Chapter Seven Sectional Strife, 1820 to 1880

Antebellum Period Civil War Reconstruction and Industrial Expansion 1820 to 1861 1861 to 1865 1865 to 1880

1820-29 1832 1840 1850 1861 1865 1866 1867 1876 | | | ||| ||| Canal, Fertilizer Pennsylvania Region Surrender at Gallaudet Howard Johns railroad improves grows population secedes Appomattox; College University Hopkins and coal plantation tobacco exceeds from the founded founded University development agriculture 1.8 million Union abolished founded

AN ECOLOGY OF PEOPLE SIGNIFICANT ▫ 1837–Great Panic of ▫ 1861 to 1865–Civil War 1837 throws nation’s fought between Union AND PLACE EVENTS economy into depression and Confederacy ▫ 1820’s–canal, railroad, ▫ 1839–nation’s first iron- ▫ 1862–northwestern Ⅺ PEOPLE and coal industrial hulled ship, the Virginia counties secede development revolu- DeRosset, built in to form new federal The mid-nineteenth century brought tionizes technology Baltimore state of West Virginia unprecedented transformations to all ▫ 1826– ▫ 1840–Pennsylvania ▫ 1862–Battle of Antietam assembly extends farmers begin growing fought in Maryland’s aspects of life in the region (see Map 9). suffrage to Jewish men cigar wrapper tobacco Great Valley; bloodiest Coal, steel, and steam fueled industrial ▫ 1827–Charles Carroll of ▫ 1841– Iron single day of Civil War expansion, binding the Chesapeake Carrollton, Maryland Works opens in ▫ 1863–pivotal Battle of organizes the Baltimore Richmond Gettysburg fought region more firmly with the rest of the and Ohio Railroad; first ▫ 1844–nation’s first ▫ 1865–Robert E. Lee sur- nation and the world. Scientific passenger and freight telegraph line erected railway in United States renders Army of North- advances and religious revivals chal- between Baltimore and ern Virginia to General ▫ 1828–work begins on Washington lenged people’s views. New crops were Grant at Appomattox Baltimore and Ohio ▫ 1844–anti-immigrant Courthouse; other introduced, and old plants were farmed Railroad and the Chesa- Know-Nothing party Confederate surrenders peake and Ohio Canal formed end the Civil War in new ways. ▫ 1829–Chesapeake and ▫ 1845–United States ▫ 1865–Thirteenth Sectional differences divided Northern Delaware Canal opens Naval Academy opens in Amendment to Consti- ▫ tution abolishes slavery and Southern parts of the nation and the 1830–Peter Cooper’s Annapolis steam engine, the Tom ▫ 1848–Irish, German, ▫ 1865 to 1877–Era of region during this period. In the Thumb, makes first trip and Polish immigrants Reconstruction from Baltimore to begin arriving in large ▫ region, North-South ten- Ellicott’s Mills 1866–Gallaudet College, numbers first institution of sions eclipsed earlier differences ▫ 1831–Maryland State ▫ 1850–regional popula- higher learning for deaf, between the Coastal Plain and Pied- Colonization Society opens in Washington established to relocate tion exceeds 1.8 million mont. Made more efficient by technolog- freed slaves ▫ 1853 to 1863– ▫ 1867–Howard University, nation’s first African ical advances, slavery became vital to ▫ 1831–Nat Turner leads Washington Aqueduct constructed American college, the economies of Southern states. These unsuccessful slave opens in Washington revolt in Southampton ▫ 1855–Republican party same technological advances allowed County, Virginia formed ▫ 1868–Hampton Normal and Agricultural Northerners, strengthened by industrial ▫ 1832–Edmund Ruffin’s ▫ 1858–first steam- powered fire engine Institute opened in growth, to ideologically and materially publication of influen- Hampton, Virginia tial scientific report placed into service in challenge Southern attempts to extend regarding use of marl Baltimore ▫ 1873–Economic Crash and expand the slave system. The strug- as fertilizer increases ▫ 1859–Abolitionist John ▫ 1876–Johns Hopkins gle over slavery and states’ rights was efficiency of plantation Brown leads unsuccess- University opens in agriculture ful raid on Harper’s Ferry Baltimore fueled by more than differing economic ▫ 1832–worldwide cholera to spark slave revolt ▫ 1877–striking railroad systems. In a broader sense, it became a epidemic strikes region ▫ 1861–Virginia secedes workers violently contest over contending concepts of race, ▫ 1837–Chesapeake and from Union and joins suppressed by Maryland Ohio Canal completed Confederacy militia class, work, and ethnicity that divided

An Ecology of People and Place 95 Map 9: Sectional Strife, 1820 to 1880

d a o r il a Bomberger's R l Distillery a r t ad n ia Railro e Columb C ia & lph North de ila Ph Wheatland ● Lancaster

S Union Canal Tunnel us Yo r k ● qu eh Su Ferncliff Wildlife an s na q and Wildflower a ue nd h Preserve Philadelphia, Wilmington T a id nn and Baltimore Railroad ew a at er R Gilpin's C iv Sion Gettysburg an e Falls al r Hill ● Chesapeake and Elkton Delaware Canal Long Green Creek and ● Sweathouse Chesapeake City e Branch Natural

g r

d e i Area r in R v e i v ta Antietam n i n i t R R Battlefield u c r o o y t P te c Carrollton a a s M e a C t Viaduct h th c a Chestertown C u p ● o o Frederick s n c S o ● o R Baltimore Metropolitan iver

M r Railroad e Ellicott City v Harper's Ferry Gap Monocacy Thomas i Station Kent R Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Sugar Loaf Viaduct Island k Harpers● Mountain n U.S. Naval a Ferry Waterford t Academy p Ball's Chesapeake o Bluff and Ohio Canal h er C Riversdale iv ● Lou Washington Manassas Gap Leesburg do Thomas Point n Aqueduct Shoal Light Station Manassas Gap RR & ● Washington DC ke R Ha ire RR Oak mpsh ● Alexandria ● Potomac P tico Hill a n Canal t a u N Mount x Thorofare Centreville Vernon Belt Woods e Gap n t ● Cambridge ● Manassas R

Warrenton i Bull Run Mountain v

er e iv r r Battle Creek e Thornton Gap R v c Cypress Swamp i a ● Salisbury R iver m Calvert h R to Cliffs Preserve a R a o o R a p P oke R d ri n d p s n a a a n i x h n e ocom e a l a t P h A n n & S u ● Culpeper n Fredericksburg o e o g c M n k ra Chancellorsville iv e O R er Caledon T g ve Smith a d Ri r ● State Park Potomac Ri i Rapidan ver Island n R g i e The Wilderness e u r l S B Spotsylvania o u n Montpelier d Fredericksburg Forest Battlefield Camden Rappahannock R Tangier

ac RR Island Virginia C entral Railroad M C at ● t iver h ond, Frederick, a Charlottesville po Gap n e kfish i c R s o and Potom R iv Virginia Richm e a P r a p Coast Green Springs mu n e Reserve ke s y a in R Mattaponi Indian ta iv k n Cold Harbor e Reservation u Marlbourne r e o ad M o B e lr Richmond g ai Richmond id R Pamunkey ● Battlefields a R ee Ja e s mes Indian u s River y l e James Ric Reservation B nn hmo e River nd & Y T x River York or & Rive k a Canal r Railroad R Cape ni tto i gi a v e r ir John Tyler House Charles V Appomattox m o Hampton Courthouse p p Petersburg Institute A Petersburg & Appomattox Battlefields Fort Monroe Gap Saylor's Creek s ● ● City Point Railroad J d a oa Five Forks m R e on Cape s pt Petersburg N Charles Ri m Henry or ve a ● Southside Railroad folk C.Steirly r H Norfolk ● & Seashore oad Pet Natural Area Lynchburg e Railr ers ● Natural Area uthsid bu So rg R Portsmouth ailr oad & d d oa on lr Great ai m R Petersburg & Weldon Railroad Dismal ch i lle R vi Swamp an D

LEGEND National Historic Landmark Railroad Civil War Battlefields Canal ¥ City or Town Bay © National Natural Landmark Plain 0 5 10 25 50 miles ■ Natural or Cultural Feature Piedmont 0 5 10 40 80 kilometers North

