|
Results for Maryland
|
On this page:
|
A state of the east-central United States. It was admitted as one of the original Thirteen Colonies in 1788. The colony was founded by Lord Baltimore in 1634 as a refuge for English Roman Catholics. Annapolis is the capital and Baltimore the largest city. Population: 5,620,000.
Marylander Mar'y·land·er n.
For more information on Maryland, visit Britannica.com.
A small state on the Atlantic coast, midway between the northern and southern boundaries of the United States, Maryland embraces the Chesapeake Bay and extends narrowly westward into the Appalachian Mountains. When the first European settlers arrived in the area, there were a dozen or more Native American tribes, each with 200 or more members crisscrossing the land, living mostly on the seafood from the Chesapeake. For sixty years after European settlement, relations between the Indians and the settlers were tense but short of war, and during the 1690s most of the Indians of the area moved south or west.
Seventeenth-Century Settlement
Explorers arrived in the 1580s, and in 1607 the London Company, with a British title to the land that is now Maryland, settled at Jamestown. The Virginians mapped the Chesapeake, traded with the Indians, and in 1631 William Claibourne from Jamestown established a furtrading settlement at Kent Island. Maryland's existence as a separate colony, however, emerged from the Calvert family. George Calvert was a personal friend of King James I, liked by the king for his Roman Catholic faith and his devotion to conservative feudal ideals. King James elevated him to the peerage as Lord Baltimore and gave him title to lands in Newfoundland. From 1620 to 1629, Calvert invested in the colony that he called Avalon, but the climate was too severe and the colony failed. In 1632, Calvert persuaded King Charles I to reclaim from the London Company the Potomac River and the Virginia lands to the north, and to transfer this land to him. Calvert diplomatically named the grant for the king's wife.
George Calvert died before settlement could proceed, but his sons ably took up the project. The oldest son Cecil became the second Lord Baltimore and managed colonization from London. The second son Leonard led the expedition of the Arc and Dove that landed at St. Clement's Island in the Potomac on 25 March 1634 and proceeded a few days later to settle permanently at St. Mary's. The first settlers included about seventeen gentlemen-investors who were mostly Catholic, about thirty freemen, and about eighty indentured servants who were mostly Protestant. The expedition also included two Africans who boarded the ship in the Caribbean, presumably as indentures. The Calverts gave at least 2,000 acres to investors who paid the way of five or more servants, and they gave 100 acres to freemen who paid their own way. The Calverts sold additional land, and they collected quitrents on the lands they gave away or sold.
Within a few years the settlers were widely scattered, cultivating corn for subsistence and tobacco for sale to England. At least until the end of the century, life was extremely rude. The ratio of men to women was three to one, and life expectancy was far below that in England. Still, there was easy upward mobility for those who survived, and for those who bought servants and collected the land bounty for them, and newcomers kept arriving. In 1649 the Calverts made the most of their settlers' religious diversity, accepting an Act of Religious Toleration to encourage more settlers. It was one of the first such acts in the history of Christianity.
Life was harsh enough on this outer edge of civilization, and eight decades of intermittent warfare made it harsher. From 1645 to 1660 Maryland repulsed at least three expeditions of attacking Virginians who proclaimed fear of their Catholic-led neighbors and who sought booty for themselves in the wilderness. Then, periodically, especially from 1689 to 1715, the colony was torn by civil war as younger planters revolted against the Calvert proprietors and their appointed governors. The rebellions expanded the power of the General Assembly over the governor, moved the capital from Catholic-leaning St. Mary's to Puritan-leaning Annapolis (1694), and repealed the Toleration Act in order to establish the Anglican Church (1702). The chastened Calverts—there were six generations from George Calvert to the American Revolution—joined the Anglican Church and regained most of their authority over the governor.
The Eighteenth Century and the American Revolution
The transition from rudeness to prosperity—from a population of 30,000 in 1700 to 340,000 in 1800—came largely with slavery. The Calvert proprietors and the settlers increasingly saw permanent bondage as an avenue toward stability and prosperity, and tolerance of slavery grew into active promotion. When slavery became fully legal in 1664, Africans numbered no more than 2 percent of the population, but their numbers surged to 20 percent in 1710, and 30 percent in 1750. The result was an economic takeoff—a surge in tobacco exports, and the rise of a money economy. A rich and stable planter class emerged, and fine Georgian country houses appeared. Scotch-Irish and Germans poured in, moving into the backcountry to establish new towns like Frederick and Hagerstown. Wheat came to supplement tobacco as an export crop, and Baltimore grew as a trade center. Artisan industry emerged and iron manufacturing began.
