The state penal and charitable institutions include a penitentiary at Baltimore; a house of correction at Jessups, two houses of refuge at Baltimore; a house of reformation in Prince George’s county; St Mary’s industrial school for boys at Baltimore; an industrial home for negro girls at Melvale; an asylum and training school for the feeble-minded at Owings Mills; an infirmary at Cumberland; the Maryland hospital for the insane at Catonsville; the Springfield state hospital for the insane; the Maryland school for the deaf and dumb at Frederick city; and the Maryland school for the blind at Baltimore. Each of these is under the management of a board appointed by the governor subject to the confirmation of the senate. Besides these there are a large number of state-aided charitable institutions. In 1900 there was created a board of state aid and charities, composed of seven members appointed by the governor for a term of two years, not more than four to be reappointed. There is also a state lunacy commission of four members, who are appointed for terms of four years, one annually, by the governor.
Education.—The basis of the present common school system was laid in 1865, after which a marked development was accompanied by some important changes in the system and its administration, and the percentage of total illiteracy (i.e. inability to write among those ten years old and over) decreased from 19.3 in 1800 to 11.1 in 1900, while illiteracy among the native whites decreased during the same period from 7.8 to 4.1 and among negroes from 59.6 to 35.2. At the head of the system is a state board and a state superintendent, and under these in each county is a county board which appoints a superintendent for the county and a board of trustees for each school district none of which is to be more than four miles square. The state board is composed of the governor as its president, the state superintendent as its secretary, six other members appointed by the governor for a term of six years, and, as ex-officio members without the right to vote, the principals of the state and other normal schools. Prior to 1900 the principal of the state normal was ex-officio state superintendent, but since then the superintendent has been appointed by the governor for a term of four years. Each county board is also appointed by the governor for a term of six years. In both the state and the county boards at least one-third of the members appointed by the governor are not to be of the dominant political party and only one-third of the members are to be appointed every two years. The state board enacts by-laws for the administration of the system; its decision of controversies arising under the school law is final; it may suspend or remove a county superintendent for inefficiency or incompetency; it issues life state certificates, but applicants must have had seven years of experience in teaching, five in Maryland, and must hold a first-class certificate or a college or normal school diploma; and it pensions teachers who have taught successfully for twenty-five years in any of the public or normal schools of the state, who have reached the age of sixty, and who have become physically or mentally incapable of teaching longer, the pension amounting to $200 a year. The legislature of 1908 passed a law under which the minimum pay for a teacher holding a first-class certificate should be $350 a year after three years’ teaching, $400 after five years’ teaching and $450 after eight years’ teaching. By a law of 1904 all teachers who taught an average of 15 pupils were to receive at least $300. School books are purchased out of the proceeds of the school tax, but parents may purchase if they prefer. In 1908 the average school year was nine and seven-tenths months—ten in the cities and nine and four-tenths in the counties; the aim is ten months throughout, and a law of 1904 provides that if a school is taught less than nine months a portion of the funds set apart for it shall be withheld. A compulsory education law of 1902—to operate, however, only in the city of Baltimore and in Allegany county—requires the attendance for the whole school year of children between the ages of eight and twelve and also of those between the ages of twelve and sixteen who are not employed at home or elsewhere. A separate school for negro children is to be maintained in every election district in which the population warrants it. The system is maintained by a state tax of 16 cents on each $100 of taxable property.