96 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE KEY LOCALES

NATIONAL HISTORIC United States Soldiers Thomas Viaduct, Sayler’s Creek Battlefield LANDMARKS Home [1851] Baltimore and Ohio [1865], Amelia and Washington Aqueduct Railroad [1835] Prince Edward counties District of Columbia [1853-1863] John Tyler House [1780, Landmarks Pennsylvania Washington Navy Yard 1842], Charles City American Peace Society [1800-1910] Bomberger’s Distillery County [1860s] [1753, 1840], Lebanon University of Virginia County Anderson House [mid- Maryland Historic District [19th- 19th century] Chestertown Historic Fulton Opera House 20th centuries], District [18th-19th [1852], Lancaster Charlottesville City Army Medical Museum County and Library [1867] centuries], Kent County University of Virginia Union Canal Tunnel Rotunda [1822-1826, Ashburton House [ca. Ellicott City Station [1831], Howard County [1825-1827], Lebanon 1898], Charlottesville 1836] County City Blair-Lee House [1827] Monocacy Battlefield [1864], Frederick Wheatland, James Waterford Historic Blanche K. Bruce House County Buchanan House District [18th-19th [1865] [1828], Lancaster centuries], Loudon Old Lock Pump House, County County Carnegie Endowment for Chesapeake and International Peace Delaware Canal [1837], [1860] Virginia Richmond City Cecil County Landmarks City Hall [1820-1849] Alexandria Historic Riversdale [early 19th District [18th-19th Egyptian Building [1845] Franklin School [1862- century], Prince centuries], Alexandria 1875] George’s County House City [1841] Gallaudet College [1866] Sion Hill [19th-20th Ball’s Bluff Battlefield and Jackson Ward Historic General Post Office centuries], Harford National Cemetery County District [19th-20th [1839-1866] [1861 and 1865], centuries] Loudon County Georgetown Historic Thomas Point Shoal Light Station [1875], Ann James Monroe Tomb District [18th-19th Camden [17th-19th [1859] centuries] Arundel County centuries], Caroline United States Naval County Tredegar Iron Works Charlotte Forten Grimke [1841] House [1880] Academy [1845], Drydock No. 1 [1827- Annapolis 1834], Portsmouth City White House of the Healy Hall [1877-1879] Confederacy, Dr. John Washington Aqueduct The Exchange [1841], General Oliver Otis Brockenbrough House [1853-1863], Petersburg City Howard House [1869] Montgomery County [1818, 1861-1865] Five Forks Battlefield Lafayette Square Historic [1865], Dinwiddie District [18th-20th Baltimore City County centuries] Landmarks Fort Monroe [1819-1834], Old Naval Observatory Baltimore and Ohio Hampton City [1844] Transportation Museum and Mount Clare Franklin and Armfield Old Patent Office [1840] Station [1830] Office [1828-1836], Renwick Gallery [1860] Carrolltown Viaduct Alexandria City Zalmon Richards House [1829] Green Springs Historic [mid-19th century] College of Medicine of District [18th-19th Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital Maryland [19th-20th centuries], Louisa [1852] centuries] County Saint Luke’s Episcopal Constellation (Sloop of Hampton Institute Church [1879] War) [1854] [1868], Hampton City Smithsonian Institution Minor Basilica of the Marlbourne, Edmund Building [1855] Assumption of the Ruffin Plantation Blessed Virgin Mary [1843], Hanover State, War, and Navy County Building (Old Executive [1806-1863] Office Building) [1871- Mount Vernon Place General William “Billy” 1888] Historic District [19th Mitchell House [1826, century] 1925], Loudon and Oscar W. Underwood Fauquier counties House [19th century] [1828] Oak Hill, James Monroe United States Capitol House [1820-1823], [1793-1865] Edgar Allen Poe House Loudon County [1833-1835] United States Department Patowmack Canal of the Treasury [1836- Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Historic District [1786- 1862] Hospital and Gate 1830], Fairfax County House [1862-1891]

An Ecology of People and Place 97 people both across and within sec- PORTFOLIO: VIEWS OF tional lines. First emerging during THE EARLY INDUSTRIAL colonial times, it became a constitu- CHESAPEAKE tional crisis over the issue of TRANSPORTATION rights–both of states and of individu- LANDSCAPE. als–that increased in rancor and intensity until it erupted into civil war and on into reconstruction. The Chesapeake region stood astride the invisible line that split the nation into North and South at the Figure 49: Dismal Swamp Canal. beginning of this era. Yet differences (From The Transformation of Virginia, 1740- between the sections never became 1790 by Rhys Isaac; used by permission of the either total or completely clear cut. University of North Carolina Press ©1982) The nation’s Northern and Southern sections spoke the same language, followed the same forms of worship, relied on the same technologies, Figure 50 and looked back on similar cultural (above): heritages and histories. To an out- Building the Chesapeake sider, their differences must have and Ohio seemed more like variations of style Canal. than differences that could only be (Illustration resolved by violence. courtesy of the ) These complex, subtle differences were reflected in the lack of definite boundaries between the sections. Although slavery only existed south of the Mason-Dixon line–the bound- ary line separating Pennsylvania and Figure 51: The completed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Water Maryland–neither this line nor the System. (Illustration courtesy of the National Park Service) Potomac River boundary between Maryland and Virginia put a stop to Figure 52 (right): Present-day relations between the states. The Aerial View of Carrollton industrial life dominating the banks Viaduct, Built by the Baltimore of Baltimore Bay and the fall line and Ohio Railroad Over towns along the lower Susquehanna Gwynn’s Falls Near Carroll Park, Baltimore. (Photograph and Potomac Rivers began develop- courtesy of the National Park Service) ing in the region’s more southerly parts, such as Richmond, Peters- burg, and Norfolk. And tobacco, tra- ditionally associated with the South, became a major cash crop along the lower Susquehanna in York and Figure 53 (left): Lancaster counties, Pennsylvania. Present-day Ground So when civil war finally came, the Level View of the region did not simply split along Baltimore and Ohio state boundaries. For example, in Railroad’s Thomas Viaduct, Looking 1862, counties in northwestern North, Spanning the Virginia seceded from Virginia and Patapsco River at joined the Union, becoming the Elkridge, Maryland. new state of West Virginia. And (Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service) though many who lived in Mary- land’s southernmost counties fought

98 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE reaped in the fields to purchase goods and open manufacturing enterprises of their own. Prohibited from importing slaves from overseas, slave markets such as Alexandria, Virginia’s Price, Birch and Price, Birch and Company, Company, prospered by auctioning Virginia slaves from plantations in the region to buyers from newly opened cotton lands farther south in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (see Figure 54). Figure 54: Way Station on the Landscape New immigrants also had to choose of Servitude: Photograph of the offices sides. Many Irish, German, and other and slave pen (the low wall to the right of the office building) of Price, Birch and immigrants–fleeing famine and unrest in Company, slave merchants, in Alexandria, Europe–landed in Chesapeake Bay ports Virginia. (Alexander Gardner photograph courtesy of such as Baltimore and Norfolk during the National Archives) the 1840s and 1850s. Their first challenge was to assimilate into an American soci- for the Confederate cause, slave state ety increasingly hostile to them. These Maryland stayed in the Union through- feelings crystallized in the formation of out the war. the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party Of course tension existed between those in 1844. Despite such opposition, immi- wishing to secede from the Union and grants managed to settle quietly through- those in favor of staying put. This tension out the region, where most eventually affected every aspect of life in the adopted the sectional sympathies of Chesapeake. Interestingly, an explosion their new neighbors or communities. of federal, state, and privately funded The ships bringing new immigrants construction was creating new turnpike, made up only a small part of the Bay’s canal, and railroad networks linking the quickly growing passenger and cargo nation’s regions closer together than ever traffic. Improvements in ship design in- before. The Dismal Swamp Canal link- creased the speed and range of wooden- ing Chesapeake Bay with North hulled Baltimore clippers, schooners, Dismal Swamp Canal, Carolina’s Albemarle Sound, the and other sailing vessels (see Figure 55). Virginia Chesapeake and Ohio Canal stretching Boats began using steam driven paddle Chesapeake and Ohio Canal along the Maryland side of the Potomac wheels, first in addition to sails, and then and Baltimore and Ohio River from Georgetown to Cumberland, instead of them. Metal ship hulls and Railroad, Maryland the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and screw propellers, linked to steam boilers other transportation systems critical to by strong metal drive shafts, came into the nation’s development were first built use more and more during the middle during the early decades of this period. decades of the period. Wooden wharves, docks, and warehouses along Chesapeake But these improvements also strength- Bay waterfronts expanded to handle ened sectional solidarity. Trains capable growing coastal and international trade. of carrying produce and minerals to mar- ket, for example, brought wealth to free labor employers in the Union and increased the profitability of Southern plantations, mines, and furnaces, all of which used slave labor. Prosperity en- couraged people to anticipate peaceful resolutions of sectional differences. Free labor advocates hoped that the successes of industrial development would show Southerners that slavery was not econom- Figure 55: The Clipper Saint David, ically efficient and should be abandoned. ca. 1900-1906. Slave owners, for their part, used profits (Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress)

