensive History of Maryland is that by Mr. J. T. Scharf, in three octavo volumes, published in 1879. This work extends from the earliest period to the present day. Mr. Scharf publishes in full many valuable documents from the English state-paper office, among which is an English translation of the charter of Avalon.[901]
Histories of Kent, Cecil, and some other counties in the State have also been published.[902]
The subject of religious toleration in Maryland—its causes and significance—has given rise to much discussion both within and without the State. We shall refer only to a few of the many pamphlets and articles which have appeared on this topic. In 1845 the late John P. Kennedy delivered a discourse before the Maryland Historical Society on the Life and Character of the first Lord Baltimore. He maintained that toleration was in the charter and not in the Act of 1649, and that as much credit was due to the Protestant prince who granted as to the Catholic nobleman who received the patent, and that the settlement of the Province was mainly a commercial speculation. This discourse was reviewed in 1846 by Mr. B. U. Campbell, who contended with so much show of reason that the honor of the policy of toleration must be attributed to the Proprietary and the first settlers, that Mr. Kennedy felt called upon in the same year to reply to the review.[903] In 1855 the Rev. Ethan Allen published a pamphlet on Maryland Toleration, in which he upheld Clayborne’s side of the controversy with Lord Baltimore, denied that Maryland was a Catholic colony, and asserted that protection to all religions was guaranteed by the charter. This question was also referred to in the discussion between Mr. Gladstone and Cardinal Manning, concerning the Vatican decrees, in 1875. Cardinal Manning had pointed to the toleration established by Catholics in Maryland to refute Mr. Gladstone’s assertion that the Roman Church of this day would, if she could, use torture and force in matters of religious belief. Mr. Gladstone replied, in his Vaticanism, that toleration in Maryland was really defensive, and its purpose was to secure the free exercise of the Catholic religion, because it was apprehended that the Puritans would flood the Province.[904]