Annapolis the Seat of Government

Partly because the whole people of Maryland might be better accommodated, but largely for the purpose of punishing the adherents of Lord Baltimore, who constituted a greater portion of the population of St. Mary's, the seat of government was moved from there to Anne Arundel town, on the shore of the Chesapeake, early in 1694, and there a General Assembly was convened in February. The following year the name of the place was changed by authority to Annapolis, and the naval station of the province was established there. Annapolis has continued to be the capital of Maryland until now. St. Mary's, dependent for its existence upon its being the capital of the province, speedily sunk into insignificance and fell into ruins.

Lord Baltimore never recovered his proprietary rights. Neither did he return to America, but died in England in 1714, at the age of eighty-five years. He was succeeded by his son Benedict Leonard Calvert. That son had abandoned the faith of his father and died in the spring of 1715, when his title to the province devolved upon his infant son Charles, who, with his brothers and sisters, had been educated as Protestants.

Charles Calvert Lord Baltimore and William Penn were cotemporaries, and were equally conspicuous for their beneficent disposition. They are regarded as the best of all the proprietaries who owned chartered domains in America. This sentiment is shadowed in the following lines by a minor English poet:

There being no longer any objection to the Baltimore family on account of religion, the British government restored to the young scion of that noble house, all the rights of proprietaryship in 1715. This restoration did not affect the republican sentiment of a great majority of the people of the province, except to stimulate its growth. The first legislature which met, after the Restoration, passed a body of laws based upon the broadest principles of civil and religious liberty, some of which yet remain in force in Maryland. There was a single blot on the legislation of that Assembly. They introduced into Maryland all of the odious test-oaths and disabilities which were enforced in England against the consciences of men.

For almost forty years after the Restoration the colony enjoyed remarkable tranquility. Only the natural disputes that arose between a lord proprietor and a people of strong republican tendencies in thought and action, and the flutter of excitement caused by the furnishing of men to aid the northern colonies in their struggles with the common foe on the frontiers, disturbed the general repose.

Charles Lord Baltimore died in 1751, after ruling the province in person and by deputies about thirty-six years. During that period the growth of the province in wealth and population was remarkable. The inhabitants then numbered more than one hundred and thirty-five thousand souls, of whom about forty thousand were black men and women, who were mostly slaves. The several provinces were then agitated by the encroachments of the French upon the territory of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, toward which English adventurers were casting longing eyes. In the French and Indian war that broke out in 1755, Maryland became involved, at first, simply in the maintenance of an attitude of self-defence and a generous assistant of its sister colonies. Its legislature for awhile persistently stood aloof from aggressive warfare in spite of the commands of the king and the entreaties of Virginia. They consented to send delegates to the colonial convention which assembled at Albany in 1754, but the delegates offended their constituents by agreeing to a plan of union submitted by Dr. Franklin, by which the several colonies might act with national power in the prosecution of measures of defence against the common enemy. The Marylanders, ever jealous of their colonial rights and proud of their separate independence as a colony, and their inherent sovereignty, had always opposed every attempt to effect a fusion of the colonies into one government. When the plan agreed upon at Albany was submitted to the General Assembly of Maryland, it was unanimously disapproved as "tending to the destruction of the rights and liberties of his majesty's subjects in the province."

The time soon arrived when the Marylanders could no longer stand in the attitude of separatist and avoid taking an active aggressive part in the war, for its surges were beating upon the borders of their province. The Indians were plundering their frontier. The General Assembly, aroused by immediate danger, voted men and money for a vigorous prosecution of the war; and the command of all the forces engaged against the French on the Ohio was given, by a royal commission, to Governor Sharpe, of Maryland. The people of that province were forced by circumstances to consent to a union which was finally cemented by the blood of the Revolution.