An Ecology of People and Place 99 Products from throughout the region were combined to fuel industrial devel- opment. Coal from upper Potomac and Susquehanna Valley mines fueled rail- road engines; the trains carried cargo to new factories in and around Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond. These same trains brought iron ore to coal-fired fur- naces, which smelted the ore into iron and steel. In turn, these metals were used to manufacture rails, bridges, Figure 56: Harper’s Ferry, July, 1865. engines, machines, and finished goods. (Photograph courtesy of the National Archives) Ambitious capitalist entrepreneurs strug- gled to meet the transportation needs of reached a flash point in 1859, after rapidly expanding markets as demand Northern abolitionist John Brown made for goods produced in Chesapeake Bay an abortive attempt to spark a slave factories rose. Banks funded develop- uprising with arms seized from the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal, ment, and they prospered or collapsed Harper’s Ferry arsenal in the Virginia West Virginia along with the volatile market economy. Piedmont (see Figure 56). The Chesapeake Bay region was splitting The drive for sectional independence into a free labor market in the north and finally led to the Civil War in 1861. The a slave labor economy farther south. war pitted Chesapeake Bay region people Thus the question of the economic and states against one another on both future preoccupied its people. White sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Pennsyl- southerners feared that slave rebellions vania remained steadfast for the Union. might grow into a general insurrection. Pro-slavery border states of Maryland One led by Nat Turner just south of the and Delaware stayed loyal to the federal Southampton County, region in Southampton County, Virginia, government, despite their many South- Virginia in 1831 left sixty people dead in four ern sympathizers in Baltimore city, Saint days of violence. Fear widened sectional Mary’s County, and other Coastal Plain differences as slave states insisted on locales. Virginians followed a different their right to avoid restrictions imposed path. The state seceded from the Union Appomattox Court by a growing free-state majority. Feelings and joined the southern Confederacy House, Virginia after South Carolina troops firing on the federal post of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor brought on the war. Edmund Ruffin fired the war’s first shot. Today, he is remembered more as an ardent fire- breathing advocate of the Confederacy than for his contributions to agriculture. Violence brought on by the Civil War devastated the Chesapeake Bay region. The part that fell midway between the federal capital in Washington, D.C., and the Confederate capital in Richmond became the war’s decisive theater. Men of both armies pillaged farms, damaged railroads, and burned bridges every- where they marched. Fighting broke out as far north as Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as far east as the outskirts of Baltimore, and as far south as the Piedmont village of Figure 57: Landscape of Reconciliation and Remembrance: Appomattox Appomattox Court House (see Figure 57). Court House, Virginia. (Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service) And they fought massive, bloody battles

100 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE LANDSCAPE OF MEMORY: GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK. This 6,000 acre National Park preserves the place where one of the most pivotal battles in American history was fought. On July 1, 1863, units of the Confederate army advancing north into Pennsylvania in an offensive aimed at ending the war, collided with Union troops at the crossroads town of Gettysburg. During the next two days, the 75,000-man Confederate Army of North- ern Virginia under the command of Figure 58: Postcard View of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg. Robert E. Lee struggled to break through Where Lincoln delivered the famous “Gettysburg Address,” and Union defenses along a line of hills and where more than 7,000 Union soldiers killed during the battle are interred. (Photograph courtesy of the Dennis Montagna Collection) ridges to the west and north of the town held by the 95,000 men of the Union Army of the Potomac led by George C. Meade. By the time the battle ended on July 3, more than 51,000 soldiers, nearly a third of all the men engaged, were either dead, wounded, captured, or missing. Stopped by the Union army and suffering losses in excess of 20,000 men, the Confederate army retreated back to Virginia. This site of singular struggle and sacrifice soon became a national shrine. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered some months later at the dedication of the National Cemetery where more than 7,000 of the Union troops (1,668 of them unidentified) killed in the battle were interred, captured the essence and meaning of the war for the Union in the few paragraphs that are still memorized by children throughout the nation. States and veterans erected monuments at Figure 59: The Union Line on Cemetery Ridge, Devil’s Den, Little Round 1989. Where Union troops stopped Pickett’s Top, Cemetery Ridge, and Charge on the third and last day of the battle. other places where the (Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service) fighting was heaviest. Established by Congress as a National Military Park on February 11, 1895, the National Park Service today preserves the locale’s pastoral landscape, the Figure 61: The Crest of Little military landscape of the Round Top, 1992. The monu- ment commemorates the stand battle itself, and the of the 20th Maine, who held the commemorative landscape Union left flank against Figure 60: Nineteenth Century Postcard View of subsequently created to repeated Confederate attacks Devil’s Den. The scene of heavy fighting during during the second day of the the second day of the battle. memorialize the struggle battle. (Photograph courtesy of the (Photograph courtesy of the Dennis Montagna Collection) (see Figures 58-61). National Park Service)

An Ecology of People and Place 101 The situation was much different in the North. Northern losses on the battlefields were horrible. On the home front, how- ever, the war stimulated a new peak of industrial expansion. Lucrative federal government contracts funded new trans- portation routes, improved harbor facil- ities, and stoked the furnaces of factories and finance. Even greater industrial growth in the North after the war helped restore many ravaged communities and Figure 62: Fort Monroe, Old Point Comfort, Virginia, 1862. helped bind the region’s states, and (E. Sachse and Company lithograph courtesy of the Library of Congress) the rest of the country, into a firmer federal union. at Coastal Plain locales such as At first, recovery was slow in Virginia. Fredericksburg, the Peninsula, and Cold Small farmers and large landowners Fredericksburg, Harbor. Farther inland in the Piedmont, struggled to make livings on the land. Peninsula, Cold Harbor, armies periodically occupied Harper’s Manassas, Ferry and engaged in equally costly Public debt to pay for the war consumed Chancellorsville, a disproportionate share of government Spotsylvania, Richmond, struggles at Manassas, Chancellorsville, Petersburg, Fort Monroe, Spotsylvania, battled decisively at dollars. Embezzlement and misappropri- Williamsburg, Richmond ation of public school funds crippled and Petersburg, Virginia Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and fought in battles around Richmond and educational development. By 1880, C.S.S. Virginia and railroad expansions, infusions of capital, U.S.S. Cumberland Petersburg in Virginia that finally and new production techniques helped Gettysburg, Pennsylvania decided the outcome of the war. Huge chains of forts surrounded Washington, Virginia’s industry and agriculture start Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia D.C. Many of these forts can still be seen to recover. today, as can the great moat-encircled stone stronghold of Fort Monroe (see Baltimore and Washington were already Figure 62) and the lines of earthwork major cities before the war, and they trenches and bastions dug during sieges grew dramatically afterward. Many peo- at Williamsburg, Richmond, and Peters- ple from the countryside moved there, burg. Ships sank while fighting to control joining the growing ranks of European the strategically vital Chesapeake water- immigrants seeking work in factories and way. The C.S.S. Virginia, the U.S.S. businesses as much American agricul- Cumberland, and many other ships still ture shifted west into the prairies and lie in muddy graves beneath Bay waters plains. Throughout the region, a mix of today (see Figure 63). nationalities, races, religions, and ethnic- ities lived beside one another, not always It took four years of bloody fighting to happily. Immigrants struggled to find reunite the nation politically, if not in other ways. The war proved disastrous for the South in many ways. The Northern blockade cut the South off from the rest of the world and gradually strangled production. Short of raw mate- rials, in need of machine tools, and unpaid by fiscally strapped Confederate and state governments unable to pay their bills, Southern commerce declined catastrophically. By 1865, famine threat- ened people living in many sections of Figure 63: C.S.S. Virginia sinks the U.S.S. Cumberland, March 8, 1862. the South. (Painting courtesy of the Library of Congress)

