MARYLAND (Hayward)

Gazetteer/Almanac
John Hayward, Gazetteer of the United States of America… (Philadelphia: James L. Gihon, 1854), 69-72.
MARYLAND is one of the thirteen American states, which, after the close of the revolutionary war, became parties to the compact whereby they were united into one great national family. It is usually designated as the southernmost of the Middle States, lying on the Atlantic coast; it extends from 38° to 39° 44' north latitude, and between 75° 10' and 79° 20' west longitude ; and its superficial area, of which about one fifth is water, is estimated as being 9,356 square miles.

The American Spirit

Dred Scott (Bailey, 1998)
Type: Description
Citation:
Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, eds., The American Spirit, 9th ed., vol.1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 421-22.
Body Summary:
Dred Scott, an illiterate Missouri slave, was taken by his master for several years (1834-1838) to the free state of Illinois and then to a portion of Wisconsin Territory now located in the state of Minnesota. The Minnesota area was then free territory, since it lay north of the line of 36 30’ established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (subsequently repealed in 1854). Scott, taken in hand by interested abolitionists, sued for his freedom on the grounds of residence on free soil. The case was appealed from the circuit court to the Supreme Court, which grappled with several basic questions: Was a slave a citizen under the Constitution? (If not, he was not entitled to sue in federal courts.) Was Dred Scott rendered free by residence in Wisconsin Territory, under the terms of the Missouri Compromise? The Court, headed by the pro-Southern Chief Justice Roger Taney of the slaveholding state of Maryland, ruled as follows.
Harpers Ferry Raid (Bailey, 1998)
Type: Description
Citation:
Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, eds., The American Spirit, 9th ed. (2 vols., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 1: 426-27.
Body Summary:
The fanatical abolitionist John Brown plotted a large slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry in western Virginia.  Purchasing arms with about $3,000 provided by sympathetic Northern abolitionists, he launched his abortive enterprise with a score of men, including two of his own sons.  Wounded and captured, after the loss of several innocent lives, he was given every opportunity to pose as a martyr while being tried.  he was found guilty of three capital offenses: conspiracy with slaves, murder, and treason.  Most of the abolitionists who had financed his enterprise ran for cover, although many of them had evidently not known of his desperate plan to attack a federal arsenal and bring down on himself the Washington government.  The Southerners were angered by the widespread expressions of sympathy for Brown in the North.  A week after the raid, the influential Richmond Enquirer wrote…”the Harper’s Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion more than any other event…since the formation of the government; it has rallied to that standard men who formerly looked upon it with horror; it has revived, with tenfold strength, the desire of a Southern Confederacy.”
Lecompton Constitution (Bailey, 1998)
Type: Description
Citation:
Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, eds., The American Spirit, 9th ed., vol.1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 422-433.
Body Summary:
Yet by 1857 Kansas had enough people, chiefly free-soilers, to apply for statehood on a popular sovereignty basis. The proslavery forces, then in the saddle, devised a tricky document known at the Lecompton Constitution. The people were not allowed to vote for or against the constitution as a whole, but for the constitution either "with slavery" or "with no slavery." If they voted against slavery, one of the remaining provisions of the constitution would protect the owners of slaves already in Kansas. So whatever the outcome, there would still be black bondage in Kansas. Many free-soilers, infuriated by this trick, boycotted the polls. Left to themselves, the slaveryites approved the constitution with slavery late in 1857.

The scene next shifted to Washington. President Pierce had been succeeded by the no-less-pliable James Buchanan, who was also strongly under southern influence. Blind to sharp divisions within his own Democratic Party, Buchanan threw the weight of his administration behind the notorious Lecompton Constitution. But Senator Douglas, who had championed true popular sovereignty, would have none of this semipopular fraudulency. Deliberately tossing away his strong support in the south for the presidency, he fought courageously for fair play and democratic principles. The outcome was a compromise that, in effect, submitted the entire Lecompton Constitution to a popular vote. The free-soil voters thereupon thronged to the polls and snowed it under. Kansas remained a territory until 1861, when the southern secessionists left Congress.
Resistance (Ver Steeg, 1985)
Type: Description
Citation:
Clarence L. Ver Steeg, American Spirit: A History of the United States (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1985), 387.
Body Summary:
Despite promising signs that the Compromise of 1850 would be accepted, differences over slavery did not end.  In 1851 an escaped salve named Shadrach was arrested in Boston.  He was rescued by a group of fellow blacks.  "The rescue of Shadrach" wrote antislavery supporter Wendell Phillips, "has set the whole public afire."  A Maryland slave owner, reclaiming two of his runaway slaves in Pennsylvania, was killed by a mob.  In New York, a well known black named James Hamlet was captured.  A Maryland woman claimed that he was a runaway.  Hamlet was taken directly to Maryland without a court hearing and without being allowed to see his wife and children.  These acts touched off public outcries.