The new prosperity gave way to new tensions, less between settlers and proprietor than among classes, sections, ideas, and especially between America and the British Empire. New ideas found expression in a newspaper, the Maryland Gazette, and in able local leaders like Daniel Dulaney, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Samuel Chase, and William Paca. Maryland planters and merchants howled against the British Stamp Act of 1765, and in June 1774, the anti-British faction in the General Assembly picked a fight with the proprietary governor who was enforcing the British laws. The patriot-secessionists formed a Provisional Convention that assumed control of the government. They drew up a conservative constitution that they adopted in 1776 without a referendum. It reestablished toleration for all Christians, and shifted taxes from a per capita base to land assessment, but it retained property qualifications for voting, limited voting to the election of delegates to the General Assembly, and actually increased property qualifications for holding office.
The General Assembly hesitated in calling out the state militia for its loyalty was doubtful, but numerous volunteers, encouraged by a state bounty, joined the Continental Army and gained renown as the "Maryland Line." Slave masters sometimes collected the bounty for enlistment, sent off their slaves to serve, and usually freed the slaves when the war ended. Maryland shipbuilders built warships for the Continental Navy, and Maryland shippers, with a subsidy from the General Assembly, armed their vessels to prey on British commerce.
Tobacco production declined after the Revolution, but otherwise the economy flourished and new institutions burgeoned—state banks, state-supported turnpikes and canals, organized medical and legal professions, and a multitude of colleges. In 1784 the Methodist Church was born in Maryland, the first formal separation from its Anglican parent. Marylanders were leaders in the establishment of American branches of the Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and African Methodist Churches. Maryland was a leader in calls for a stronger central government, a United States Constitution, and in the formation of political parties. Maryland happily ceded land for the new District of Columbia.
The Nineteenth Century and the City
The nineteenth century brought urbanization, democracy, industry, and the end of slavery. State population grew from 340,000 in 1800 to 1,200,000 in 1900, and Baltimore City grew from 8 percent of the total to 43 percent. The size and wealth of the city overwhelmed Annapolis and the state's long-established plantation culture.
The city—with its merchant, professional, artisan, and proletarian classes—led the statewide movement toward democracy and party politics. Property qualifications for voting ended in 1802; property qualifications for holding office ended in 1809; a public school system began, at least in theory, in 1825; Jews were allowed to vote in 1826; popular election of the governor came in 1837, election of city and county officials in 1851; African Americans were enfranchised in 1870; the secret ballot came in 1901; and women gained the vote in 1920. Actually, Maryland tended to lag behind other states in most of these reforms.
The city won its first notable struggle with the planters in the War of 1812. Federalist planters, eager to maintain their profitable trade with Great Britain, opposed the war, but Baltimore relished the alliance with France and another chance to loose its privateers on British commerce. When the British landed at Bladensburg in 1814, the planter-led militia let them pass; but three weeks later when the British attacked Baltimore, the city militia held firm. Francis Scott Key, watching the British bombardment, wrote a poem celebrating the victory over the British that became the words to the National Anthem. The planter-led Federalist party of Maryland never recovered.
Especially from the 1820s to the 1850s, Maryland's General Assembly, dominated by Whigs, promoted a frenzy of capital formation and construction projects. First came the turnpikes. The assembly gave rights-of-way to private companies to improve the roads, establish stagecoaches, and charge tolls. Most famous was the National Pike that, with its extensions, stretched from Baltimore to Ohio. Then came a craze for canals, the most famous of which was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to reach from Washington to Cincinnati. It nearly bankrupted the state and never got beyond Cumberland. The grandest and most successful of the projects were the railroads. The line from Baltimore to Ohio was one of the first and busiest in the country, and by 1840 other lines extended to Washington, Philadelphia, and central Pennsylvania.
Eventually urbanization, democracy, and capitalism came up against the continued existence of slavery. After the collapse of tobacco, slavery was barely profitable in Maryland, and by midcentury there were almost as many free blacks as slaves. African Americans like Richard Allen, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass were leaders of their people. Still, battered Maryland planters clung desperately to the institution. Roger B. Taney of Mary-land, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was a powerful spokesman for slavery's expansion.
By the 1850s change was coming too fast and tensions were too great, and Maryland drifted toward chaos. Party structure collapsed, rioting turned Baltimore into mobtown, and for a while the Know-Nothings ruled the state with a platform that made a scapegoat of immigrants.