102 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE their places in Chesapeake society, Ⅺ PLACE dealing with both the intolerance of The period’s profound changes radically native born Americans and difficulties of transformed Chesapeake Bay environ- cutting ties to the old country–and ments. Most of the region’s remaining upholding its traditions. old-growth forests were cut down. Farmers cleared from 40 to 50 percent of African Americans, recently freed from the land for planting fields. Wheat began slavery worked with freeborn blacks, to supplant corn and tobacco as the major other people of color, and sympathetic cash crop. In the Susquehanna Piedmont whites to secure voting rights, find work, in the 1840s, growers began naturalizing fight discrimination, and establish a variety of tobacco from Cuba that schools. In 1867, a federal agency known could tolerate the cold. Rechristened as the Freedman’s Bureau opened Pennsylvania seedleaf tobacco, it Howard University (named after the became the favored outer wrapping for Bureau’s white commander, General American cigars by the 1850s. Howard University, Oliver Otis Howard) in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. Wood remained the region’s primary to train African American teachers, Hampton Institute, source of heat, light, and building mater- Virginia lawyers, and business leaders. One year ial until the 1860s. Growing cities and later, Virginia’s Hampton Institute rural towns required huge amounts of (today’s Hampton University) opened. milled timber for building construction But anti-black prejudice reasserted itself and maintenance. Innumerable cords of by the mid-1870s, after being suppressed firewood were needed for heat as the by federal military authority during the Little Ice-Age winds made winters bitter era of Reconstruction. White voters cold. Farther inland, charcoal fueled enacted Black Codes, laws that severely Piedmont furnaces, foundries, and facto- restricted African American rights. New ries. Since it took 20,000 to 30,000 acres laws made it almost impossible for them of woodland to produce enough char- to vote. Black people were barred from coal to smelt 1,000 tons of iron, charcoal public life and forced to conform to producers consumed entire forests. strict segregation laws. Woodlots on land that could not be used for farming provided wood for all of For the poor, finding work and a place to these domestic and industrial purposes. live were major challenges. In the coun- tryside, poor people of all races worked Landscapes in and around Chesapeake fields for portions of the harvest as Bay cities were transformed as never sharecroppers or rented them as tenant before. Complexes of stores and munici- pal buildings rose in city centers. farmers. Black people employed as Residential and industrial districts servants to middle and upper class emerged in outlying areas. Brick, stone, families were often given quarters in the iron, and steel replaced wood as the houses where they worked. African favored building material in city and Americans and new immigrants moving town centers. Horses drew carriages, to smaller cities often took up lodgings wagons, and streetcars on city roads and in well kept, established neighborhoods, rail lines. Great terminals were built to but those moving to larger cities often serve the steam railroads linking cities had to live in rundown ghettoes and with the countryside. Coal fueled the rail- accept unskilled work. Though they roads and began supplanting charcoal struggled against discrimination, African as the fuel of choice in city buildings and Americans and new immigrants estab- in factories. Production rose higher than lished churches, benevolent societies, ever in many established factories, such and educational institutions to improve as the arsenal complex in Harper’s Ferry Harper’s Ferry, Virginia conditions for their people throughout first built in 1803. New rail construction the region. linking Virginia with the rest of the

An Ecology of People and Place 103 TREDEGAR IRON WORKS. The Tredegar Iron Works was built in Richmond Virginia between the north bank of James River and the southern berm of the James River and Kanawha Canal in 1841. Worked by highly skilled slave laborers, Tredegar’s coal-fired forge and furnace smelted iron that was then cast to produce cannon barrels and ammunition, machined into parts for steam engines, or rolled into sheet metal and steel rails. Continually expanding, the works grew into the nation’s third largest ironworks by the time the Civil War broke out in 1861. Tredegar became the South’s largest and most important munitions plant during the war. Served by as many as 2,500 workers, mostly slaves, convicts, paroled Union prisoners, and Confederate soldiers detached from their units, the Tredegar works turned out 1,099 can- non of all calibers, hundreds of tons of shot and shell, and the plate armor mounted on the sides of the Confederate ironclad ram C.S.S. Virginia. Experimental prototypes of the submarine, the torpedo, and the machine gun were also produced at Figure 64: Tredegar Iron Works, Tredegar during the war. April, 1865. Photograph by Alexander Gardner. (Alexander Gardner photograph Blown up by retreating courtesy of the Library of Congress) Confederate troops when Richmond fell to Union forces on April 3, 1865, the Tredegar Works were quickly repaired and placed back into production. The works continued to produce munitions, , and sheet metal up the end of World War I. Several restored buildings (see Figure 65: Tredegar Iron Works, 1990. North Figures 64-65) and the archeological remains of others are and east facades of the Spike Factory. today preserved on the twenty-two acre Tredegar tract. (Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service)

nation stimulated the erection of the Baltimore and Washington city fathers Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond in were intent on securing adequate sup- Tredegar Iron Works, 1841. Initially built to produce rails, plies of fresh water. So they created reser- Virginia engines, and rolling stock, the Tredegar voirs by damming nearby Piedmont Washington Aqueduct, rivers and streams. The most ambitious Washington, D.C. works became one of the South’s few munitions plants during the Civil War. of these water supply projects, the Washington Aqueduct (constructed between 1853 and 1863), carried Potomac water stored in a dam built just above the river’s Great Falls to holding reservoirs in Georgetown and Wash- ington City (see Figures 66-67). Locally obtained brick, stone, wood, and metal were used to construct the pipelines and

Figure 67: The Dalecarlia Reservoir in Figure 66: Working Water Landscape: The Great Falls of the Potomac, Georgetown, April, 1973. (Environmental Protec- June, 1906. (F. Lamson Scribner photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress) tion Agency photograph courtesy of the National Archives)

104 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE aqueducts of this and subsequent water supply systems that carried reservoir PORTFOLIO: THE water to city water mains. The same CHESAPEAKE BAY materials were also used in new sewers SHELLFISH INDUSTRY dug under city streets. These sewers pouring wastes and runoff into rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay. Expanded agricultural, residential, and industrial development meant more soil erosion. In the interior, tailings of waste Figure 69: Oyster Tongers off Rock Point, Maryland, 1941. (Reginald Hotchkiss rock, cinders, and other residues from photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress) mines, quarries, and furnaces–mixed with soils eroded from logged-over lands–flowed into Piedmont rivers and Figure 68: Working an Oyster streams. Soils eroded from agricultural Bed off Rock Point, Maryland, fields washed millions of additional tons 1936. (Arthur Rothstein photograph of topsoil into regional waterways across courtesy of the Library of Congress) the Coastal Plain. Untreated sewage and other city wastes–pumped directly into harbor waters by coastal cities–further fouled Bay waters. Figure 71: Oyster Bed Watch House. The region’s plant and animal communi- Typical of the types of houses used ties began to show signs of the affects of to shelter watchmen looking out for pollution and sedimentation. Offshore poachers raiding oyster grounds oyster beds, for example, were once so throughout the Chesapeake drainage. (From Harvesting the Chesapeake: Tools and dense that they were regarded as naviga- Figure 70: Oyster House and Traditions, by Larry S. Chowning, courtesy of tional hazards. But they were decimated Shuck Pile, Rock Point, Tidewater Publishers ©1990) after better transportation networks Maryland, 1941. opened new markets for fresh, pickled, (Reginald Hotchkiss photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress) and spiced oysters in the 1830s. Searching for new supplies in deeper waters, Chesapeake Bay oystermen dredged up the huge quantities of oys- ters discovered in Tangier Sound in 1840. Figure 72: Catching Blue By 1845, coastal canneries had been Crabs with a Trotline. (Sketch courtesy of the Virginia built, and oystermen were hauling their Institute of Marine Sciences, th catches there. Oysters were steamed in College of William and Mary) huge kettles, then packed into sealed bottles and cans that could preserve per- ishable contents. They were then sent in condition. But oysters were not in end- wooden crates by ship and rail through- less supply. Sickened by pollution and out the region and the nation. devastated by crude harvesting tech- niques, Chesapeake Bay oyster breeding The oyster industry became big business. stocks were severely threatened by 1880. Baltimore canneries alone processed 1.6 million bushels (a bushel represents the The Bay’s blue crab communities began rough equivalent of eight gallons) in to be exploited as well, after rail line 1857, 4 million bushels in 1865, and 10 expansion and the invention of the million bushels in 1868. Overall, refrigerator car in the 1870s made it pos- Maryland oystermen took approximately sible to ship blue crabs to cities. Market 400 million bushels of oysters from demand for hard shelled crabs caught by Chesapeake Bay waters between 1836 trotlines, long lengths of line baited with and 1890. Oystermen ripped up the chunks of eel and other bait sunk in seabed with metal rakes and dredges, open Bay waters, emerged soon after taking all oysters, regardless of age and (see Figure 72).

