Volume 4, Chapter 32, New Jersey and Maryland Follow
New Jersey, a scene of conflict between rebel and Tory, had felt understandably diffident about antagonizing its two powerful and arch-conservative neighbors, New York and Pennsylvania.
Lexington and Concord galvanized New Jersey, as it did the other colonies, and a provincial convention in Trenton was formed in the spring of 1775 out of a general provincial conference of county commitment.
But while favoring military measures, the convention had continued to protest its loyalty to the king.
By early 1776, the New Jersey Revolutionaries had established a Provincial Congress with a Committee of Safety as its executive arm.
Even so, the Tories remained strong in New Jersey, and Royal Governor William Franklin continued to be active in political affairs, as we have seen.
Leading the radically militant forces in New Jersey was the distinguished president of Princeton College, the Scottish-born Reverend Dr. John Witherspoon.
An early advocate of independence, he had seen his students fill the ranks of the Sons of Liberty,
and he was prominent enough in the revolution that he was one of the three Americans burned in effigy by the British and Tories
When General Howell captured Staten Island in July 1776.
By early June, an internal drive for militancy, combined with the transformation of Pennsylvania, easily swung New Jersey into the independence camp.
The elections to the June meeting of the Provincial Congress at Burlington produced a clear, radical victory.
Two conservative delegates to Philadelphia were immediately recalled, and on June 21, the New Jersey Congress selected an entirely new delegation, all of whom staunchly favored independence. The new delegation included Witherspoon.
The Provincial Congress also ordered the arrest of Governor Franklin, sent him to prison in Connecticut and authorized the delegates to Philadelphia to concur in a Declaration of Independence.
After completing this drive for independence, the Provincial Congress promptly decided to write a constitution for the virtually independent province.
The new constitution on which Dr. Witherspoon was the main influence was approved at the beginning of July.
It was moderately conservative, establishing a bicameral legislature, but also, by a vote of five counties to four,
abolishing the old freehold qualifications for voting.
Suffrage was broadened to all inhabitants with assets, personal or real, valued at 50 or more pounds.
Perhaps through careless wording, the unintended effect of the legislation after time was to give the vote to widows inheriting property worth at least 50 pounds, an initial breakthrough for women's suffrage.
New Jersey's swift adhesion to the cause of independence left only Maryland and New York unconverted.
Maryland was a proprietary colony of the Baltimore family, and for a century its politics had been expressed in terms of pro and anti-proprietary parties.
The Court Party was the party of the allies and receivers of special privilege from the proprietary.
It defended the quit rents and other exactions imposed by the Baltimore's.
It naturally controlled appointed officialdom, the governor, the council, the established
Anglican clergy and the body of the petty bureaucracy.
In opposition was the country party, dominating the elected lower house of the legislature.
Added to the disfranchisement of the sizeable minority of Roman Catholic voters, the property
Public qualifications for voting proved high enough to disfranchise proportionately more
citizens in Maryland than in any other province.
Probably little more than two-fifths of the white adult males of Maryland were eligible
to vote.
Furthermore, as elsewhere in the South, apportionment for the assembly was weighted heavily in favor
of the older Eastern counties, containing large slave-holding plantations and fewer
The exactions of the proprietary upon the land of the inhabitants were not merely academic, they included quit rents, caution money from land purchasers, rents from proprietary manors and alienation fines on those who transferred their land.
From these sources, as well as fines, and fees, and tonnage, and export duties on Maryland's staple tobacco, the proprietary derived a net annual income in the decade before the revolution of £12,500.
In addition to this substantial sum, the people of Maryland were forced to pay £12,000 in taxes per year to support the proprietary officials who enforced these exactions upon them, as well as £8,000 to support the established Anglican clergy.
Thus over 32,000 pounds were extracted from the Marylanders to support the proprietary and a hundred-odd appointed bureaucrats and ministers.
In contrast, the entire government of Maryland, including provincial, county and local operations, costs Maryland only 18,500 pounds per year.
It is easy to see that saddled with perhaps the most expensive state in the colonies, the grievances of the country party were real indeed.
Both court and country parties were dominated by the social and economic leaders of the province, the wealthy planter oligarchs, their wealth based on slave cultivation of tobacco.