When the Civil War came, Maryland was overwhelmingly pro-slave; in the presidential election of 1860 only 2 percent of the votes went to Abraham Lincoln. But the state was also mostly opposed to secession. After his inauguration, Lincoln intervened forcibly, arresting some 3,000 community leaders who were Southern sympathizers and allowing many more to be disfranchised. Southern sympathy waned. About 50,000 Marylanders eventually enlisted in the Union army, including 9,000 African Americans. About 20,000 Maryland whites fled to join the army and navy of the Confederacy.
From 1864 to 1867, with pro-Southern Marylanders disfranchised, the state launched its own radical reconstruction, foreshadowing what was to come in the South. The radicals abolished slavery, threatened to seize slave-holders' property to pay for the war, and established an authoritarian and far-reaching school system for whites and former slaves. As the war ended, however, and as Southern sympathizers returned home, radicalism collapsed and conservative leadership reasserted itself.
After the war people were concerned mainly with things economic. The railroads, led by the aggressive John W. Garrett, spread into every county. Coal mining expanded in the western counties, oystering expanded on the Eastern Shore, and in Baltimore came vast steel mills, copper and tin smelting, a ready-to-wear clothing industry, canning, and meat packing. Immigrants poured into the city and state—Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, and others—often into crowded tenements. Industry and labor sometimes fought; scores died in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Many people still lived on farms, although the farms were usually small and poor. The very rich provided grand philanthropies—the Garrett State Forests, the Enoch Pratt libraries, the Walters Art Gallery, and the great Johns Hopkins University. The two political parties—Democrats and Republicans—were nearly balanced after the war, both run by bosses who were closely allied with business, both offering generous patronage to faithful followers.
Twentieth-Century Suburbanization
Twentieth-century change was measurable in a demographic shift—the rise of the suburbs and the corresponding decline of the city and farm. Maryland population grew from 1,200,000 in 1900 to 5,200,000 in 2000, and the suburbs grew from 2 percent to about 80 percent of that total. People moved from factory and farm into middle-class, white-collar, and service occupations.
As the century began, the rising middle classes—doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, accountants, bureaucrats—were asserting themselves as a Progressive movement, less concerned with creating new wealth than with its management, by people like themselves, for the benefit of all society. Working through both political parties, the Progressives forced through a mass of new laws in the 1900s and 1910s establishing nonpartisan citizen boards to replace politicians in control of the schools, parks, hospitals, and libraries. Other citizen boards gained control over rates charged by electric, water, telephone, railroad, and shipping companies. In 1904, in the midst of these reforms, much of Baltimore burned in what was until then the greatest conflagration in American history, but this only stimulated city planning and new housing codes. Progressivism, however, also had its dark side. The middle class was eager to disfranchise illiterate voters, especially African Americans. Disfranchisement failed in Maryland as blacks and immigrants joined to protect their right to vote, but the reforms succeeded in legalizing racial segregation in most public and commercial facilities. World War I provided a culmination of Progressivism as citizen commissions promoted war production and patriotism with equal fervor.
By the 1920s people were tired of reform and eager to enjoy themselves. Local police refused to enforce the national prohibition laws that lasted from 1919 to 1933, and illegal booze may have flowed more freely in Maryland than in any other state. Eubie Blake and Cab Calloway played in the local jazz clubs. Marylanders like H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ogden Nash caught the mood of the times. Baseball was the rage, and its greatest hero was Baltimore's Babe Ruth, even if he played for New York. Maryland became famous for its horse racing and slot machines. Albert Ritchie was the state's all-time most popular governor, serving from 1919 to 1934. Aristocratic and autocratic, he believed in state rights and unfettered capitalism. Three times he tried to gain the Democratic nomination for president, arguing that Presidents Coolidge and Hoover were spendthrift radicals.
The Great Depression descended relentlessly, first to the farms, then to the city and suburbs. From 1929 to 1933, Maryland's per capita income dropped 45 percent, industrial production dropped 60 percent. Maryland received less from the New Deal than most states because of its unwillingness to provide matching funds. The New Deal built the model town of Greenbelt in Maryland, with cooperative housing and stores. The town was a success but opponents scuttled its experiment in socialism.
In World War II, Maryland, because of its location, became a center of military training, arms and aircraft production, and shipments abroad. African Americans and women made major inroads into the labor market, where they would remain. After the war, prosperity continued but politics grew shrill. A liberal governor, William P. Lane, enacted a sales tax and built airports and a spectacular bridge across the Chesapeake Bay; but a conservative General Assembly enacted the Ober Law, the country's most far-reaching loyalty oath and a forerunner of McCarthyism.