An Ecology of People and Place 105 Market demand also drastically reduced THE CULTURAL waterfowl populations. One commercial hunter reported that he had shot 7,000 LANDSCAPE OF canvasback ducks during the 1846-1847 SECTIONAL STRIFE hunting season. Market gunners com- monly reported daily hauls of more than Ⅺ PEOPLING PLACES a hundred canvasbacks. Canvasback ducks were most frequently hunted Immigration, relocation from rural areas along the west side of the upper bay, to Chesapeake Bay cities, and the great between the mouths of the Susquehanna westward migration changed the region’s and Patapsco Rivers. Market hunters fre- demography dramatically between 1820 quently used large, cannon-like, smooth and 1880. Successive waves of European bored shotguns, which they mounted on immigrants arrived at ports such as swivels fixed to the rail sidings of shallow Baltimore, Washington, and Norfolk. draft vessels, such as sneakboats–low Even more came on trains from northern boats barely visible above the waves. cities such as Boston, New York, and Volleys of shot fired by a battery of such Philadelphia. Many Swedes settled at the guns could kill thousands of birds at a northern end of the Eastern Shore in the time. Sport hunters often used the lifelike early 1840s. Germans, Czechs, and wooden decoys carved by Chesapeake Poles–fleeing failed revolutions–came to Bay craftsmen to lure flights of ducks, Baltimore after 1848. And numerous Irish geese, and other waterfowl into range. immigrants also arrived at this time, dri- Farther inland, hunters shot huge num- ven from their homes by poverty, repres- bers of passenger pigeons and other sion, and famine. migratory birds. Hunters developed a special breed of dog, the Chesapeake Bay Many new immigrants fought in both Retriever, to be particularly adept at bring- armies during the Civil War. And growing ing in birds under all weather conditions. numbers of Italians, Russians, Greeks, Accurate records of Chesapeake fish har- Ukrainians, Jews, and Scandinavians vests were first kept during this period. came to the region in the decades after The Maryland Fish Commission’s com- the war. They were joined by impover- prehensive survey, List of Fish of Mary- ished Southerners of all races seeking land, catalogued 202 different species in opportunities farther north. Many new- Chesapeake Bay in 1876. Only five of comers settled together in city neighbor- these were full time residents; the rest hoods with names like Little Italy. were migrants of one sort or another. The Small numbers of Nanticoke, Powhatan, Bay was noted as the northernmost limit Mattaponi, and other Native Americans for twenty-seven species that were more continued to live in scattered rural reser- commonly found farther south. And twelve northern species reached the vations and other enclaves. They were southern limits of their ranges in the Bay often unable to find spouses in their own region. Anadromous species spawning communities because the communities in freshwater, such as American shad, had shrunk so much. As a result, many alewives, and striped bass, were heavily married non-Indians. Children born to fished by Chesapeake Bay watermen. these families often moved from their im- Farther inland, sport fishing grew popular. poverished communities to the region’s cities in search of employment in mills, On land as well, hunting had an ever shops, and factories. Many other rural greater impact on animal populations. inhabitants did the same. Most of these Drastic declines occurred in the number newcomers were poor and had to live in of game animals such as white-tailed racially and ethnically segregated neigh- deer and black bear. In repeated borhoods. Each of these neighborhoods attempts to protect the remaining popu- developed its own places of worship, lations, local governments defined and redefined legal bag limits and limited markets, clubs, and other institutions. hunting seasons.

106 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE City services, already sparse in this when almost all established institutions period, were rarely available in neighbor- closed their doors to black students. hoods occupied by new immigrants or These included the previously men- United States Naval native born African Americans. Blind to tioned Howard University and Hampton Academy and Pratt Hospital, social distinctions, diseases such as Institute. Maryland malaria and yellow fever were spread by Gallaudet College, Howard Other social services were expanded, mosquitoes thriving in the warm, still University, Washington and new facilities were built throughout Aqueduct, and United States waters of the Bay estuary. And ships from the region. These included hospitals Soldier’s Home, Washington, foreign ports carried lethal illnesses such D.C. such as Baltimore’s Pratt Hospital, water as cholera. An epidemic of cholera origi- treatment facilities such as the earlier Hampton Institute, United nating in India in 1826 slowly spread States Naval Hospital, mentioned Washington Aqueduct, and around the world, reaching the Medical College of Virginia, homes for retired soldiers and seamen James Monroe Tomb, Chesapeake by 1832. Together, epi- such as the United States Soldier’s Camden Plantation House, demics and contagious illnesses sick- Virginia Home, built in Washington. Many were ened and killed tens of thousands. in rural locales, far from settlements. Although city authorities did what they Others were built in or near city centers could to improve sanitation and provide and county seats. At first, many of these clean water, their efforts did little to halt institutions were housed in structures– the spread of contagious diseases for wood-framed or masonry, in the Greek much of the nineteenth century. Revival style–that were believed to repre- sent and foster democratic values. The Ⅺ CREATION OF SOCIAL United States Naval Hospital in INSTITUTIONS Portsmouth is one of the best known examples in the region. Another archi- Social life in the region expanded far beyond home and hearth between 1820 tectural style, an imposing one known as and 1880. Churches, taverns, shops, and Egyptian Revival, was used to emphasize inns remained centers of social interac- the solemn, scientific purpose of Rich- tion in rural communities. Publicly mond’s Medical College of Virginia, the funded primary schools began opening first institution of its kind in the South. in communities in Pennsylvania and Wood, brick, and stone masonry hauled Maryland in the late 1820s. Virginian from nearby quarries were also used to communities started their own public build both ornate Victorian Gothic school systems in the years after the Civil Revival buildings, such as the James War. Much of the region’s current educa- Monroe Tomb in Richmond (built in tional infrastructure was in place by 1859), and Italianate structures, such as 1880. These schools came to be staffed the Camden Plantation House in Port by teachers who had attended colleges Royal, Virginia (see Figure 73). (then known as normal schools) designed to train educators. Higher education also expanded dra- matically. The United States Naval Academy, for example, was founded in Annapolis in 1845. Federally funded land grant colleges–intended to stimulate growth in agriculture, industry, and engi- neering – opened in Maryland and Virginia in the 1860s and 1870s. Several private colleges were also established in and around Washington. One of these, Gallaudet College, which opened in 1866, was the nation’s first institution of higher learning dedicated to educating deaf people. African American commu- Figure 73: Camden Plantation Great House, 1986 nities also opened schools of their own (Photograph courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources)

The Cultural Landscape of Industrial Development 107 served in the Confederate armies, pat- terned their organization’s name and cer- emonies after the Greek three-letter fraternities of their college days. Meeting in Pulaski, Kentucky in 1866, they estab- lished a highly ritualized secret fraternal order whose name derived from kucklos, a Greek word for circle, and clan, a Gaelic word for family. In less than a year, this small club grew into a far-flung secret army. This army waged a covert war on Reconstruction and used tactics employed by vigilantes and militia guards Figure 74: Soldier’s Home, Washington, ca. 1868. (Lithograph by Charles Magnus courtesy of the Library of Congress) to hunt escaped slaves in Southern states before the Civil War. Disbanding soon after the federal government officially The huge numbers of Civil War soldiers suppressed their organization in 1871, maimed by incapacitating wounds had the Ku Klux Klan nevertheless played a made large scale institutional health major role in the enactment of discrimi- care necessary, and it also led to much natory Black Codes in Maryland, subsequent construction in the region. Virginia, and other Southern states. Crippled or aged soldiers were cared for in veterans’ homes (see Figure 74). Orphanages, homes for widows, and Ⅺ EXPRESSING CULTURAL poor farms opened to care for other vic- VALUES tims of the war. Cities and counties built Like other areas of the nation, facilities to care for growing numbers of Chesapeake Bay struggled to form a cul- prison inmates, impoverished citizens, tural identity between 1820 and 1880. and mental patients. Sanitariums were New journals appeared, including opened to care for tuberculosis victims, Richmond’s Southern Literary Mes- whose numbers began to grow alarm- senger, providing places for cultural ingly towards the end of the period. This exchange. One of its editors, Edgar Allen increase occurred as crowded urban Poe (1800-1849), spent much of his life slums became breeding grounds for the moving between Richmond and disease. Libraries, museums, and histori- Baltimore. Poe explored the darker cal societies sponsored by influential depths of the romantic sentimentality families began to open in larger cities that dominated the nation’s popular cul- and county seats. In the cities, new immi- ture of the period. grants began benevolent societies and other support services. Reactionary Sentimental minstrel performances also groups intent on restricting the rights of became popular at this time. They show- immigrants and people of color also cased banjo music played by white organized secretly throughout the region actors who had blackened their faces. during this period. Their minstrel shows presented a roman- tic view of Southern plantation life–a Foremost among these groups was the view of that world as it never was. Ku Klux Klan. Initially a social club, it Although the minstrel shows were made quickly grew into a secret army that used to appear as if they were drawn from terror and violence to intimidate its vic- African American life, their middle class tims; authorities administering Recon- sensibilities, polka-style beat, and homely struction in the South and black people lyrics were mostly the inventions of exercising newly won rights. Some tradi- Northern songwriters such as Stephen tions hold that the Klan’s name originally Foster. referred to a legendary Indian demon thought to prey on willful black people. Other forms expressed the region’s many Its founders, a group of lawyers who had cultures more accurately. These forms

