ii^Mt4iirAi^ii Baltimore as a National Nominating Convention City Eugene H. Roseboom The Democratic Conventi Betty Dix Greeman The Baltimore Convention of the Constitutional Union Party Donald Walter Curl Governor Ritchie and the Conver of 1932 James Lev m W m nfkv nl 1 ''iiS* '',, 1 ^ IV £• ' 1'^** tic Conve Fall, 1972 A QUARTERLY PUBLISHED BY THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY GOVERNING COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY GEORGE L. RADCLIFFE, Chairman of the Council SAMUEL HOPKINS, President C. A. PORTER HOPKINS, Vice President EDWARD G. HOWARD, Vice President LEONARD C. CREWE, JR., Vice President JOHN G. EVANS, Treasurer S. VANNORT CHAPMAN, Recording Secretary A. RUSSELL SLAGLE, Corresponding Secretary WILLIAM B. MARYE, Corresponding Secretary Emeritus LEONARD C. CREWE, JR., Gallery DR. RHODA M. DORSEY, Publications MRS. BRYDEN B. HYDE, Women's LESTER S. LEVY, Addresses CHARLES L. MARBURG, Athenaeum ROBERT G. MERRICK, Finance ABBOTT L. PENNIMAN, JR., Athenaeum DR. THOMAS G. PULLEN, JR., Education FREDERICK L. WEHR, Maritime DR. HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS, Library P. WILLIAM EILBY, Director Annual Subscription to the Magazine, $3.00. Each issue $1.25. The Magazine assumes no responsibility for statements or opinions expressed in its pages. Published quarterly by the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore, Md. Second-Class postage paid at Baltimore, Md. HALL OF RECORDS LIBRARY ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND WMtffitntMft BOARD OF EDITORS JEAN BAKER Goucher College RHODA M. DORSEY, Chairman Goucher College JACK P. GREENE Johns Hopkins University FRANCIS C. HABER University of Maryland AUBREY C. LAND University of Georgia BENJAMIN QUARLES Morgan State College MORRIS L. RADOFF Maryland State Archivist A. RUSSELL SLAGLE Baltimore RICHARD WALSH Georgetown University FORMER EDITORS WILLIAM HAND BROWNE 1906-1909 LOUIS H. DIELMAN 1910-1937 JAMES W. FOSTER 1938-1949, 1950-1951 HARRY AMMON 1950 FRED SHELLEY 1951-1955 FRANCIS C. HABER 1955-1958 RICHARD WALSH 1958-1967 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 67, No. 3 FALL, 1972 CONTENTS Baltimore as a National Nominating PAGE Convention City Eugene H. Roseboom 215 The Democratic Convention of 1860: Prelude to Secession Betty Dix Greeman 225 The Baltimore Convention of the Constitutional Union Party Donald Walter Curl 254 Governor Albert C. Ritchie and the Convention of 1932 James Levin 278 Sidelights The Dome of the Annapolis State House Winifred and Douglas Gordon 294 The Baltimore Theatre and the Yellow Fever Epidemic David Ritchey 298 The Hundreds of Washington County Jeffrey A. Wyand 302 Notes on the Maryland Historical Society Manuscript Collections The Joseph Nathan Ulman Collection Nancy G. Boles 307 Genealogical Notes Vital Records Abstracted from the Frederick-Town Herald, 1802-1815 Robert W. Barnes 313 Reviews of Recent Books 321 Cream, The First American: A Story of North American Archaeology, by Frank Hole Marcus, The Colonial American Jew, 1492-1776, 3 vols., by Harold Schwartz Land, ed., Journal and Correspondence of the Slate Council of Maryland 1784-1789, by Ronald Hoffman Cassell, Merchant Congressman in the Voung Republic: Samuel Smith of Maryland, 1752-1839, by Gary L. Browne Hill, William Vans Murray, Federalist Diplomat: The Shaping of Peace with France, 1791-1801, by James F. Vivian Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, by Daniel P. Jordan Parker, George Peabody: A Biography, by Robert H. Bremner Merrill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison: I Will Be Heard! 1822-1835, by Merton L. Dillon Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital, by Maxwell Bloomfield Welch, Jr., George Frisbie Hoar and the Half-Breed Republicans, by Donald Walter Curl Glanz, Jew and Italian: Historic Group Relations and the New Immigration {1881-1924), by J. Scarpaci Link, The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson and Other Essays, by Lloyd E. Ambrosius Riggs, A Guide to the Manuscripts in the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library: Accessions through the Year 1965, by Nancy G. Boles Book Notes 339 Notes and Queries 343 Richard R. Duncan, Editor John B. Boles, Book Review Editor David Sullivan, Assistant Editor Mary K. Meyer, Genealogical Editor Graphics Staff Kugenia Calvert Holland and Lois B. McCauley CONTRIBUTORS Donald Walter Curl is Chairman of the Department of History at Florida Atlantic University. Among his published works are "Murat Halstead," in For the Union, edited By Kenneth W. Wheeler, and Pioneer Life in Southeast Florida (University of Miami Press, 1970) for which he recently received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. He has also published a number of articles in such journals as Ohio History and the Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society. He is a frequent reviewer for this Magazine. Douglas Gordon is well known as a Baltimore lawyer and for his articles on local history. He has published articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and this Magazine. His article, "An Essay on Three Gracious Baltimore Houses," appeared in the Fall, 1970 