Meanwhile, burgeoning suburbanization was transforming the state's economic and political landscape. The movement began with the trolley lines of the 1890s and the automobile of the 1920s, mostly into affluent enclaves out from Washington and Baltimore. Then the suburban population doubled in the late 1940s, this time mostly into inexpensive housing tracts, bringing shopping strips and drive-in movies; it doubled again in the 1950s and 1960s with planned bedroom cities like Bowie and Columbia; it doubled again in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing beltways and malls; and it continued after that, bringing office towers, mass transit, and ethnic diversity.
The other side of suburban growth was urban and rural decline. Baltimore reached its peak about 1920 with half the state's population and by far its highest per capita income; but in 2000 it had fallen to 12 percent of the state population and by far the lowest per capita income. Urban renewal programs lurched forward by trial and error. In the 1970s, Mayor Donald Schaefer built a sparkling Harborplace development that attracted tourists into the city for spending and recreation.
Suburbanization provided a liberal tilt to Maryland politics, and Maryland kept pace and occasionally offered leadership to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. African American leaders like Lillie Mae Jackson and Thurgood Marshall worked comfortably with Governors Theodore McKeldin and Millard Tawes. Baltimore was the first major segregated city to integrate its schools, a year before court requirements, and state laws were ahead of federal laws in promoting civil rights. The state suffered from race riots in the late 1960s, but the civil rights movement did not go backward for state agencies promoted school busing and affirmative action, and an ever larger portion of the African Americans entered the middle class.
Idealism slumped into malaise in the 1970s. Two successive governors, Spiro Agnew and Marvin Mandel, plus many other local officials, pled guilty to accepting bribes. They were caught between the old politics of favors and the newer middle-class ethic that was tinged with hostility to politics of all sorts.
The last decades of the century, however, were happy as personal income soared, especially for those already prosperous. Government and business bureaucracies expanded and clean high-tech industries grew. Government in the 1980s and 1990s was mostly corruption-free and progressive, with abundant funding for education and for the environment. Women increasingly entered politics. Universities, claiming to be the engines of the new economy, especially flourished. As the century ended, optimism prevailed.
Bibliography
Argersinger, Jo Ann E. Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Baker, Jean H. The Politics of Continuity: Maryland Political Parties from 1858 to 1870. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. Brugger, Robert J. Maryland, A Middle Temperament, 1634–1980.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. A full and excellent history. Callcott, George H. Maryland and America, 1940 to 1980. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Carr, Lois Green, Russell R. Menard, and Louis Peddicord. Maryland—At the Beginning. Annapolis, Md.: Department of Economic Development, 1978.
Evitts, William J. A Matter of Allegiances: Maryland from 1850 to1861. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.
Fields, Barbara Jeanne, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground:Maryland During the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985.
Hoffman, Ronald. Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and theRevolution in Maryland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
Kulikoff, Alan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of SouthernCultures in the Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Land, Aubrey C. Colonial Maryland: A History. Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1981.
Main, Gloria L. Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland, 1650–1720. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Facts and Figures
Area, 10,577 sq mi (27,394 sq km). Pop. (2000) 5,296,468, a 10.8% increase since the 1990 census. Capital, Annapolis. Largest city, Baltimore. Statehood, Apr. 28, 1788 (7th of the original 13 states to ratify the Constitution). Highest pt., Backbone Mt., 3,360 ft (1,025 m); lowest pt., sea level. Nickname, Old Line State. Motto, Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine [Manly Deeds, Womanly Words]. State bird, Baltimore oriole. State flower, black-eyed Susan. State tree, white oak. Abbr., Md.; MD
Geography
A seaboard state, E Maryland is divided by Chesapeake Bay, which runs almost to the northern border; thus the region of Maryland called the Eastern Shore is separated from the main part of the state and is dominated by the bay. For the most part, the erratic course of the Potomac River separates the main part of Maryland from Virginia (to the south) and the long, narrow western handle from West Virginia (to the south and west). The District of Columbia cuts a rectangular indentation into the state just below the falls of the Potomac.
The main part of the state is divided by the fall line, which runs between the upper end of Chesapeake Bay and Washington, D.C.; to the north and west is the rolling Piedmont, rising to the Blue Ridge and to the Pennsylvania hills. The heavily indented shores of Chesapeake Bay fringe the land with bays and estuaries, which helped in the development of a farm economy relying on water transport. Flourishing in the mild winters and hot summers of the coastal plains are typically southern trees, such as the loblolly pine and the magnolia, while the cooler uplands have woods of black and white oak and beech. Maryland has nearly 3 million acres (l.2 million hectares) of forest land.