108 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE included starkly simple choral singing revival influenced architecture, the arts, (the tune of one such song, “Amazing and the names of new towns and cities Grace,” is still widely known), camp- (such as Arcadia, Maryland, and Arcadia, Maryland meeting revival songs, call-and-response Palmyra, Virginia). Classically land- Palmyra, Virginia black spirituals, and European-style mili- scaped parks and cemeteries featuring tary marches. curvilinear paths, ornamental and com- memorative monuments, sculptures, and People became more aware during these fountains, mown lawns, and gardens and decades that historic sites could be used groves emulating layouts of ancient to support cultural messages. For exam- designed landscapes unearthed during ple, a group of Know-Nothings calling the nineteenth century at Pompeii and themselves the American Party tried to other Roman and Greek archeological build a monument to George Washing- sites, began to appear in regional cities. ton in the capital. This was clearly an This use of Greco-Roman style had sym- attempt to use the first president as a bolic value, as the Greek and Roman symbol to support their anti-immigrant empires were founded on democratic program. The Know-Nothings were not ideals that the United States intended to the only group to appreciate George uphold. The movement also emphasized Washington’s symbolic significance. In a the European origins of American cul- bustle of patriotic zeal, the citizens of the ture, ignoring or denigrating the cultural South Mountain town of Boonsboro, Boonsboro, Maryland contributions of Africans and Native Maryland erected the nation’s first monu- Americans. Such an emphasis was ment to Washington, a stone mound, in strengthened by a so-called scientific one day on July 4, 1827. Rebuilt by the view that emerged in this period. Based Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, it is on evolutionary theory as it was then now the centerpiece of a state park. And, understood, this view held that peoples in the late 1850s, a national group of considered by white Europeans and women calling themselves the Mount Americans to be more primitive–such as Vernon Ladies’ Association, formed to Africans and Native Americans–were address the growing North-South ten- also biologically and culturally inferior. sions tearing at their country. They pur- chased Mount Vernon, Washington’s Before the Civil War, Quakers, abolition- Mount Vernon, Virginia home on the Potomac, preserving it and ists, feminists, and other Northern social making it a monument to America’s com- reformers struggled to put forward more mon heritage (see Figure 75). Inspired egalitarian cultural agendas in the by their example, patriotic citizens region. Criticizing social inequality and began erecting replicas of the building injustice, reformers supported the aboli- elsewhere in the nation in the decades tion of slavery, fought to extend voting following the end of the Civil War. rights to all adult citizens, struggled against religious intolerance and anti- Enthusiasm for classical Greek and immigrant Know-Nothingism, and cham- Roman culture swept the region and the pioned other causes. Although the country in this period. This classical rhetoric often ran hot, public support was lukewarm at best, as John Brown dis- covered to his sorrow at Harper’s Ferry in 1859. The dramatic postwar development in the North appeared to signal victories for the reformers, but it did not radically transform cultural values. Many Southerners in the Chesapeake and else- where rejected what was called the radi- cal agenda. Laws supporting this agenda, Figure 75: Aerial View of Mount Vernon: April, 1973. (Photograph by the Environmental which called for, among other things, full Protection Agency courtesy of the National Archives) and immediate representation of African

The Cultural Landscape of Industrial Development 109 American voters in federal, state, and The Federal government funded recon- local governments, were proposed and struction after the war, and it placed enacted by politicians known as the defeated Southern states under military Radical Republicans. And those in law. Wartime forts and camps were main- power both north and south of the tained to train troops in the North and to Potomac refused to give women the vote. house occupation forces in the South. Most native born Americans, also contin- Massive stone administration buildings ued to look with disdain on African rose up in Washington. Some, such as Americans, Native Americans, and the the General Post Office (completed in General Post Office latest waves of immigrants from Eastern 1866), were built in the restrained neo- and State, War, and European and Mediterranean countries. classical style. Others, such as the State, Navy Buildings (Old War, and Navy Building (built between Executive Building), Washington, D.C. Ⅺ SHAPING THE POLITICAL 1871 and 1888 and today known as the LANDSCAPE Old Executive Building), were con- structed in the ornate French Second Chesapeake Bay people struggled to bal- Empire style, reflecting the triumph of ance state rights with federal authority the Federal government. The impulse to throughout this period. They agreed that build impressive edifices extended to the national government should see to city and county administrations, which the nation’s defense, but they debated also funded the construction of huge whether or not to create national postal, and elaborate administrative buildings, banking, and transportation systems. The courthouses, halls of records, and prisons. question of slavery brought these state versus federal issues to a head when the Ⅺ DEVELOPING THE Civil War erupted in 1861. That upheaval CHESAPEAKE ECONOMY changed the region’s entire political landscape, as every level of government New coal-driven technologies began to mobilized every possible resource to revolutionize the region’s economic life support military operations. The Federal in the 1820s and beyond. Maryland and Confederate governments built forti- entrepreneurs, first excited by discoveries fications, expanded and modernized of hard coal seams to their north, found navy yards (see Figure 76), raised armies, closer deposits in western parts of the and established elaborate networks to state. Often supported by the federal and support the logistics of war. Trains, ships, state governments, they organized corpo- canal boats, and other essential utilities rations to take advantage of new devel- were pressed into war service. Military opments such as railroads, steamships, priorities determined what products fac- and other coal-powered technologies. tories and farms produced. And foraging Many of these corporations raised their soldiers seized livestock, confiscated development funds by selling stock and food supplies, and burned fence rails for sponsoring lotteries. Larger enterprises fuel wherever their armies marched. were actually allowed to open banks and print their own currency. Some corporations got both public and private funds. These included the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Chesapeake and Ohio which extracted and conveyed coal, tim- Canal Company, ber, and other raw materials to new fac- Baltimore and Ohio tories, foundries, and furnaces in Coastal Railroad, and Chesapeake and Plain cities and Piedmont mill towns. Delaware Canal, Other improvements, such as the Maryland Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, Figure 76: Washington Navy Yard, 1861. forged closer links with coastal ports (Sketch by Alfred R. Waud courtesy of the Library of Congress) north and south of the region. Fueled by

110 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE coal, growing numbers of corporations began turning local sand, clay, and iron ore into glass, ceramics, bricks, iron, and steel. New houses and structures rose everywhere as a building boom gripped the region following the recovery from the Great Panic of 1837 (see below). Entrepreneurs organized new construc- tion companies to meet demands from new industries and their ever growing numbers of workers. Mills in coastal Figure 77: Centreville, Virginia, March, cities and Piedmont villages–such as 1862. (Photograph by George N. Barnard and James F. Harper’s Ferry, Lancaster, and Peters- Gibson courtesy of the National Archives) burg–worked glass, metal, and wood into owners borrowed money from regional finished tools, implements, and furnish- banks to meet the growing costs of pro- ings. Whatever could not be produced duction and transportation. Private and was imported into the region by trading public banks competed to offer these companies operating in Baltimore, funds, and their dispute soon spilled Norfolk, and other port cities. over into divisive political conflict on the New roads, canals, and rail lines carried floors of statehouses throughout the goods to cities, towns, and villages region. As the fortunes of individuals throughout the region. Railroads made it and corporations rose and fell, the econ- possible to develop small Piedmont omy became more volatile. Periods of towns such as Centreville, Virginia (see prosperity were followed by depressions. Figure 77)–towns that lacked access to These falls were often sparked by fiscal adequate roads or river routes. Estab- disasters such as the Great Panic of 1837, lished industries employed once inde- which was set off when the Bank of pendent artisans to train and supervise Maryland and other financial institutions workforces of new immigrants and rural in and around the region failed. countryfolk. These included ship build- Economic changes brought on by the ing facilities and factories that mass pro- Civil War started an era of unprece- duced precision goods, such as steam dented industrial expansion. Northern engine parts and rifled muskets. Those industries and financial institutions had who stayed in the countryside raised been enriched by military contracts and farm production with new and more effi- took full advantage of the new purchas- cient plows, harrows, and other tools. ing power of workers in the booming Most farmers stayed largely self sufficient labor market. But they grew even more in the first decades of this period. All prosperous, as the spending power of continued to depend on horses, mules, Northern consumers and western mar- and oxen to pull their plows and draw kets grew after the war. For their part, their wagons, but steam railroads helped Southerners wishing to end their depen- get their growing amounts of produce to dence on Northern manufacturers markets. Advances in transportation also started up their own industries and finan- stimulated development of the Pennsyl- cial institutions as they worked to rebuild vania tobacco industry and encouraged economies shattered by the war. In tide- the growth of large commercial orchards water areas, tobacco gave way to a more in Adams County, Pennsylvania, and other diverse agricultural economy. Many old Chesapeake Piedmont communities, plantations were broken up into smaller since tobacco and fruit producers could holdings. These were increasingly send their products to far off markets. farmed by tenant farming renters and sharecroppers who gave up parts of their Both farms and factories grew depen- harvests to more prosperous larger dent on industrial developments. Their landowners.

