For God, king, and country: loyalism on the eastern shore of Maryland during the American Revolution.

• Author: Neville, Barry Paige
• Position: Essay

Few events in American history have been studied as much as the War for Independence. Advocates of the Whig interpretation of the American Revolution argue that the colonists rose in a unified mass movement to throw off the yoke of British tyranny. (1) This, however, was not the case. The War for Independence was America's first civil war. Not only was there fighting between American colonists and British forces, there was also conflict between Patriots and those colonists who wished to remain under British rule. As John Adams observed, the American Revolution was fought by one-third of the population against another third to benefit the remaining third. (2)

With the exception of New York, (3) such divided loyalties are best illustrated in Maryland. During the war, the revolutionary government in Annapolis often faced political dissension and feared an armed rebellion by citizens who remained loyal to the British Crown. One of the most strife-torn areas in Maryland was its Eastern Shore, a large peninsula that lies between the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. Approximately 180 miles long and 60 miles wide, it includes parts of Maryland, Virginia, and all of Delaware. The area is inundated with innumerable rivers, creeks, and inlets, making it a center for trade, ship building, and smuggling. Enjoying access to fertile land, Eastern Shore farmers had long repudiated tobacco farming in favor of producing grains, vegetables, fruits, and other cash crops. Consequently, the Eastern Shore, as local historian Charles Truitt describes it, became the "breadbasket of the Revolution." (4)

During the American Revolution, the Eastern Shore proved to be an area of great strategic and economic importance to the war effort. The Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean were of vital significance to the colonies, not only for trade, but also for communication and supply lines between Philadelphia and the Southern colonies. Maryland ship captains kept the colonies supplied with vital materials from Europe and the Caribbean, and privateers were recruited from the area to attack British commerce. These factors, coupled with the fact that Eastern Shore farmers supplied Washington's Continental Army with essential foodstuffs throughout the war, demonstrate the strategic and economic importance of the region to the Patriot cause. If the British or their Loyalist surrogates could have separated Maryland's Eastern Shore from the Patriot movement by cutting off the flow of supplies and restricting communications that crossed the region, they might have improved their chances of suppressing the rebellion.

To maintain its authority on the Eastern Shore, the extra-legal state government of Maryland adopted restrictive laws and quartered troops there to restrain Loyalist sentiment in the region. Despite these measures, the Annapolis government never exercised complete control over Eastern Shore Loyalists. Consequently, Eastern Shoremen hampered Maryland's war-making capabilities throughout the American Revolution. Nevertheless, constant harassment from the Annapolis government prevented these Loyalists from ever gaining military or political control over the Eastern Shore.

This paper examines the nature of loyalism on Maryland's Eastern Shore, identifying three distinct groups labeled as Loyalists, or the disaffected, by the revolutionary state government. First, there were the outspoken Loyalists, that is, those individuals or groups who actively opposed the state government. Second, there were the political opponents of the new state government who refused to accept the governmental institutions established during the 1775 State Constitutional Convention. Lastly, there were Eastern Shoremen who the state government characterized as Loyalists, in large part, because of their religious affiliations. This study focuses on the actions taken by the Annapolis government to subdue these various groups of disaffected people, and the reasons why the Loyalists failed to seriously challenge the authority of that government on the Eastern Shore.

Formation of Maryland's Extra-legal Government

As the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Maryland moved forward as did other colonies in declaring its independence from Great Britain. When the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia one month later, Maryland representatives Charles Carroll and William Paca, both of Anne Arundel County, Samuel Chase of Somerset County, and Thomas Stone of Charles County all favored independence. (5)

Once independence had been declared in early July 1776, Maryland established a new state government. Its first order of business was the elimination of the proprietary charter. To be sure, by the 1770s the British government had assumed much of the actual power of the proprietary government, but the Calvert family still controlled vast amounts of land, capital, and patronage privileges in Maryland. More importantly, Maryland taxpayers were still assessed thousands of pounds sterling annually for the maintenance of the proprietary class. (6) In dealing with these issues, the State Constitutional Convention abolished the proprietary government and transferred its assets to the state treasury. (7)

The convention then moved quickly to frame a new constitutional state government in order to manage state affairs and the regional war effort. The same property qualifications that existed under the proprietary government would continue to apply to the election of officials who would serve in the new state government. All freemen over the age of twenty-one possessing a minimum of fifty acres of land or owning property worth at least 40 sterling [pounds sterling] could elect Delegates to represent them in Annapolis. (8)

Even though Maryland had established an "elected" representative government, it was never a legal government until independence had been secured on the battlefield and in the subsequent peace conference. Rather, it was an extra-legal government whose legitimacy rested on its ability to control the state's population, either by force or by persuading Maryland residents that it was the legal heir-apparent to the old governmental system. As long as state residents aligned themselves with the revolutionary government in Annapolis, it had credibility. If, however, a substantial number of citizens chose to remain loyal to the British Crown, the survival of the new government would remain in doubt. Thus, the legitimacy of the new state government became the focal point in the struggle between Patriots and Loyalists for control of Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Political Dissidents and Other Disaffected Peoples

During the war, the Annapolis government made no attempt to classify the various opposition groups within the state according to their degree of loyalism. Any person who did not support the state government whole-heartedly was labeled a Tory. This blanket condemnation of all disaffected people as being "true Loyalists" was erroneous. The majority of Marylanders characterized as Tories were essentially opponents of the new state government for both political and social reasons. With regard to Eastern Shore residents, several factors explain their disaffection: localism, disintegration of the prewar social structure, deprivations wrought by wartime food shortages, and the increased tax burden to prosecute the war effort.

Following the ratification of Maryland's new constitution in 1775, the state government immediately had to address the issues of voting rights and holding office. The use of prewar voting qualifications barred most Marylanders from the election rolls. For example, only 74 of Kent County's 3,500 free whites were eligible to vote for Delegates. (9) This produced an intolerable situation. The major pretense for the revolt against Great Britain had been that the British government had restricted the colonists' rights as Englishmen. The Patriots sought to rectify this by declaring independence and demanding the loyalty and martial support of their fellow citizens. Yet such restrictive voting requirements meant that only the wealthiest members of the gentry in Maryland could participate in the new government. According to the new state constitution, one had to possess 500 [pounds sterling] real property to serve as a Delegate; 1,500 [pounds sterling] to serve on the Council. (10) These requirements for holding office, coupled with state restrictions on voting rights, meant that no more than fifty-five percent of Maryland's free white population could vote or hold office. Consequently, only a handful of individuals held county seats. For example, in Queen Anne's County, between 1777 and 1787, only nineteen different individuals filled that county's forty-five elected seats. Of those individuals, James Kent, William Bruff, John Seney, Clement Sewell, and Edward Coursey each served in the state legislature five times. This trend holds true in other counties as well. (11)

To correct this situation, more moderate members of the Council, men such as Chase, Paca, and Rezin Hammond of Anne Arundel County, were able to reduce the property requirement for voting from 40 [pounds sterling] to 30 [pounds sterling]. But an attempt to further reduce that requirement to 5 [pounds sterling] was soundly defeated. (12) Apparently, the elite who now controlled Maryland had no intention of sharing their power with "social inferiors." That included officers and soldiers of the Maryland Line who could not vote in any state election until 1781. (13)

The gentry's efforts to restrict the franchise and limit office holding illustrates a phenomenon peculiar to the American Revolution. In contrast to Marx's dialectic, where the oppressed proletariat led the revolution, or the middle class in the French Revolution, the American Revolution was shaped primarily by the gentry. They had led the initial protests to break away from...