Annapolis, with its well-preserved Colonial architecture and 18th-century waterfront, is the capital; it is also the site of the U.S. Naval Academy. Baltimore, with a large percentage of the state's population, is the dominant metropolis. Tourists are attracted to the Antietam National Battlefield and the National Cemetery at Sharpsburg (see National Parks and Monuments, table); the Fort McHenry National Monument, near Baltimore's inner harbor; and the historic towns of Frederick and St. Marys City. Racing enthusiasts attend the annual Preakness and Pimlico Cup horse races in Baltimore. There are several military establishments, including Fort George G. Meade and Andrews Air Force Base. The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda is a government establishment. The 12,000-acre (4,856-hectare) National Agricultural Research Center is located at Beltsville.
Economy
Although the fishing industry is declining, the catch of fish and shellfish, chiefly from Chesapeake Bay, yielded an income of over $67 million in 1998, and the state's annual catch of crabs is the largest in the nation. The coastal marshes abound in wildfowl. Stone, coal, and iron, mined chiefly in the west of Maryland, are much less significant than in the 19th cent.
Leading manufactures include electrical and electronic machinery, primary metals, food products, missiles, transportation equipment, and chemicals. Shipping (Baltimore is a major U.S. port), tourism (especially along Chesapeake Bay), biotechnology and information technology, and printing and publishing are also big industries. Service industries, finance, insurance, and real estate are all important. Many Marylanders work for the federal government, either in offices in Maryland or in neighboring Washington, D.C.
Although manufacturing well exceeds agriculture as a source of income, Maryland's farms yield various greenhouse items, corn, hay, tobacco, soybeans, and other crops. Income from livestock (especially broiler chickens) and livestock products, especially dairy goods, is almost twice that from crops. Maryland is also famous for breeding horses.
Government, Politics, and Higher Education
Maryland is governed under a constitution adopted in 1867. The general assembly consists of 47 senators and 141 delegates, all elected for four-year terms. The governor, also elected for a four-year term, may succeed him- or herself once. The state elects two U.S. senators and eight representatives. It has 10 electoral votes. Democrats traditionally dominate state government; William D. Schaefer was elected governor in 1986 and 1990, Parris Glendening in 1994 and 1998. In 2002, however, a Republican, Robert Ehrlich, Jr., was elected to the office. Ehrlich was defeated (2006) for reelection by Democrat Martin O'Malley.
Maryland's medical, educational, and cultural institutions greatly benefited from philanthropic gifts in the late 19th cent. from Johns Hopkins, George Peabody, and Enoch Pratt. Institutions of higher learning in the state include Goucher College and Towson Univ., at Towson; the Johns Hopkins Univ., the Univ. of Baltimore, and the Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore, at Baltimore; St. John's College, at Annapolis; the Univ. of Maryland, at College Park; and the Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County, at Catonsville (Baltimore County). See also Maryland, University System of.
History
Exploration and Colonization
Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian navigator in the service of France, probably visited (1524) the Chesapeake region, which was certainly later explored (1574) by Pedro Menéndez Marqués, governor of Spanish Florida. In 1603 the region was visited by an Englishman, Bartholomew Gilbert, and it was charted (1608) by Capt. John Smith.
In 1632, Charles I granted a charter to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, yielding him feudal rights to the region between lat. 40°N and the Potomac River. Disagreement over the boundaries of the grant led to a long series of border disputes with Virginia that were not resolved until 1930. The states still dispute the use of the Potomac River. The territory was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, queen consort of Charles I. Before the great seal was affixed to the charter, George Calvert died, but his son Cecilius Calvert, 2d Baron Baltimore, undertook development of the colony as a haven for his persecuted fellow Catholics and also as a source of income. In 1634 the ships Ark and Dove brought settlers (both Catholic and Protestant) to the Western Shore, and a settlement called St. Mary's (see Saint Marys City) was set up. During the colonial period the Algonquian-speaking Native Americans withdrew from the area gradually and for the most part peacefully, sparing Maryland the conflicts other colonies experienced.
Religious Conflict and Economic Development
Religious conflict was strong in ensuing years as the Puritans, growing more numerous in the colony and supported by Puritans in England, set out to destroy the religious freedom guaranteed with the founding of the colony. A toleration act (1649) was passed in an attempt to save the Catholic settlers from persecution, but it was repealed (1654) after the Puritans seized control. A brief civil war ensued (1655), from which the Puritans emerged triumphant. Anti-Catholic activity persisted until the 19th cent., when in an unusual reversal of the prevailing pattern many Catholic immigrants came to Baltimore.
In 1694, when the capital was moved from St. Mary's to Annapolis, those were the only towns in the province, but the next century saw the emergence of commercially oriented Baltimore, which by 1800 had a population of more than 30,000 and a flourishing coastal trade. Tobacco became the basis of the economy by 1730. In 1767 the demarcation of the Mason-Dixon Line ended a long-standing boundary dispute with Pennsylvania.