The continuing attack by the country party on the place and privileges of the court party
led naturally to their leading the wider opposition to British exactions in Maryland.
In the course of the revolutionary movement, the country party established periodic extra-legal
provincial conventions with a council of safety appointed to operate in the interior.
The political convention functioned as a supreme court and appointed county committees. No
American colony labored under such tight control of a small, interlocking clique as Maryland
under the country party. Virtually complete control was exercised by very few men. First
and foremost was the very wealthy Matthew Tillman, head of a very prominent and powerful
and the National Planter Family on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Tillman presided over all the provincial conventions,
was usually President of the Council of Safety, and later
was President of Maryland's Constitutional Convention.
Also prominent was Edward Lloyd, first cousin of Tillman,
and an extremely wealthy member of another leading Eastern
Shore family. Lloyd was one of the largest slaveholders
Another important figure in the province was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a resident of the capital city of Annapolis. Carroll had the largest slave holdings in Maryland and was not only the wealthiest man in the province, but one of the wealthiest in America. A delegate to the Continental Congress, he achieved political prominence despite being a Roman Catholic.
Almost equally important was another Charles Carroll of Annapolis, a distant relation to Carroll of Carrollton.
Yet another Charles Carroll was the son-in-law of Carroll of Carrollton.
He too was one of the wealthiest people in Maryland.
Three prominent Annapolis lawyers, once partners, rounded out the country party leadership.
William Packer, a delegate to the Continental Congress, made his fortune by marrying into
the Lloyd family and became a leading planter and slave holder. Thomas Johnson, another
congressional delegate, specialized in acquiring land grants in unoccupied Western Maryland.
Before the revolution, having put on enough pressure to gain himself the land, Johnson
had joined with George Washington to try to persuade the Maryland and Virginia legislatures
to open a vast Potomac navigation system to raise the value of their lands enormously.
The third of these lawyers, Samuel Chase, was also a delegate to the Continental Congress.
Under this sort of control, it is not surprising that Maryland's revolutionary movement was
was staunchly conservative and opposed the radical drive for independence, and as we
have seen, Robert Eden was courteously allowed to remain as nominal governor, though he retained
no power. As late as May 15, 1776, the Maryland Provincial Convention reconfirmed its aim
of reconciliation with Britain and its corollary, instructions to the delegates at Philadelphia.
The American radicals almost despaired of Maryland, but its very tight control afforded
a chance of radical change through conversion of a few of the inner circle.
The break came with the ardent adoption of the independence cause by two of the top oligarchs,
Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
To gain sufficient support and pressure for independence, they were forced to stump the
of the Western Country, raising demands for independence among the Maryland masses, thus
taking the risk of arousing domestic radicalism as well.
In fact, along with a host of local committee resolutions for independence in Western Maryland,
many of the local groups were stimulated to agitate for domestic reform.
Committees in Western Frederick County, seeing the link between independence and domestic
Change attacked the tyranny and discriminatory representation in the assembly as part of
an effort to develop political organs that would agree to independence. Military participation
heightened pressure for reform as soldiers in the fight against Britain felt with a special
keenness their disfranchisement and handicaps in representation. They pressed for broadening
in the highly restrictive Maryland suffrage, and demands arose for allowing all adult arms-bearing taxpayers the right to vote.
Clearly, mass democratic pressure was beginning to push against the tight aristocratic control of the province.
Chase's campaign and Western mass pressure affected a remarkable change in Maryland's position,
The shift aided by Maryland's sudden, unwelcome isolation among the colonies and General Lee's agitation from Williamsburg. Moreover, Maryland was sternly confronted by the request of the Continental Congress for military aid and this presented the stark choice of conforming or standing alone.
Originally on June 28, the Maryland Convention revoked its instructions against independence
and authorized its delegates to join in a Declaration of Independence.
Governor Eden was gracefully permitted to leave for Britain on a British warship.
The Convention also decided to draft the State Constitution on August 1.
Property qualifications for the Constitutional Convention were to remain the same, but representation
was partially corrected by splitting Frederick County into three parts and adding more delegates
from the major cities of Baltimore and Annapolis.
Thus, by the end of June, all the colonies but one stood four square for independence
and almost all had either formally adopted a new government or were in the process of
of Doing So. But one, New York, powerful and firmly in arch-conservative hands, still stood
in the way of American independence.