The higher state educational institutions are two normal schools and one agricultural college. One of the normal schools was opened in Baltimore in 1866, the other at Frostburg in 1904. Both are under the management of the state Board of Education, which appoints the principals and teachers and prescribes the course of study. There is besides, in Washington College at Chestertown, a normal department supported by the state and under the supervision of the state Board of Education. The Maryland Agricultural College, to which an experiment station has been added, was opened in 1859; it is at College Park in Prince George’s county, and is largely under state management. Maryland supports no state university, but Johns Hopkins University, one of the leading institutions of its kind in the country, receives $25,000 a year from the state; the medical department of the university of Maryland receives an annual appropriation of about $2500, and St John’s College, the academic department of the university of Maryland, receives from the state $13,000 annually and gives for each county in the state one free scholarship and one scholarship covering all expenses. Among the principal institutions in the state are the university of Maryland, an outgrowth of the medical college of Maryland (1807) in Baltimore, with a law school (reorganized in 1869), a dental school (1882), a school of pharmacy (1904), and, since 1907, a department of arts and science in St John’s College (non-sect., opened in 1789) at Annapolis; Washington College, with a normal department (non-sect., opened in 1782) at Chestertown; Mount St Mary’s College (Roman Catholic, 1808) at Emmitsburg; New Windsor College (Presbyterian, 1843) at New Windsor; St Charles College (Roman Catholic, opened in 1848) and Rock Hill College (Roman Catholic, 1857) near Ellicott City; Loyola College (Roman Catholic, 1852) at Baltimore; Western Maryland College (Methodist Protestant, 1867) at Westminster; Johns Hopkins University (non-sect., 1876) at Baltimore; Morgan College (coloured, Methodist, 1876) at Baltimore; Goucher College (Methodist, founded 1884, opened 1888) at Baltimore; several professional schools mostly in Baltimore (q.v.); the Peabody Institute at Baltimore; and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.
Revenue.—The state’s revenue is derived from a general direct property tax, a licence tax, corporation taxes, a collateral inheritance tax, fines, forfeitures and fees; and the penitentiary yields an annual net revenue of about $40,000. There is no provision for a general periodic assessment, but a state tax commissioner appointed by the governor, treasurer and comptroller assesses the corporations, and the county commissioners (in the counties) and the appeal tax court (in the city of Baltimore) revise valuations of real property every two years. From 1820 to 1836 Maryland, in its enthusiasm over internal improvements, incurred an indebtedness of more than $16,000,000. To meet the interest, such heavy taxes were levied that anti-tax associations were formed to resist the collection, and in 1842 the state failed to pay what was due; but the accumulated interest had been funded by 1848 and was paid soon afterwards, the expenses of the government were curtailed by the constitution of 1851, and after the Civil War the amount of indebtedness steadily decreased until in 1902 the funded debt was $6,909,326 and the net debt only $2,797,269.13, while on the 1st of October 1908 the net debt was $366,643.91. As a result of incurring the large debt, a clause in the constitution prohibits the legislature from contracting a debt without providing by the imposition of taxes for the payment of the interest annually and the principal within fifteen years, except to meet a temporary deficiency not exceeding $50,000. The first bank of the state was established in 1790, and by 1817 there was one in each of twelve counties and several in Baltimore; in 1818-1820 and in 1837-1839 there were several serious bank failures, but there have been no serious failures since. A constitutional provision makes each stockholder in a state bank liable to the amount of his share or shares for all the bank’s debts and liabilities. A savings bank is taxed on its deposits, and a state bank is taxed on its capital-stock.
History.—The history of Maryland begins in 1632 with the procedure of Charles I. to grant a charter conveying almost unlimited territorial and governmental rights therein to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore (1580?-1632), and styling him its absolute lord and proprietor. George Calvert died before the charter had passed the great seal, but about two months later in the same year it was issued to his eldest son, Cecilius. In November 1633 two vessels, the “Ark” and the “Dove,” carrying at least two hundred colonists under Leonard Calvert (c. 1582-1647), a brother of the proprietor, as governor, sailed from Gravesend and arrived in Maryland late in March of the following year. Friendly relations were at the outset established with the Indians, and the province never had much trouble with that race; but with William Claiborne (1589?-1676?), the arch-enemy of the province as long as he lived, it was otherwise. He had opposed the grant of the Maryland charter, had established a trading post on Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay in 1631, and when commanded to submit to the new government he and his followers offered armed resistance. A little later, during his temporary absence in England, his followers on the island were reduced to submission; but in 1644, while the Civil War in England was in progress, he was back in the province assisting Richard Ingle, a pirate who claimed to be acting in the interest of parliament, in raising an insurrection which deprived Governor Calvert of his office for about a year and a half. Finally, the lord proprietor was deprived of his government from 1654 to 1658 in obedience to instructions from parliament which were originally intended to affect only Virginia, but were so modified, through the influence of Claiborne and some Puritan exiles from Virginia who had settled in Maryland, as to apply also to “the plantations within Chesapeake Bay.” Then the long continued unrest both in the mother country and in the province seems to have encouraged Josias Fendall, the proprietor’s own appointee as governor, to strike a blow against the proprietary government and attempt to set up a commonwealth in its place; but this revolt was easily suppressed and order was generally preserved in the province from the English Restoration of 1660 to the English Revolution of 1688.