The Revolution and a New Nation
Economic and religious grievances led Maryland to support the growing colonial agitation against England. At the time of the American Revolution most Marylanders were stalwart patriots and vigorous opponents of the British colonial policy. In 1776 Maryland adopted a declaration of rights and a state constitution and sent soldiers and supplies to aid the war for independence; supposedly the high quality of its regular “troops of the line” earned Maryland its nickname, the Old Line State. The U.S. Congress, meeting at Annapolis, ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War in 1783. A party advocating states' rights, in which Luther Martin was prominent, was unsuccessful in opposing ratification of the Constitution, and in 1791 Maryland and Virginia contributed land and money for the new national capital in the District of Columbia.
Industry, already growing in conjunction with renewed commerce, was furthered by the skills of German immigrants. The War of 1812 was marked for Maryland by the British attack of 1814 on Baltimore and the defense of Fort McHenry, immortalized in Francis Scott Key's “Star-Spangled Banner.” After the war the state entered a period of great commercial and industrial expansion. This was accelerated by the building of the National Road, which tapped the rich resources of the West; the opening of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal (1829); and the opening (1830) of the Baltimore & Ohio RR, the first railroad in the United States open for public traffic.
The Coming of the Civil War
Southern ways and sympathies persisted among the plantation owners of Maryland, and as the rift between North and South widened, the state was torn by conflicting interests and the intense internal struggles of the true border state. In 1860 there were 87,000 slaves in Maryland, but industrialists and businessmen had special interests in adhering to the Union, and despite the urgings of Southern sympathizers, made famous in J. R. Randall's song, “Maryland, My Maryland,” the state remained in the Union.
At the beginning of the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and sent troops to Maryland who imprisoned large numbers of secessionists. Nevertheless, Marylanders fought on both sides, and families were often split. General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia invaded Maryland in 1862 and was repulsed by Union forces at Antietam (see Antietam campaign). In 1863, Lee again invaded the North and marched across Maryland on the way to and from Gettysburg. Throughout the war Maryland was the scene of many minor battles and skirmishes.
Industrialization
With the end of the Civil War, industry quickly revived and became a dominant force in Maryland, both economically and politically. Senator Arthur P. Gorman, a Democrat and the president of the Baltimore & Ohio RR, ran the controlling political machine from 1869 to 1895, when two-party government was restored. New railroad lines traversed the state, making it more than ever a crossing point between North and South. Labor troubles hit Maryland with the Panic of 1873, and four years later railroad wage disputes resulted in large-scale rioting in Cumberland and Baltimore. During the 20th cent., however, Maryland became a leader in labor and other reform legislation. The administrations of governors Austin L. Crowthers (1908–12) and Albert C. Ritchie (1920–35) were noted for reform. Ritchie, a Democrat, became nationally known for his efforts to improve the efficiency and economy of state government.
The great influx of people into the state during World War I was repeated and accelerated in World War II as war workers poured into Baltimore, where vital shipbuilding and aircraft plants were in operation. In addition, military and other government employees moved into the area around Washington, D.C.
Growth since World War II
Since World War II, public-works legislation, particularly that concerning roads and other traffic arteries, has brought major changes. The opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952 spurred significant industrial expansion on the Eastern Shore; a parallel bridge was opened in 1973. The Patapsco River tunnel under Baltimore harbor was completed in 1957, and the Francis Scott Key Bridge (1977), crosses the Patapsco. Other construction projects have included the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, formerly called Friendship International Airport (1950), south of Baltimore, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (1954). The state gained a different kind of attention in 1968 when its governor, Spiro T. Agnew was elected vice president.
Maryland experienced tremendous suburban growth in the 1980s, especially in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. This growth occurred in spite of a decline in government jobs, as service sector employment rose dramatically. Suburban Baltimore grew as well although the city proper lost 6.4% of its population during the 1980s. Baltimore undertook major revitalization projects in the 1980s and the early 1990s, including the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the new home of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.
Maryland has become increasingly popular as a vacation area—Ocean City is a popular seashore resort, and both sides of Chesapeake Bay are lined with beaches and small fishing towns. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge has brought the culture of the Eastern Shore, formerly quite distinctive, into a more homogeneous unity with that of the rest of the state; the area, however, is still noted for its unique rural beauty and architecture, strongly reminiscent of the English countryside left behind by early settlers.
Bibliography
See J. T. Scharf, History of Maryland from the Earliest Period to the Present Day (1967); F. V. W. Mason, The Maryland Colony (1969); J. E. Dilisio, Maryland: A Geography (1983); V. F. Rollo, Your Maryland (4th ed. 1985); E. L. Meyer, Maryland Lost and Found (1986).
