USA > Maryland > Talbot County > History of Talbot county, Maryland, 1661-1861, Volume II > Part 44
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THE TOWNS OF TALBOT
that the party of benevolence and kindness, albeit that party has many adherents whose motives are not those of charity, has thus far triumphed over the party of public sanitation and pleasant living. When the question was last tested by taking the voice of the people, there were but nine voters against the continuance of the nuisances; for many who had most strenuously opposed them, at last expressed the willingness to endure the evil odors rather than to bear an ill name, and to take the dubious risk of incurring disease rather than the certain condemna- tion of the poor.70 But the progress of civilization and refinement is nevertheless doing effectually what was vainly sought to be accom- plished by direct legislation, so that under a rigid enforcement of exist- ing ordinances the atmosphere of St. Michaels is becoming as agreeable as it is salubrious.
Another subject of local politics-local as to the county-deserves a brief notice, in as much as the action of the people of the town upon it marks their progress in public order, social morality and private propriety, of which virtues some have thought it did not at one time present the best illustrations. When in the year 1873 it was put to the vote of the people of this county, whether in the several districts the sale of liquor should be forbidden or not, by an overwhelming majority, it was resolved that it should not be sold. This is the more remarkable and commendable as it involved a severe self-denial, for men who are as much exposed to atmospheric inclemencies and who undergo as much hard exhausting labor as the oystermen of St. Michaels, find a comfort in alcoholic beverages that those employed in more protected and easy avocations may easily forego. The influence of what was known as the Local Option laws is thought by many, perhaps by the majority, to be most salutary, while there are yet some who question their effi- ciency in promoting sobriety and good morals.
No records exist that serve to indicate the number of the inhabitants prior to the Revolution, nor are there any data upon which we may form a reasonable conjecture. Unquestionably, it was very small-not more, probably, than one hundred or at most two hundred. In the national decennial census taken since 1790, with stated regularity, there were no records made of the people of the town distinct from those
70 It is in place to say here, that in the year 1832 the town was visited by the terrible scourge of Asiatic cholera, by which a larger number of the people perished proportionately, than in any other part of the county-a result which most per- sons attributed to the cause mentioned in the text. Other epidemics are thought to be traceable to the same.
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THE HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
of the rest of election district until the enumeration of 1840, at which time there was a separation of the town inhabitants from those not. residing within its limits, and this has continued. If the recollections of the older people may be depended upon, up to the year named the town had not a population of more than three hundred people. It may be well enough to say that at no time has the colored population within the town borne the same proportion to the whites that it did bear beyond the town-in other words, the colored population was always few in numbers. It has increased since the emancipation of slaves. The following table of population has been compiled from the official publications of the census for the several years:
1840 499
1850
858
1860
1010
1870 1095
1880. 1471
There is good ground for believing that the population is increasing in numbers, for as yet the pressure upon the means of living has not yet reached its maximum and in the struggle for life there are chances in favor of survival. Health and vigor are the inheritance of the young, large families are the blessings of the mature, and longevity is the rea- sonable expectation of the old. These, with the absence of desire to wander from home, give assurance that the town will continue to increase.
JACOB GIBSON'S BANK
Now that we are experiencing the expiring gusts of that financial storm which so recently burst upon the country, but is now dying away in the distance of the past-now that our minds are full of that subject of Banks and Bankers which forced itself upon our attention, uninvited and against our wills, an account of one of the most curious schemes for the foundation of a fiscal institution within this county that was ever conceived, may possess an interest that under other circumstances might not attach to it. In giving a relation, some years ago, of the ori- gin and organization of the Farmer's Bank of Maryland, of which a branch was established at Easton, which branch was merged into that institution which is now with so much skill, so much security, and so much confidence managing and performing so large a part of our moneyed operations, it was stated that the first decade of this century was a period of extraordinary prosperity in Talbot county, and indeed of the State. Then it was that our agriculture was receiving a new impulse by the increased attention to new methods of culture and the application of an intelligent husbandry. In the year 1805 the "Maryland Agricul- tural Society" had its beginning, now the oldest society of the kind in the United States. Ship-building was carried on with great vigor and upon a large scale. Other forms of manufacture, which have now entirely disappeared from among us, were then in existence. Tan yards were scattered all over the country. In the town of Easton, hatting, copper and brass founding, nail making, clock and watch mak- ing, silver smithing to say nothing of those branches of mechanical industry that are still followed, were conducted with success. At the period mentioned, say in 1805, the advantages of Banking institutions were sufficiently appreciated: indeed benefits were attributed to them of a kind and degree to which they were not entitled. Then as now, they were thought to be the creators of wealth, and not mere machinery for the management of money. Hence the Legislature was besieged for charters, and there was a great multiplication of banks within the State.