The Cultural Landscape of Industrial Development 111 Large corporations also made their pres- locales. They found a workforce afraid of ence visible in the landscape during this unemployment; a group of established, period. Powerful companies built impos- powerful families more interested in get- ing, ornate structures that rivaled federal, ting richer than in distributing corporate state, and local government buildings. wealth; and civil authorities who wanted Corporate employers dominated life in things to stay as they were. Now and then smaller mining and mill towns, often run- a business crisis threatened to spark a ning community banks, stores, and storm in labor relations; one of these was schools. Corporations needing skilled the Economic Crash of 1873. Caused by labor began encouraging educational a catastrophic drop in stock prices on improvements required to create a more the Vienna and New York markets, this competent, literate workforce. Literacy crash set off a five-year period of eco- also fueled development. Printing nomic depression. But even so, the dis- presses turned out growing numbers of content and anger of workers in the books and newspapers to meet the region’s factories and fields mostly stayed demands of newly literate consumers. hidden–or was forced into hiding– between 1820 and 1880. Toward the end of the period, industrial philanthropists also began funding the But worker unrest flared into violence on construction of libraries and museums in the open waters of the Bay when oyster- major cities and towns. Corporations men began fighting state authorities and purchased huge amounts of locally pro- each other for the shellfish they had to duced brick, stone, glass, timber, and sell to survive. In struggles known as cast iron to build stately office buildings Oyster Wars, oystermen using tongs in city centers and factory warehouse fought those using the far more destruc- complexes near rail heads, terminals, tive dredges, which had been outlawed and harbor wharves. Impressed by these in Maryland and Virginia. Dredges indis- grand structures, people flocked to work criminately scraped up vast quantities of in them. Many found contentment oysters regardless of age or condition in within their walls. Others, influenced by large scoops dragged from boats across the writings of progressive American and wide swaths of Bay bottom. These con- European social theorists, dreamed of frontations erupted into gunfire. To end better wages and working conditions. the violence, Maryland created what Oyster Navy, Maryland But even so, Northern organizers who became known as the Oyster Navy in came to the region to form unions had 1868. Patrolling Chesapeake waters in little success in most Chesapeake swift, highly maneuverable vessels, the Oyster Navy worked to enforce anti- dredging laws and restore order (see Figure 78). Although the Oyster Navy ended the fighting, it could do little to stop the over-harvesting and pollution that were quickly depleting the Bay’s oyster beds.

Ⅺ EXPANDING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Major developments in science and tech- nology fueled industrial expansion in the Chesapeake Bay region between 1820 and 1880. Native born mechanics and skilled European technicians adapted Figure 78: Hulk of the Governor Robert M. Lane. Flagship of the Oyster Navy, 1884-1932 laid up in Baltimore Harbor near European innovations in metallurgy, the Baltimore Museum of Industry, 1997. steam technology, and textile manufac- (Photograph by Susan B. M. Langley courtesy of the Maryland Historical Trust) turing to fit local needs. Mechanics

112 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE Virginian Edmund Ruffin showed how marl (a crumbly dirt rich in calcium car- bonate) could provide a cheap, easily obtainable fertilizer for fields that had been depleted by intensive tobacco, corn, and wheat cultivation. Farmers also began using new genetic theories to breed more productive and disease resis- tant plants and animals. Graduates of land grant colleges introduced other use- ful techniques, including crop rotation Figure 79: Steamboat Potomac on the methods and tilling techniques that Patuxent River at Lower Marlboro, guarded against erosion. The results– Maryland, ca. 1900. (Photograph courtesy of the Calvert Marine greater farm yields of higher quality– were carried to regional towns and cities improved engine efficiency, increased along rail lines. And new refrigeration the production capacities of industries, and canning techniques encouraged and used new transportation develop- exports of farm products to other ments to create better vehicles. As noted American and foreign markets. above, faster and more efficient wooden sailing vessels were developed, and these were replaced eventually by wheel and propeller-driven steamships with metal hulls (see Figure 79). Engineers such as Charles Reeder, inventor of the crosshead engine, improved steam en- gines for ships dramatically. Locomotives were made larger and more powerful. Safer and more efficient metal railroad cars replaced their wooden predecessors. Lighter, stronger, and more malleable metals also transformed the building trades, enabling architects to design taller, larger, and more ornate structures.

New information moved quickly through the region in technical articles, guide- books, and other publications. Baltimore Figure 80: Baltimore City, 1862. Panoramic view from the Mount Vernon became a major information center, as it Place Historic District looking south beyond the Washington Monument. was strategically located on the banks of (Lithograph by E. Sachse and Company courtesy of the Library of Congress) the region’s roomiest deepwater harbor and at the heart of a web of major trans- portation networks (see Figure 80). Ⅺ TRANSFORMING THE Publications produced by its regional ENVIRONMENT presses were gathered together in libraries, technological institutes, and The many factors described above – industrialization, urban growth, shifts in colleges such as the Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins University, a research center focusing on agricultural production, and transporta- University postgraduate education. College gradu- tion improvements – radically trans- ates and self-trained technicians opened formed Chesapeake Bay environments in or worked in the many laboratories and this period. Marching armies of the Civil workshops created in and around the city. War did affect the environment nega- tively, polluting local water supplies, cut- Technological advances also increased ting trees, and, on occasion, rerouting agricultural production. By 1832, waterways with makeshift ditches like the

Where, What, and When 113 threatened the future of the Bay’s duck and oyster populations.

Ⅺ CHANGING ROLE OF THE CHESAPEAKE IN THE WORLD COMMUNITY During this period, wharves, warehouses, Figure 81: Dutch Gap Canal, on the James and immigrant communities rose along River, Eight Miles from Richmond March, 1865. (Photograph by John Reekie the shores of Norfolk, Alexandria, courtesy of the National Archives) Baltimore, and other Chesapeake Bay ports (see Figure 82). This growth took Dutch Gap Canal, Dutch Gap Canal (see Figure 81), built the region from an isolated agricultural Virginia by Union troops in 1864 to bypass enclave to a cosmopolitan center of Washington Navy Yard, strongly fortified Confederate positions industry and trade. Propellers replaced Washington, D.C. outside Richmond. Such environmental sails, and schooners, clipper ships, and disturbances tended to be temporary steam transports brought in imports from and of a highly localized nature. River Europe and Asia. The Washington Navy sediments quickly filled the Dutch Gap Yard (see Figure 83) and other Chesa- ditch, and most other envi- ronmental dislocations were corrected by concerned citi- zens and local communities within a few years of the end of the war. But postwar devel- opment posed more serious problems. Eroded soil sedi- ments, human and animal wastes, and industrial wastes polluted Chesapeake Bay waterways as never before. Figure 83: Washington Navy Yard, 1861. Shad fishermen And vast clouds of wood and draw in a net in the foreground. (Harper’s Weekly sketch coal smoke billowed from courtesy of the Library of Congress) factory smokestacks and the chimneys of residences and office build- peake Bay shipyards also produced more ings. This pollution blotted the skies and more warships that could project above Chesapeake Bay towns and cities. American power far from the nation’s Intensive use of particular resources shores. American determination to turn caused the clear cutting of old growth back potential foreign invaders also forests, the killing of entire species, and motivated the placement of cannon bar- the altering of ecosystems. As men- rels in the walls of stone fortresses on the tioned, hunting and harvesting even region’s shores. Washington and Baltimore grew into international cities as new immigrants and foreign diplomatic and trade delega- tions moved in. More and more immi- grants gathered in ethnic neighborhoods with distinctive churches, shops, signage, and eateries offering inexpensive Old World meals to unmarried male new- comers. Farther inland, new immigrants Figure 82: Sixth Street Wharf, 1863, Washington, D.C. found work in Piedmont mills, mines, (Lithograph by Charles Magnus courtesy of the Library of Congress) and factories.

114 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE FURTHER INFORMATION P. R. Uhler and Otto Lugger, List of Fish of Maryland (1876). These works are foremost among the David A. Zegers, ed., At the Crossroads: A many sources containing useful Natural History of Southcentral information surveying this period in Pennsylvania (1994). Chesapeake Bay history: Carol Ashe, Four Hundred Years of These useful atlases and geographic Virginia, 1584-1984: An Anthology surveys graphically depict large (1985). scale patterns of development in the Chesapeake Bay’s cultural landscape Carl Bode, Maryland: A Bicentennial in the period: History (1978). Michael Conzen, ed., The Making of the Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans (1973). American Landscape (1990). Robert J. Brugger, Maryland: A Middle David J. Cuff, et al., eds., The Atlas of Temperament,1634-1980 (1988). Pennsylvania (1989). Suzanne Chapelle, et al., Maryland: A James E. DiLisio, Maryland, a Geography History of Its People (1986). (1983). Federal Writers’ Program, Maryland: A Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of Guide to the Old Line State (1940a). America. Volume 2: Continental ——-, Virginia: A Guide to the Old America,1800-1867 (1993). Dominion (1940b). Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of Frederick A. Gutheim, The Potomac America.Volume 3: Transcontinental (1968). America,1850-1915 (1999). Alice Jane Lippson, The Chesapeake Bay Edward C. Papenfuse and Joseph M. in Maryland (1973). Coale, eds., The Hammond-Harwood House Atlas of Historical Maps of Paul Metcalf, ed., Waters of Potowmack Maryland,1608-1908 (1982). (1982). John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscape of Lucien Niemeyer and Eugene L. Meyer, America,1580 to 1845 (1982). Chesapeake Country (1990). Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., The Settling Edward C. Papenfuse, et al., Maryland: A of North America (1995). New Guide to the Old Line State (1979). Derek Thompson, et al., Atlas of Maryland (1977). Morris L. Radoff, The Old Line State: A History of Maryland (1971). Kent T. Zachary, Cultural Landscapes of the Potomac (1995). Emily J. Salmon, ed., A Hornbook of Virginia History (1983). Small-scale community studies Mame and Marion E. Warren, Maryland: include this one: Time Exposures,1840-1940 (1984). Jack Temple Kirby, Poquosson (1986). John R. Wennersten, Maryland’s Eastern Biographical accounts providing Shore: A Journey in Time and Place insights into individual lives include (1992). the following: Major environmental studies include Frank A. Cassell, Merchant Congressman the following: in the Young Republic: Samuel Smith of William C. Schroeder and Samuel F. Maryland,1752-1839 ( 1971). Hillebrand, Fishes of Chesapeake Bay Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of (1972). Frederick Douglass (1962). James P. Thomas, ed., Chesapeake (1986).