Meanwhile an interesting internal development had been in progress. The proprietor was a Roman Catholic and probably it was his intention that Maryland should be an asylum for persecuted Roman Catholics, but it is even more clear that he was desirous of having Protestant colonists also. To this end he promised religious toleration from the beginning and directed his officers accordingly; this led to the famous toleration act passed by the assembly in 1649, which, however, extended its protection only to sects of Trinitarian Christianity. Again, although the charter reserved to the proprietor the right of calling an assembly of the freemen or their delegates at such times and in such form and manner as he should choose, he surrendered in 1638 his claim to the sole right of initiating legislation. By 1650 the assembly had been divided into two houses, in one of which sat only the representatives of the freemen without whose consent no bill could become a law, and annual sessions as well as triennial elections were coming to be the usual order. When suffrage had thus come to be a thing really worth possessing, the proprietor, in 1670, sought to check the opposition by disfranchising all freemen who did not have a freehold of fifty acres or a visible estate of forty pounds sterling. But this step was followed by more and more impassioned complaints against him, such as: that he was interfering with elections, that he was summoning only a part of the delegates elected, that he was seeking to overawe those summoned, that he was abusing his veto power, and that he was keeping the government in the hands of Roman Catholics, who were mostly members of his own family. About this time also the north and east boundaries of the province were beginning to suffer from the aggressions of William Penn. The territory now forming the state of Delaware was within the boundaries defined by the Maryland charter, but in 1682 it was transferred by the duke of York to William Penn and in 1685 Lord Baltimore’s claim to it was denied by an order in council, on the ground that it had been inhabited by Christians before the Maryland charter was granted. In the next place, although it was clear from the words of the charter that the parallel of 40° N. was intended for its north boundary, and although Penn’s charter prescribed that Pennsylvania should extend on the south to the “beginning of the fortieth degree of Northern Latitude,” a controversy arose with regard to the boundary between the two provinces, and there was a long period of litigation; in 1763-1767 Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two English mathematicians, established the line named from them (see [Mason and Dixon Line]), which runs along the parallel 39° 43′ 26″.3 N. and later became famous as the dividing line between the free states and the slave states. While the proprietor was absent defending his claims against Penn the English Revolution of 1688 was started. Owing to the death of a messenger there was long delay in proclaiming the new monarchs in Maryland; this delay, together with a rumor of a Popish plot to slaughter the Protestants, enabled the opposition to overthrow the proprietary government, and then the crown, in the interest of its trade policy, set up a royal government in its place, in 1692, without, however, divesting the proprietor of his territorial rights. Under the royal government the Church of England was established, the people acquired a strong control of their branch of the legislature and they were governed more by statute law and less by executive ordinance. The proprietor having become a Protestant, the proprietary government was restored in 1715. Roman Catholics were disfranchised immediately afterward. In 1730 Germans began to settle in considerable numbers in the west-central part of the colony, where they greatly promoted its industrial development but at the same time added much strength to the opposition. The first great dispute between proprietor and people after the restoration of 1715 was with regard to the extension of the English statutes to Maryland, the popular branch of the legislature vigorously contending that all such statutes except those expressly excluded extended to the province, and the lord proprietor contending that only those in which the dominions were expressly mentioned were in force there. Many other disputes speedily followed and when the final struggle between the English and French for possession in America came, although appropriations were made at its beginning to protect her own west frontier from the attacks of the enemy, a dead-lock between the two branches of the assembly prevented Maryland from responding to repeated appeals from the mother country for aid in the latter part of that struggle. This failure was used as an argument in favour of imposing the famous Stamp Act. Nevertheless, popular clamour against parliament on account of that measure was even greater than it had been against the proprietor. The stamp distributor was driven out, and the arguments of Daniel Dulany (1721-1797), the ablest lawyer in the province, against the act were quoted by speakers in parliament for its repeal.