While the subject of the formation of the Farmer's Bank of Maryland was in agitation, and the attention of capitalists, agriculturists and manufacturers were directed to the subject of its establishment at Annapolis with its numerous branches at various points in the State,
415
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HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
one of which was to be in this county; and just before the "Articles of Association" for the proposed bank were published in the papers here and at the capital, there appeared a long communication, in the form of an "Address to the People" in the Republican Star, published at Easton, over the signature of JACOB GIBSON. In this communication was detailed a scheme for the establishment of a financial institution in Talbot, so oddly original in its conception, so utterly impracticable in its methods of operation, and so strange, outre and bizarre in its purposes, that one not acquainted with the character of that most remarkable man who proposed it, would suppose it to be the vagary of a madman or the pleasantry of a satirist. It is not the place nor the occasion to give an account of this stout-hearted, large-brained, strong- armed man; of this friend of the poor and the lowly and enemy of the rich and lofty; this life-long foe of aristocratic pretension, and this lover of democratic equality; of this hater of hypocrisy in religion and this irreligious applauder of piety; of this terror of his enemies and this refuge of his friends; of this rugged, stalwart, militant man, who loved a fight better than a feast, and who was never thoroughly at peace with himself except when engaged in active war with others. Hereafter, however, a sketch of this person, the most notable of his time living in this county, will be given. His life was full of curious incidents, and of these, his project, which it is now intended to relate, of founding a bank, was not the least curious.
It is proposed to give an abstract of the article containing this project of Mr. Gibson, but before doing so, in order that it may be more clearly understood and appreciated, it may be necessary and it certainly will not be amiss to state that at the period previously referred to, there was not only great material prosperity as manifested in an improved agriculture and increased manufacturing industry, but there was co- incidently great intellectual activity and augmented moral susceptibil- ity. As evidences of the mental activity that prevailed, it is only necessary to mention the names of some of those citizens of the county who were living during this period. In its beginning Bowie was preach- ing at St. Michael's, and teaching in our Academy at Easton. He was succeeded by that able, but unfortunate man, Francis Barclay, in the school, who was in turn succeeded by that distinguished linguist, who here wrote and published his grammar of the Latin language, Archibald Walker. At this time Bozman was writing his invaluable history of the earlier years of the State, a monument of his industry, his research and his erudition. Nicholas Hammond, that precise and formal Englishman
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JACOB GIBSON'S BANK
from the Isle of Jersey, was not only laying the firm foundation of our bank, but was elucidating the obscurities and unravelling the intricacies of our land records, and by the wonderful accuracy and elaborateness of his conveyances, was giving stability to our titles to property, winning the thanks of all future honest land-owners, and the objurgations of the tricksters and litigious. Thomas J. Bullitt, that unermined judge, as the learned and discreet counsellor was delivering those lucid opinions that had almost the authority and weight of judicial decisions. Robt. H. Goldsborough, who was at once our Chesterfield in manners and our Chatham in eloquence, was preparing himself for that brilliant career in the State and National Legislatures, in which he proved himself the match for the strongest in the course. John Leeds Kerr, at one time the bosom friend and then the earnest rival of him last named, was train- ing his nerves and strengthening his young thews for those struggles at the bar where he won such distinction that his precedence was hardly to be questioned. Dr. Ennalls Martin, the perspicacious physician, but the brusque, bluff, burly man, was acquiring in his contests with disease upon the narrow field of a country practice that courage of opinion that enabled him to dare to differ with the great masters in medicine, even Rush himself, and to anticipate by two generations, in his book published some years later, the rational treatment of the present day: while Dr. Tristram Thomas, that "mildest mannered man," his very antipode in bearing, if not his equal in ability, was riding throughout the county carrying soothing comfort by his sweet urbanity where gros- ser medicaments had sadly failed into many a chamber of sickness.