State in the eastern United States bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Delaware to the east, and Virginia and West Virginia to the south and west. Its capital is Annapolis. Baltimore is its largest city.
Local Time: Aug 30, 4:16 AM
Grape growing and winemaking in this Mid-Atlantic state appear to have started as early as the mid-1600s when both native American vines and European varieties (vitis vinifera) were grown and made into wine. The European varieties were not successful because of their susceptibility to local pests and disease-elements to which the local varieties had adapted. On the other hand, wines from local varieties didn't taste that good. Over the centuries, numerous attempts were made with hybrids, Vitis vinifera, and with grafting of Vitis vinifera to native vine rootstocks (to solve the phylloxera problems)-all with limited success. In the 1940s, Phillip Wagner made a concerted effort to obtain as many hybrid vines as possible, which he then propagated and sold to other grape growers. This boosted the viticulture industry not only in Maryland but all around the eastern seaboard. Today, Maryland has three viticultural areas-the catoctin ava thelinganore ava and the cumberland ava (which it shares with pennsylvania). As in most of the eastern and mid-western states, hybrids like chambourcin, chardonel, seyval blanc and vidal blanc play a major role. But good Vitis vinifera wines are made from cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot and riesling . Maryland has over a dozen wineries-Boordy Vineyards is one of the best-known (given that it was started in 1945 by Phillip Wagner) and is the state's second largest winery behind Berrywine Plantation-Linganore Cellars.
 |
| State of Maryland | |||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Official language(s) | None (English, de facto) | ||||||||||
| Capital | Annapolis | ||||||||||
| Largest city | Baltimore | ||||||||||
| Area | Ranked 42nd | ||||||||||
| - Total | 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²) |
||||||||||
| - Width | 101 miles (145 km) | ||||||||||
| - Length | 249 miles (400 km) | ||||||||||
| - % water | 21 | ||||||||||
| - Latitude | 37° 53′ N to 39° 43′ N | ||||||||||
| - Longitude | 75° 03′ W to 79° 29′ W | ||||||||||
| Population | Ranked 19th | ||||||||||
| - Total (2000) | 5,600,388 | ||||||||||
| - Density | 541.9/sq mi 209.2/km² (5th) |
||||||||||
| - Median income | $56,763 (3rd) | ||||||||||
| Elevation | |||||||||||
| - Highest point | Hoye Crest[1] 3,360 ft (1,024 m) |
||||||||||
| - Mean | 344 ft (105 m) | ||||||||||
| - Lowest point | Atlantic Ocean[1] 0 ft (0 m) |
||||||||||
| Admission to Union | April 28, 1788 (7th) | ||||||||||
| Governor | Martin O'Malley (D) | ||||||||||
| U.S. Senators | Barbara Mikulski (D) Ben Cardin (D) |
||||||||||
| Congressional Delegation | List | ||||||||||
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | ||||||||||
| Abbreviations | MD US-MD | ||||||||||
| Web site | www.maryland.gov | ||||||||||
Maryland (IPA: /ˈmɛrələnd/) is a
state located on the Atlantic Coast
in the Mid-Atlantic region of the
It was the seventh state to ratify the United States Constitution and bears two nicknames, the Old Line State and the Free State. Its history as a border state has led it to exhibit characteristics of both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States. As a general rule, the rural areas of Maryland, such as Western, Southern, and Eastern Maryland, are more Southern in culture, while densely-populated Central Maryland — areas in the Baltimore and the Washington Beltway Regions — exhibit more Northern characteristics.
Maryland is a life sciences hub with over 350 biotechnology firms, making it the third-largest such cluster in the nation.[3] Institutions and agencies located throughout Maryland include University System of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Maryland possesses a great variety of topography, hence its nickname, "America in Miniature."[4] It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water snakes and large bald cypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of oak forest in the Piedmont Region, and mountain pine groves in the west.
Maryland is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania, on the west by West Virginia, on the east by Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south, across the Potomac River, by West Virginia and Virginia. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted on the Maryland side by Washington, DC, which sits on land originally part of Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state, and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Most of the state's waterways are part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, with the exception of a portion of Garrett County drained by the Youghiogheny River, as part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, the eastern half of Worcester County, which drains into Maryland's Atlantic Coastal Bays, and a small portion of the state's northeast corner which drains into the Delaware River watershed. So prominent is the Chesapeake in Maryland's geography and economic life that there has been periodic agitation to change the state's official nickname to the "Bay State," a name currently used by Massachusetts.