Further Information 115 Eugene S. Ferguson, Oliver Evans,The Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Inventive Genius of the American Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (1990). Industrial Revolution (1980). Vera F. Rollo, The Black Experience in Richard H. Hunt, Enoch Pratt:The Story of Maryland (1980). a Plain Man (1935). Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People Dickson J. Preston, Young Frederick (1990). Douglass:The Maryland Years (1980). Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Helen Hopkins Thom, Johns Hopkins: A Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Silhouette (1929). Reconstruction (1971).

Aspects of the cultural life of the Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Northeast (Vol. 15, period is examined in these works: Handbook of North American Indians, 1978). Helen Chappell, Chesapeake Book of the Dead (1999). Edward C. Papenfuse, et al., Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State Hugh D. Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of (1979). the Johns Hopkins University, 1874- 1889 (1960). Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., History of Indian-White Relations (Vol. 4, Esther Wanning, Maryland: Art of the Handbook of North American Indians, State (1998). 1988). The many studies surveying key Charles Lewis Wagandt, The Mighty aspects of social life of the period Revolution: Negro Emancipation in include these: Maryland,1862-1864 (1964). Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave James M. Wright, The Free Negro in Revolts (1943). Maryland,1634-1860 (1921).

Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Significant examples of the many Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs recent scholarly studies of slavery in (1996). the region in this period include the Dieter Cunz, The Maryland Germans following: (1948). Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone (1998). Bianca P. Floyd, Records and Reflections: ——-, and Philip D. Morgan, eds., The Early Black History in Prince George’s Slave’s Economy (1991). County,Maryland (1989). ——-, and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Cultivation and Culture (1993). Unfinished Business,1863-1877 (1988). Barbara J. Fields, Slavery and Freedom Mary Forsht-Tucker, et al., Association on the Middle Ground (1985). and Community Histories of Prince George’s County (1996). Ronald Lewis, Coal, Iron, and Slaves (1979). Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint States (1985). (1997). Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, The Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves American Backwoods Frontier (1989). (1989). Suzanne Lebsock, Virginia Women, 1600- T. Stephen Whitman, The Price of 1945 (1987). Freedom (1997). Roland C. McConnell, Three Hundred William H. Williams, Slavery and and Fifty Years (1985). Freedom in Delaware, 1639-1865 (1996). Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (1975). Carol Wilson, Freedom at Risk (1994).

116 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE Gilbert L. Wilson, An Introduction into the Paula Johnson, ed., Working the Water History of Slavery in Prince George’s (1988). County (1991). Joanne Passmore, History of the These are among the many studies Delaware State Grange and the State’s addressing the development of Agriculture,1875-1975 (1975). religion in this period: Glenn Porter, ed., Regional Economic Donald G. Mathews, Slavery and History of the Mid-Atlantic Area Since Methodism (1965). 1700 (1976). Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion John R. Wennersten, The Oyster Wars of (1978). Chesapeake Bay (1981).

Useful insights into period political Useful analyses of regional scientific life may be found in the following: and technological developments in the period may be found in these Jean H. Baker, The Politics of Continuity works: (1973). Albert Lowther Demaree, The American ——-, Ambivalent Americans: The Know Agricultural Press,1819-1860 (1941). Nothing Party in Maryland (1977). James D. Dilts, The Great Road: The Richard O. Curry, ed., Radicalism, Building of the Baltimore and Ohio Reconstruction, and Party Realignment Railroad (1993). (1969). Geoffrey M. Fostner, Tidewater Triumph William A. Evitts, A Matter of Allegiances: (1998). Maryland from 1850 to 1861 (1974). Thomas F. Hahn, The Chesapeake and Robert B. Harmon, Government and Ohio Canal (1984). Politics in Maryland (1990). Brook Hindle, ed., America’s Wooden Age Whitman H. Ridgway, Community (1975). Leadership in Maryland, 1790-1840 (1979). David C. Holly, Chesapeake Steamboats (1994). Malcolm J. Rohrbaugh, The Land Office Business (1968). David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 Among the huge number of studies (1984). on the Civil War in the Chesapeake Walter S. Sanderlin, The Great National Bay region is this work: Project: A History of the Chesapeake Eric Mills, Chesapeake Bay in the Civil and Ohio Canal (1946). War (1996). David G. Shomette, Shipwrecks on the Key economic studies include the Chesapeake (1982). following: Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer’s Last Percy W. Bidwell and John I. Falconer, Frontier:Agriculture,1860-1897 (1945). History of Agriculture in the Northern George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation United States,1620-1860 (1925). Revolution,1815-1860 (1951). Avery O. Craven, Soil Exhaustion as a Surveys examining the region’s Factor in the Agricultural History of architecture and buildings include Virginia and Maryland, 1606-1860 the following: (1925). Pamela James Blumgart, At the Head of Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the the Bay: A Cultural and Architectural to 1860 (1932). History of Cecil County, Maryland Luther Porter Jackson, Free Negro Labor (1995). and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830- 1860 (1969).

Further Information 117 Michael Bourne, Historic Houses of Kent Archeological studies include these: County (1998). James Deetz, Flowerdew Hundred ——-, et al., Architecture and Change in (1984). the Chesapeake (1998). William M. Kelso and R. Most, eds., Earth J. Ritchie Garrison, et al., eds., After Patterns (1990). Ratification (1988). Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little, Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Historical Archaeology of the Chesa- Culture of the Eastern United States peake,1784-1994 (1994). (1968). ——, et al., eds., Annapolis Pasts (1998). ——-, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia David G. Shomette, Tidewater Time (1975). Capsule (1995). Bernard L. Herman, Architecture and Theresa A. Singleton, ed., The Archae- Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700- ology of Slavery and Plantation Life 1900 (1987). (1985). Terry G. Jordan, American Log Buildings (1985). The following are among the many studies of the development of urban Gabrielle M. Lanier and Bernard L. and suburban life in and around Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Washington, D.C.: Mid-Atlantic (1997). Constance M. Green, Washington: A Marilynn Larew, Bel Air: An Architectural History of the Capital, 1800-1878 and Cultural History,1782-1945 (1995). (1961). Calder Loth, Virginia Landmarks of Black Frederick A. Gutheim, Worthy of the History (1995). Nation (1977). George W. McDaniel, Hearth and Home Elizabeth Jo Lampl and Kimberly (1982). Williams, Chevy Chase (1998). Susan G. Pearl, Prince George’s County Fredric M. Miller and Howard Gillette, Jr., African-American Heritage Survey Washington Seen: A Photographic (1996). History,1875- 1965 (1995). Paul Touart, Somerset: An Architectural These works trace the emergence of History (1990). Baltimore as the region’s largest city: Dell Upton, ed., America’s Architectural Toni Ahrens: Design Makes a Difference: Roots (1986a). Shipbuilding in Baltimore, 1795-1835 ——-, ed., Holy Things and Profane (1998). (1986b). Gary Browne, Baltimore in the Nation, ——-, and John Michael Vlach, eds., 1789-1861 (1980). Common Places (1986). Isaac M. Fein, The Making of an American Donna Ware, Ann Arundel’s Legacy: The Jewish Community (1971). Historic Properties of Ann Arundel Leroy Graham, Baltimore:The Nineteenth- County (1990). Century Black Capital (1982). Christopher Weeks, ed., Where Land and James W. Livingood, The Philadelphia- Water Intertwine: An Architectural Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780-1830 History of Talbot County, Maryland (1947). (1984a). ——-, ed., Between the Nanticoke and the Choptank (1984).

118 CHAPTER SEVEN: SECTIONAL STRIFE