In the years immediately preceding the Declaration of Independence Maryland pursued much the same course as did other leading colonies in the struggle—a vessel with tea on board was even burned to the water’s edge—and yet when it came to the decisive act of declaring independence there was hesitation. As the contest against the proprietor had been nearly won, the majority of the best citizens desired the continuance of the old government and it was not until the Maryland delegates in the Continental Congress were found almost alone in holding back that their instructions not to vote for independence were rescinded. The new constitution drawn and adopted in 1776 to take the place of the charter was of an aristocratic rather than a democratic nature. Under it the property qualification for suffrage was a freehold of 50 acres or £30 current money, the property qualifications for delegates £500, for senators £1000, and for governor £5000. Four delegates were chosen from each county and two each from Baltimore and Annapolis, the same as under the proprietary government, population not being taken into account. Senators were chosen by a college of fifteen electors elected in the same manner as the delegates, and the governor by a joint ballot of the two houses of assembly. In 1802 negroes were disfranchised, and in 1810 property qualifications for suffrage and office were abolished. The system of representation that, with the rapid growth of population in the north-east sections, especially in the city of Baltimore, placed the government in the hands of a decreasing minority also began to be attacked about this time; but the fear of that minority which represented the tobacco-raising and slave-holding counties of south Maryland, with respect to the attitude of the majority toward slavery prevented any changes until 1837, when the opposition awakened by the enthusiasm over internal improvements effected the adoption of amendments which provided for the election of the governor and senators by a direct vote of the people, a slight increase in the representation of the city of Baltimore and the larger counties, and a slight decrease in that of the smaller counties. Scarcely had these amendments been carried when the serious financial straits brought on by debt incurred through the state’s promotion of internal improvements gave rise to the demand for a reduction of governmental expenses and a limitation of the power of the General Assembly to contract debts. The result was the new constitution of 1851, which fully established representation in the counties on the basis of population and further increased that of Baltimore. The constitution of 1851 was however chiefly a patchwork of compromises. So, when during the Civil War Maryland was largely under Federal control and the demand arose for the abolition of slavery by the state, another constitutional convention was called, in 1864, which framed a constitution providing that those who had given aid to the Rebellion should be disfranchised and that only those qualified for suffrage in accordance with the new document could vote on its adoption. This was too revolutionary to stand long and in 1867 it was superseded by the present constitution. In national affairs Maryland early took a stand of perhaps far-reaching consequences in refusing to sign the Articles of Confederation (which required the assent of all the states before coming into effect), after all the other states had done so (in 1779), until those states claiming territory between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi and north of the Ohio—Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut—should have surrendered such claims. As those states finally yielded, the Union was strengthened by reason of a greater equality and consequently less jealousy among the original states, and the United States came into possession of the first territory in which all the states had a common interest and out of which new states were to be created. In the War of 1812 Frederick, Havre de Grace, and Frenchtown were burned by the British; but particularly noteworthy were the unsuccessful movements of the enemy by land and by sea against Baltimore, in which General Robert Ross (c. 1766-1814), the British commander of the land force, was killed before anything had been accomplished and the failure of the fleet to take Fort McHenry after a siege of a day and a night inspired the song The Star-spangled Banner, composed by Francis Scott Key who had gone under a flag of truce to secure from General Ross the release of a friend held as a prisoner by the British and during the attack was detained on his vessel within the British lines. In 1861 Maryland as a whole was opposed to secession but also opposed to coercing the seceded states. During the war that followed the west section was generally loyal to the north while the south section favoured the Confederacy and furnished many soldiers for its army; but most of the state was kept under Federal control, the writ of habeas corpus being suspended. The only battle of much importance fought on Maryland soil during the war was that of Sharpsburg or Antietam on the 16th and 17th of September 1862. As between political parties the state has usually been quite equally divided. From 1820 to 1860, however, the Whigs were in general a trifle the stronger; and from 1866 to 1895 the Democrats were triumphant; in 1895 a Republican governor was elected; in 1896 Maryland gave McKinley 32,232 votes more than it gave Bryan; and in 1904 seven Democratic electors and one Republican were chosen; and in 1908 five Democratic and three Republican.
The proprietors of Maryland were: Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore (1605[?]-1675) from 1632 to 1675; Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore (1629-1715) from 1675 to 1715; Benedict Leonard Calvert, fourth Lord Baltimore (1684?-1715) 1715; Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore (1699-1751) from 1715 to 1751; Frederick Calvert, sixth and last Lord Baltimore (1731-1771) from 1751 to 1771; Henry Harford, from 1771 to 1776.
Governors of Maryland.