The highest point in Maryland is Hoye Crest on Backbone Mountain, which is in the southwest corner of Garrett County, near the border with West Virginia and near the headwaters of the North Branch of the Potomac River. In western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state, is a point at which the state is only about mile ( km) wide. This geographical curiosity, which makes Maryland the narrowest state, is located near the small town of Hancock, and results from Maryland's northern and southern boundaries being marked by the Mason-Dixon Line and the north-arching Potomac River, respectively.
Portions of Maryland are included in a number of official and unofficial geographic regions. For example, the Delmarva Peninsula comprises the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, the entire state of Delaware, and the two counties that make up the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and the westernmost counties of Maryland are considered part of Appalachia. Much of the Baltimore-Washington corridor lies in the rolling hills of the Appalachian Piedmont.
A quirk of Maryland's geography is that the state contains no natural lakes.[5] During the last Ice Age, glaciers did not reach as far south as Maryland, and therefore did not carve out deep natural lakes as exist in northern states. There are numerous man-made lakes, the largest being Deep Creek Lake, a reservoir in Garrett County. The lack of glacial history also accounts for Maryland's soil, which is more sandy and muddy than the rocky soils of New England
The majority of Maryland's population is concentrated in the cities and suburbs surrounding Washington, DC and Maryland's most populous city, Baltimore. Historically, these cities and many others in Maryland developed along the fall line, the point at which rivers are no longer navigable from sea level due to the presence of rapids or waterfalls. Maryland's capital, Annapolis, is one exception to this rule, lying along the Severn River close to where it empties into the Chesapeake Bay. Other major population centers include suburban hubs Columbia in Howard County, Silver Spring, Rockville and Gaithersburg in Montgomery County, Frederick in Frederick County and Hagerstown in Washington County. The eastern, southern, and western portions of the state tend to be more rural, although they are dotted with cities of regional importance such as Salisbury and Ocean City on the eastern shore, Waldorf and La Plata in southern Maryland, and Cumberland in Western Maryland.
Maryland has wide array of climates for a state of its size. It depends on numerous variables, such as proximity to water, elevation, and protection from northern weather due to downslope winds.
The eastern half of Maryland lies on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, with very flat topography and very sandy or muddy soil. This region has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with hot, humid summers and a short, mild to cool winter. This region includes the cities of Salisbury, Annapolis, Ocean City, and southern and eastern greater Baltimore.
Beyond this region lies the Piedmont which lies in the transition between the humid subtropical climate zone and the humid continental climate zone (Köppen Dfa), with hot, humid summers and moderately cold winters where significant snowfall and significant subfreezing temperatures are an annual occurrence. This region includes Frederick, Hagerstown, Westminster, Gaithersburg and northern and western greater Baltimore.
Extreme western Maryland, in the higher elevations of Allegany County and Garrett County lie completely in the Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa) due to elevation (more typical of inland New England and the Midwestern U.S.) with milder summers and cold, snowy winters. Some parts of extreme western Maryland possess the cool summer Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb), with summer average temperatures below 71°F.[6][citation needed]
Precipitation in the state is very generous, as it is on most of the East Coast. Annual rainfall ranges from 40-45 inches (1000-1150 mm) in virtually every part of the state, falling very evenly. Nearly every part of Maryland receives 3.5-4.5 inches (95-110 mm) per month of precipitation. Snowfall varies from 9 inches (23 cm) in the coastal areas to over 100 inches (250 cm) a winter in the western mountains of the state.[7]
Because of its location near the Atlantic Coast, Maryland is somewhat vulnerable to
tropical cyclones, although the Delmarva
Peninsula, and the outer banks of North Carolina to the south provide a large
buffer, such that a strike from a major hurricane (category 3 or above) is not very likely. More often, Maryland might get the
remnants of a tropical system which has already come ashore which dumps a huge amount of rain. Maryland averages around 30-40
days of thunderstorms a year, and averages around 6 tornado strikes annually.[8]
| Monthly normal high and low temperatures for various Maryland cities | ||||||||||||
| City | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hagerstown | 38/21 | 42/23 | 52/31 | 63/41 | 74/51 | 82/60 | 86/64 | 84/62 | 77/55 | 66/43 | 54/35 | 43/27 |
| Frederick | 41/25 | 46/27 | 56/35 | 67/44 | 77/54 | 85/62 | 89/67 | 87/66 | 80/59 | 68/47 | 57/38 | 46/30 |
| Baltimore | 44/29 | 47/31 | 57/39 | 68/48 | 77/58 | 86/68 | 91/73 | 88/71 | 81/64 | 70/52 | 59/42 | 49/33 |
| Ocean City | 44/28 | |||||||||||