The Story of America

Battle of Gettysburg (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 574.
Body Summary:
A month after the battle of Chancellorsville, Lee again invaded the North.  He still hoped that a decisive victory on northern soil would cause the United States to give up the struggle…For two days the battle raged.  As the sun set on the second day, Union troops still held a steep knoll called Little Round Top.  From there they cut the Rebel rank to ribbons.  That night Lee made the fateful decision to charge the center of Meade's line.  The same night a few miles away, Meade planned for an attack on his center.  He moved his strength there.  The afternoon of July 3 proved him right.  Between one and two o'clock, while Confederate artillery pounded Cemetery Ridge, General George E. Pickett led a charge at the Union position.  Howling the eerie "rebel yell," 15,000 infantrymen started to trot across the open ground.  For a brief moment some of these confederates reached the Union trenches on Cemetery Ridge.  But Union reserves counterattacked quickly.  Pickett's surviving men were driven off...The battle was over.  Lee retreated back into Virginia.
Discovery of Oil (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 664.
Body Summary:
The first oil well was drilled by E. L. Drake, a retired railroad conductor. In 1859 he began drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The whole venture seemed so impractical and foolish that onlookers called it "Drake's Folly." But when he had drilled won about 70 feet, Drake struck oil. His well began to yield 20 barrels of crude oil a day. News of Drake's success brought oil prospectors to the scene. By the early 1860s these wildcatters were drilling for "black gold" all over western Pennsylvania. The boom rivaled the California gold rush of 1848 in its excitement and Wild West atmosphere. And it brought far more wealth to the prospectors than any gold rush.
Discovery of Oil (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 664.
Body Summary:
The first oil well was drilled by E. L. Drake, a retired railroad conductor.  In 1859 he began drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania.  The whole venture seemed so impractical and foolish that onlookers called it "Drake's Folly."  But when he had drilled won about 70 feet, Drake struck oil.  His well began to yield 20 barrels of crude oil a day.  News of Drake's success brought oil prospectors to the scene.  By the early 1860s these wildcatters were drilling for "black gold" all over western Pennsylvania.  The boom rivaled the California gold rush of 1848 in its excitement and Wild West atmosphere.  And it brought far more wealth to the prospectors than any gold rush.
Emancipation Policy (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 569-570.
Body Summary:
The cost of war in blood and money was changing the way ordinary people in the North felt about slavery.  Anger at southerners more than sympathy for slaves caused this change…Gradually Lincoln came to the conclusion that the United States should try to free all slaves.  He would have preferred to have the states buy the slaves from their owners and then emancipate or free them.  This idea was known as compensated emancipation. But Lincoln was a clever politician.  He knew that many citizens would oppose paying anything to rebels and slave owners.  Others still objected to the freeing the slaves for the sake of doing away with an evil institution.  Lincoln therefore decided to act under his war powers.  He would free slaves not because slavery was wrong but as a means of weakening the rebel government.  This proclamation stated that after January 1, 1863, "all persons held as slaves with any States...in rebellion against the United States, shall be...forever free."  Notice that Proclamation did not liberate a single slave that the government could control.
John C. Calhoun (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 440-441.
Body Summary:
Calhoun, old and ill, his once-powerful voice broken by the throat cancer that would soon kill him, sat grim and silent as another senator read his words: "How can the Union be saved? There is but one way by which it can with any certainty; and that is, by a full and final settlement, on the principle of justice, of all the questions at issue between the two sections [North and South]. The South asks for justice, simple justice, and less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the Constitution; and no concession or surrender to make. She has already surrendered so much she has little left to surrender. Such a settlement would go to the root of evil, and remove all cause of discontent, by satisfying the South she could remain honorably and safely in the Union and restore the harmony and fraternal feelings between the sections which existed anterior to [before] the Missouri agitation [compromise in 1820]. Nothing else can with any certainty, finally and forever settle the question, terminate the agitation, and save the Union. But can this be done? Yes easily; not by the weaker party [the South] for it can of itself do nothing not even protect itself but by the stronger"… Unless Congress allowed owners to bring their slaves into the territories, the Southern states would secede, or leave the Union. There was nothing evil or immoral about slavery, Calhoun argued. Northerners must accept the fact that it exists. If they want to live at peace with the South, they must stop criticizing slavery.
Lecompton Constitution (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 528.
Body Summary:
Conditions in Kansas Territory grew still worse. Meeting at the town of Lecompton, the proslavery convention in Kansas had drawn up a proposed state constitution authorizing slavery. The delegates represented only a minority of the people of the territory. But since they were Democrats, President Buchanan supported them. He urged Congress to accept this Lecompton Constitution and admit Kansas as a state. Of course, antislavery forces in Kansas and throughout the nation objected strongly...When a vote was finally taken on the Lecompton Constitution, the people of Kansas rejected it by a huge majority, 11,300 to 1,788. Southern Democrats and President Buchanan were furious. They blamed Douglas for this defeat.
Stephen Arnold Douglas, Lecompton (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 528.
Body Summary:
These developments put Senator Stephen A. Douglas in a difficult position. He was a Democrat. (But he was clearly no friend of the president's. Indeed he often used his skills as an orator to express his open contempt for Buchanan.) The president had made the matter a party issue. On the other hand, Douglas sincerely believed in popular sovereignty. And it was obvious that a majority of the people in Kansas were opposed to the Lecompton constitution and to the opening of the territory to slavery.
Wilmot Proviso (Garraty, 1994)
Type: Description
Citation:
John A. Garraty, The Story of America (Austin:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1994), 438.
Body Summary:
Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced the Wilmot Proviso in the House of Representatives. The proviso called for prohibiting slavery "in any territory [taken] from the Republic of Mexico."

