Maryland Historical Magazine, 2000, Volume 95, Issue No. 4
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M HALL m RECORDS LiBf?ARy Winter 2000 M AND Historical Magazine THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY Founded 1844 Dennis A. Fiori, Director The Maryland Historical Magazine Robert I. Cottom, Editor Patricia Dockman Anderson, Managing Editor Donna Blair Shear, Associate Editor David Prencipe, Photographer Robin Donaldson Coblentz, Christopher T. George, Jane Gushing Lange, and Mary Markey, Editorial Associates Regional Editors John B. Wiseman, Frostburg State University Jane G. Sween, Montgomery County Historical Society Pegram Johnson III, Accoceek, Maryland Acting as an editorial board, the Publications Committee of the Maryland Historical Society oversees and supports the magazine staff. Members of the committee are: John W. Mitchell, Upper Marlboro; Trustee/Ghair John S. Bainbridge Jr., Baltimore Gounty Jean H. Baker, Goucher College James H. Bready, Baltimore Sun Robert J. Brugger, The Johns Hopkins University Press Lois Green Carr, St. Mary's City Commission Suzanne E. Ghapelle, Morgan State University Toby L. Ditz, The Johns Hopkins University Dennis A. Fiori, Maryland Historical Society, ex-officio David G. Fogle, University of Maryland Jack G. Goellner, Baltimore Roland G. McConnell, Morgan State University Norvell E. Miller III, Baltimore Gharles W. Mitchell, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins John G. Van Osdell, Towson University Alan R. Walden, WBAL, Baltimore Brian Weese, Bibelot, Inc., Pikesville Members Emeritus lohn Higham, The lohns Hopkins University Samuel Hopkins, Baltimore Charles McC Mathias, Chevy Chase ISSN 0025-4258 © 2000 by the Maryland Historical Society. Published as a benefit of membership in the Maryland Historical Society in March, June, September, and December. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and/or America: History and Life. Periodicals postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: please send address changes to the Maryland Historical Society, 201 West Monument Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. Printed in the USA by The Sheridan Press, Hanover, Pennsylvania 17331. Individual subscriptions are $24.00. (Membership in the Society with full benefits is $40.00.) Institutional subscriptions are $30.00 per year, prepaid. MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY 201 WEST MONUMENT STREET BALTIMORE MARYLAND 21201 MARYLAND Historical Magazi te VOLUME 95,4 (WINTER 2000) CONTENTS FEB 20 2001 "A Stirring Among the Dry Bones": George Whitefield and the Great Awakening in Maryland 389 by Timothy Philip Feist Chattel Slavery at Hampton/Northampton, Baltimore County 409 by R. Kent Lancaster One Step Closer to Democracy: African American Voting in Late Nineteenth-Century Cambridge 428 by C. Christopher Brown Portfolio: "Maryland in Focus" 438 The Lost Way: Community Mental Health in Maryland, 1960-75 446 by Jonathan Engel Book Reviews 478 Hoffman, Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782, byVirginaGeiger Twohig, ed., George Washington's Diaries: An Abridgement, by Sheldon S. Cohen Onuf, Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood, by Toni M. Barnard Hoxie, Hoffman, and Albert, eds.. Native Americans and the Early Republic, by John R. Wennersten Hart, Ward, and Miller, eds., The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family: Volume 5, The Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale, by Michelle L. Kloss Daniels, ed., Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America, by Catherine A. Cardno Townsend, Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America, by Natalie Zacek Ernst, "Too Afraid to Cry": Maryland Civilians in theAntietam Campaign, by Charles W. Mitchell Rhea, To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864, by Aaron C. Sheehan-Dean Orr, Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998, by Bruce Thompson Books in Brief 499 Notices 501 Index to Volume 95 503 Editor's Notebook That Great Dust Heap Called "History" "Well," the caller seethed, "I thought the Maryland Historical Society had a passing interest in history." I assured him that we did—but not in publishing a history of his retirement community's first twenty-five years. He abruptly hung up, disgruntlement intact. Then there was the letter upbraiding us for permitting an article to refer to George Washington as the first president of the United States. Didn't we know the first president was John Hanson of Charles County, later Frederick, in 1781, under the Articles of Confederation (never mind the subtle governmental differences)? A more or less regular critic is, among other things, determined to keep the number of Maryland Union volunteers to the absolute minimum allowed by Civil War records. A cynic once referred to what we do here, in these offices, as "that great dust heap called 'history,'" but he could not have been more wrong. History matters in varying degrees to a great many