issue of this Magazine. Winifred Gordon, the Annapolis-born wife of Douglas Gordon, was brought up in the shadow of the State House Dome. She first noticed the resemblance between the Schlossturm and the dome of her native city when in Karlsruhe in the summer of 1966. She is a portrait painter whose work is represented in the collection of the Society. Betty Dix Greeman is a graduate teaching instructor at Duke University. She is currently completing a doctoral dissertation, "Stephen A. Douglas and Herschel V. Johnson: Examples of National Men in the Sectional Crisis of 1860," under the direction of Professor Robert Durden. James Levin is a lecturer at the City College of New York, City University of New York. He holds a doctor's degree from the City University of New York, and his article, "Governor Albert Ritchie and the Democratic National Con- vention of 1924," appeared in the Summer, 1971 issue of the Magazine. David Ritchey is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. Professor Ritchey holds a Ph.D. degree from Louisiana State University where he completed his dissertation, "A History of the Baltimore Stage in the Eighteenth Century," under the direction of Dr. Gresdna Doty. He has also contributed articles to such journals as Louisiana History, Educational Theatre Journal, and Southern Speech Journal. Eugene H. Roseboom is Professor Emeritus of History at The Ohio State University. He is the author of A History of Presidential Elections, A Short History of Presidential Elections, The Civil War Era (History of the State of Ohio, Vol. IV), and with Francis P. Weisenburger, A History of Ohio. He has contributed articles to various encyclopaedias and articles and reviews to his- torical periodicals. Jeffrey A. Wyand is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University in electrical engineering and is a student of local history. He is currently employed by the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute in Annapolis. MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE A Quarterly VOLUME 67 FALL, 1972 NUMBER 3 BALTIMORE AS A NATIONAL NOMINATING CONVENTION CITY BY EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM BEFORE the Civil War Baltimore was the favorite national convention city of both the major parties.1 Six Democratic conventions met there, 1832-1852, Cincinnati interrupting the succession in 1856. In 1860, after the Charleston convention's debacle over the slavery issue, the divided Democrats returned to Baltimore only to continue the sectional battle and end up with two conventions and two national tickets. The National Republican party nominated Henry Clay at Baltimore in 1831. Its Whig successor came there on two occasions, 1844 and 1852, as did a Whig segment in 1860, renamed the Constitutional Union move- ment, which offered a Union alternative to the sectionalized major parties. If this convention and the Antimasonic party that started the system in 1831 are included, the Chesapeake metropolis was the host city for twelve nominating bodies in the three decades before the Civil War. Only three other cities, Harrisburg (Whig, 1840), Cincinnati (Democratic, 1856), and Philadelphia (Whig, 1848, Republican and Know Nothing, 1856) kept Baltimore from a complete monopoly of the Presidential nominations of the important national parties.2 1 This article is based on research the author did in connection with the writing of his History of Presidential Elections. He is under deep obligations to the graduate students in his seminars for their assistance in examining the vast amount of materials on national conventions. The account here is largely from contemporary sources. 2 The conventions of the radical antislavery parties, 1840-1852, would not have been welcomed in a slave state and attracted slight attention in the northern cities where they met, the 1848 Free Soil gathering at Buffalo possibly excepted. Their principles rather than their choices of candidates were what mattered. 215 216 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE fffim /yf//*>t//.f/im}/t/r> / iff//Jjitti ' Jit ,iiiv* Jir ti'/'ifW/''/'"/. it /e/m-A/ft ' f&r/Je/mm/ />///, mirf //u/1' ptmS r/rf/fa/tiHrtih . Hi/i/my man //* //f//i/r/si>, j'/Hi /'arft? Z-f'*/*"•'?/?'/////•//"• i t.rfa/ mur& /jrtr/r /«.ffoyW. Cartoon, 1848. Litho by H. R. Robinson. Library of Congress. Baltimore's convention hegemony did not depend on attractive monetary bids, the size and utility of a huge convention hall, and hotel accommoda- tions for a mass influx of visitors. The nominating system evolved these requirements much later. The city could offer its location as its one great asset. Its other attractions were incidental. The transportation revolution, which made national gatherings possible, was well under way by 1830, and no other large city was as accessible from all parts of the country. In the east macadamized roads made stage coach travel swifter and easier. The great east-west artery, the National Road, was open from Baltimore to Wheeling on the Ohio River by 1819 and to Columbus by 1833. Steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi and the lower reaches of the Missouri were breaking down the isolation of the great interior.