The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge

Frances Anne Kemble (American Cyclopaedia)
Type: Description
Citation:
George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, eds.,The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1861), 10: 129.
Body Summary:
Her mother, long known on the English stage as Mrs. Charles Kemble, was originally a danseuse at the opera house, London, as Miss De Camp. She manifested no special predilection for the stage, but was induced, in consequence of the embarrassed circumstances of her family, to make her début at Covent Garden, then under the management of her father, in Oct. 1829. On this occasion she played Juliet, her father taking the part of Romeo and her mother that of the nurse, with complete success, notwithstanding that 6 weeks previous she had no thought of embarking in a dramatic career. For the 3 succeeding years she performed leading parts in tragedy and comedy with great applause, distinguishing herself particularly in Juliet, Portia, Bianca in Milman's "Fazio," Juliet in the "Hunchback" (the latter being originally personated by her], Belvidera, Isabella, Lady Teazle, and Louise de Savoy, in her own play of "Francis the First," written when she was 17 years old, and received with great approbation. In 1832 she accompanied her father to the United States, and met with an enthusiastic reception in the chief cities. In 1834 she was married to Mr. Pierce Butler of Philadelphia, and at the same time retired definitively from the stage. Incompatibility of tastes and temperament having rendered the union an unhappy one, a separation took place at the end of a few years, and Mrs. Butler subsequently fixed her residence in Lenox, Berkshire co., Mass. Previous to this she had published her first work in prose, "A Journal of a Residence in America" (2 vols. 8vo., London, 1835 ; 2 vols. 12mo., Philadelphia), chiefly devoted to a description of her tour through the United States. It was followed in 1837 by a drama entitled " The Star of Seville," which was acted with success ; and in 1844 she published a collection of her poems, a portion of which only had previously appeared. In 1846 she visited Europe, extending her travels as far as Italy, where her sister, Mrs. Sartoris, resided, and in 1847 published an account of her tour under the title of " A Year of Consolation." Shortly afterward steps were taken to procure a divorce from her husband, which was granted by the legislature of Pennsylvania in 1849, since which time she has resumed the name of Kemble. In the winter of 1848-'9 she commenced in Boston a series of Shakespearian readings which drew crowded audiences ; and during the next two years she repeated the course in some of the principal American cities. In 1851 she returned to England, reappeared for a brief period on the stage, and after giving readings in London and other parts of the United Kingdom, made another long continental tour. In 1856 she returned to the United States, and continued at intervals to give readings in Boston and elsewhere, till Feb. 1860, when she gave her last reading in Boston, and took her farewell of the public. Her present residence is in Lenox, Mass.
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