Annapolis

Annapolis and the American Revolution: Where a Nation Found Its Footing

Long before the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, Annapolis, Maryland, had established itself as one of the most refined and politically sophisticated cities in British North America. By 1763, at the close of the French and Indian War, the town had reached what historians often describe as its colonial peak—a compact but elegant capital perched on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, home to wealthy planters, ambitious lawyers, and a vibrant culture of political debate. Its streets were lined with Georgian mansions, its harbor bustled with tobacco trade, and its State House—whose construction began in 1772 on the site of two earlier capitol buildings and which remains today the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use in the United States—served as the seat of one of the oldest representative legislatures in the colonies. It was precisely this combination of wealth, political maturity, and civic pride that made Annapolis not merely a witness to the American Revolution but one of its most consequential stages. Between 1774 and 1786, events that took place in this small city helped ignite the independence movement, gave shape to the new nation's government, and set the precedent for civilian authority over the military—a principle that remains the bedrock of American democracy.

Annapolis's defiance of imperial authority, however, began well before the dramatic events of 1774. As early as 1765, the city became the scene of what has been called one of the first acts of forcible resistance to British taxation in the colonies. When Zachariah Hood, an Annapolis merchant who had accepted the post of stamp collector for the Province of Maryland, returned from England that August, he was met at the Annapolis docks by an angry crowd. The future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase organized the burning of Hood's effigy, and days later a mob of some three hundred citizens burned down Hood's warehouse, forcing him to flee to New York for his life. Chase and his close friend William Paca—both young Annapolis lawyers—co-founded the local chapter of the Sons of Liberty and mobilized opposition to the Stamp Act, establishing themselves as leading figures in Maryland's emerging resistance movement. These early acts of defiance planted seeds that would bear far more dramatic fruit a decade later.

The revolutionary temper of Annapolis announced itself with fire on a grander scale on October 19, 1774, when a crowd of local patriots confronted Anthony Stewart, a merchant and owner of the brigantine Peggy Stewart, which had arrived in the harbor carrying over two thousand pounds of tea on which Stewart had paid the despised parliamentary tax. Stewart had guaranteed payment of the duty himself in order to get fifty-three indentured servants—many of them sick from the late-season Atlantic crossing—safely ashore, since customs officials would not allow any cargo to land until the tea tax had been settled. The episode echoed Boston's famous Tea Party of the previous year, but with a distinctly Maryland twist. Rather than dumping the tea into the water, Stewart—pressured by an increasingly hostile crowd that included prominent citizens—was compelled to set his own ship ablaze. The Peggy Stewart was run aground and put to the torch with her sails and colors still flying, and within a few hours she had burned down to the waterline. The burning of the Peggy Stewart—sometimes called the "Annapolis Tea Party"—was more than a dramatic act of protest; it was a declaration by Maryland's planter elite that they stood with the broader colonial resistance. The event signaled that opposition to British taxation was not confined to New England radicals but had penetrated deeply into the Chesapeake gentry. Men like Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, openly supported the patriot cause, lending it a legitimacy and financial gravity that London could not easily dismiss. Known to contemporaries as the "First Citizen" for his celebrated pen-name essays in the Maryland Gazette defending colonial rights, Carroll was also the only Roman Catholic to champion the patriot movement in Maryland's highest circles—a remarkable distinction in an era when Catholic participation in public life was barred by colonial statute. Carroll would go on to become one of the most consequential figures in Maryland's revolutionary story, eventually affixing his signature to the Declaration of Independence in 1776—reputedly writing "of Carrollton" after his name to distinguish himself from his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, and several other relatives who shared the name, so that there could be no doubt which Charles Carroll had pledged his life and vast fortune to the cause.

When the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, Maryland's delegates were among those who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause. Four Marylanders signed the engrossed document on August 2, 1776: William Paca, a lawyer and planter who would later serve as a three-term governor of Maryland and as a federal jurist; Samuel Chase, the fiery leader of Annapolis's Sons of Liberty who would go on to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; Thomas Stone, a thoughtful Charles County lawyer who would help draft the Articles of Confederation; and Carroll himself, who at age thirty-eight was the wealthiest of the signers and the only Catholic among all fifty-six men who put their names to the Declaration. All four had trained as lawyers, and all had deep ties to Annapolis—Chase and Paca had built impressive homes in the city, and Carroll had been born in the family house on Duke of Gloucester Street. Carroll would outlive all the other signers, dying in 1832 at the age of ninety-five as the last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

Though no major battles of the Revolutionary War were fought on Maryland soil, the state's soldiers distinguished themselves in the Continental Army. The Maryland Line—a formation of uniformed regulars established by the Maryland Provincial Convention in January 1776—earned a reputation as one of the finest fighting forces in Washington's army. At the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, roughly 260 to 270 men of the 1st Maryland Regiment under Major Mordecai Gist repeatedly charged a numerically superior British force of some two thousand troops, sacrificing themselves to cover the retreat of the Continental Army and allowing Washington to evacuate the bulk of his forces to Manhattan. Fewer than a dozen Marylanders made it back to the American lines. Tradition holds that Washington, watching the carnage from a nearby position, remarked, "Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose." So impressed was Washington with the Maryland troops' discipline and valor that he came to refer to them as his "Old Line"—the term that gave Maryland one of its enduring nicknames, the "Old Line State."

It was in the aftermath of the war, however, that Annapolis assumed its most pivotal role in the shaping of the new nation. In the autumn of 1783, the Confederation Congress—displaced from Philadelphia by mutinous unpaid soldiers the previous June—accepted the Maryland governor's offer of the State House and took up residence in Annapolis. From November 26, 1783, to August 13, 1784, Annapolis served as the capital of the United States—the only state house in American history ever to have served as the nation's capitol. It was here, in the elegant Old Senate Chamber crowned by the largest wooden dome built without nails in the country, that three events of transcendent importance took place in rapid succession.

The first was George Washington's resignation of his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army. Washington arrived in Annapolis on December 19, 1783, and was greeted by Generals William Smallwood and Horatio Gates at the "Three Mile Oak" outside the city. In the days before the ceremony, Congress honored Washington with a public dinner at Mann's Tavern on December 22, attended by some two hundred guests who raised thirteen toasts accompanied by the discharge of thirteen cannon. That evening, Governor William Paca held a grand ball at the State House, where over six hundred well-wishers celebrated the victorious general. Then, at noon on Tuesday, December 23, Washington was escorted into the Senate Chamber to deliver his address to Congress. According to James McHenry, a Maryland delegate, Washington's voice "faultered and sunk" as he spoke; David Howell of Rhode Island recalled "a most copious shedding of tears" among those present. Washington famously declared: "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action." He handed his commission and a copy of his address to Thomas Mifflin, the President of Congress, bowed, and departed. The next day, Christmas Eve, he rode home to Mount Vernon. The scene was immortalized by the painter John Trumbull, who considered the resignation "one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world"; his monumental canvas of the event,