people. It mildly concerned the visitor to our booth at the Baltimore Book Festival who idly wondered, "My house is in the 1200 block of St. Paul Street. What can you tell me about it?" More purposeful was the woman who tapped one of our titles and informed us, correctly, that it did not deal at all with slavery as it should have. Perhaps most urgent was the caller who demanded: "My son has a term paper due next week. Send me everything you have on the Civil War!" Amusing as some of these queries sound, they remind us that many share a healthy impatience to know more about the past. Far more ominous was the county school library supervisor who wanted to reshape the past by chang- ing the wording in a 1959 children's book on Maryland Indians. If we did not alter two sentences to fit more recent political sensibilities, she wrote, she would have to remove the books from her county's library shelves. We did not comply, but we are, in fact, preparing a new book on the subject. As the Press at the Maryland Historical Society begins to pick up steam, the phones have begun ringing at a furious pace. Callers want to know where their books are—"I ordered it Tuesday, and this is Friday!"—which is music to our ears. The clothbound edition of A Monument to Good Intentions sold through briskly. The Baltimore Album Quilt Tradition shows similar energy. Some calls are a joy. A writer for the New York Posf contacted this office to ask what, were he still among us, H. L. Mencken would think of "Festivus Maximus," Baltimore's colorful epithet for this year's winter gridiron spectacle? Doubtless he would have hated it. What then, she wanted to know, did he mean to Baltimore? That was easy. We love him because he loved us and because he despised preten- sion. The New York Times did not call but ran a playful article on the eve of Baltimore's trouncing that city's Giants arguing that Edgar Allan Poe's heart right- fully (and laughably) belonged to them because he wrote much of his work there. Had they asked, we would have replied that he lived, got horribly drunk, died, and is buried here. He also disliked New York, as we know from the fact that he was in New York when he finished "The Raven," probably while contemplating suicide. R.I.C. Cover Inauguration Day, Garrett County, March 4,1917 Western Maryland photographer Leander Beachy (1874-1927) celebrated Woodrow Wilson's inauguration to a second term by taking patriotic photographs of his niece, Myra Custer Taylor—shown in this picture draped in one American flag while carrying another through knee-deep snow on a Garrett County mountainside. The practice of inaugurating the president on March 4 began when members of the Continental Congress set the date four months after the election so that new members of Congress and officials of the new administration might have ample time to reach the capital. In what historian Ken Burns called "Jefferson's three-mile-an-hour world," speed of communication and transportation deter- mined dates of national gatherings. Franklin Delano Roosevelt holds the distinc- tion of being the last president sworn in on March 4 (1933) and the first to take the oath of office on January 20 (1937). A bundle of electoral reforms, including the change of date for presidential terms of office, congressional meeting dates, and a mandatory meeting of the electoral college to formally nominate the president and vice president, became law with ratification of the Twentieth Amendment on February 26, 1933. (Maryland Historical Society.) P.D.A. Corrigienda In the last issue of the magazine PDA inadvertently located Prince Frederick in Western Maryland. We regret the error but put forth by way of explanation the fact that PDA had just successfully completed her doctoral examinations, an achievement which often leaves one unable to correctly identify not only cities but sometimes one's own front door. The condition is said to be temporary. 388 George Whitefield (1714-70), charismatic revivalist leader in the North American colonies captivated audiences from Maine to Georgia, but his awakening message largely failed in Maryland's Eastern Shore and southern counties. (From John Gillies, Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Late Reverend George Whitefield of Pembroke College, Oxford ...: Faithfully Selected from His Original Papers, Journals, and Letters . 3d ed. rev., Aaron C. Seymour, ed. [Philadelphia: Bradford and Innskeep, 1812].) 389 "A Stirring Among the Dry Bones": George Whitefield and the Great Awakening in Maryland TIMOTHY PHILIP FEIST Historians have routinely attributed Maryland's spotty participation in the eighteenth-century religious revival called the Great Awakening to exceptional factors in its social and cultural makeup. The colony's unique mix of socio-economic elements, including its preoccupation with trade, political controversies, paucity of urban centers, and widespread Enlightenment skepti- cism, supposedly made it poor tinder for this movement that engulfed the other American colonies.