But this digressive notice of the unusual mental activity that charac- terized our county in the early part of the century is given to mark the contemporaneousness of intellectual vivacity with the great material prosperity before referred to, but more especially to mark their syn- chronism with an access of moral sensibility. There is not space, nor is this properly the occasion, to descant upon the general progress of morality which was then making in the county, under the teaching of the Old Church that was endeavoring to purify herself, but not as yet with entire success, for Price yet officiated at her altars, from the stains cast upon her robes by so many unworthy ministers, and was now by the whiteness of the lives of most of her priesthood rendering herself worthy to be heard in her reproofs of sensuality and grossness. Nor is there space nor suitable occasion to speak of the still more potent influence upon the general progress of morality, that was exercised by that child of the church, Wesleyan Methodism, the warm and glowing
418
HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
exhortations of whose early preachers, to a deeper piety and greater righteousness of life, were heard in the remotest and most secluded sections of the county where as yet there was neither church nor chapel, and where the gospel was preached by these devoted men in private houses, barns and shady groves. But attention is here meant to be called to a single manifestation of a higher moral development among our people, for the reason that it is hinted at or presupposed in the article of Mr. Gibson. There is no purpose, however, of attempting to trace this to its proximate cause; no purpose of inquiring whether this in- stance of a higher moral development was the result of a more enlightened view among our citizens or their material interests, of a better conception of sociological law, or of a clearer apprehension of the divine will. The particular manifestation of moral sensibility to which reference is made was the evident disposition on the part of all to ameliorate the condi- tion of the black race, and a settled purpose on the part of many to ef- fectuate the emancipation of the slaves. Manumissions which had indeed from the very beginning been occasionally made in the latter part of the 18th century and on into the 19th, multiplied rapidly. The testimony against slavery of those high moralists, the Quakers, who were numerous and influential in Talbot, confirmed and strengthened as it was by the preaching of the Methodists; the teachings and practices of the French Revolutionists in regard to personal freedom which were strongly approbated by the predominant or popular party in the county; the Jeffersonian Republicans; and finally the small, marketable value at which slaves were held, even by those who had no religious nor political scruples about holding them, before there grew up that active Southern demand for them for the culture of cotton, which subsequently so en- hanced their price; were all tending rapidly to one end, the abolition of slavery. Every one was looking forward to the early disappearance of what had come to be considered, almost unanimously, a great social evil, and the ablest minds were exercised not in finding suitable argu- ments to defend the institution, but the best means of accomplishing an inevitable result with the least injury to all interests.
As an evidence that the minds of our people were earnestly exercised upon this subject, additional to that presented in the plan of the bank hereafter to be mentioned, it is worthy of notice that in our county in 1804, the very year of the publication of the plan, there was organized and established a society, the ostensible object of which was "the relief of persons of color unlawfully held in bondage, and the aid of those who may be illegally transported from the State, &c.," but the covert or in-
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JACOB GIBSON'S BANK
direct object of which was the affecting public sentiment upon the great politico-moral question of emancipation. In other words this "Philan- thropic Society," as it was called, was not only a society to prevent kidnapping and like crimes, but an abolition society under a very thin disguise. That the estimate here given of the purposes of this society is not erroneous, the preamble to the Constitution of the Society, adopted the 28th July, 1804, will sufficiently attest, and it is here inserted:
It having pleased the Creator of the world to make of one flesh all the children of men, it becomes them to consult and promote each other's happiness as members of a family, however diversified they may be by color, situation, religion or different states of society.
Commerce in the human species has been uniformly pernicious and disgraceful in every country in which it has been exercised, and long experience has sufficiently attested its repugnance to sound policy, to good morals, to the rights of mankind, and to the sacred obligations of the Christian Religion. The free Constitution of the United States suffers violence by such illicit practices. Its fundamental principles declare the original and inherent equality of mankind, and on this broad and liberal basis stands our liberty and political happiness. If the prin- ciple of slavery were in itself justifiable, it is impossible to vindicate on rational grounds the illegal exercise of it. Many persons entitled to freedom by the laws and constitutions of the several States, are de- tained by fraud and violence. Every good citizen is deeply interested in the impartial administration of justice, and consequently in the prevention of such illegal and unjust proceedings.
The cultivation of the minds of those that may be emancipated, in order to eradicate the habits and vices of slavery, is an object highly worthy of public attention. Society has suffered injury, and is in danger of suffering more by neglecting the education of persons of color.
Impressed with the importance of those sentiments the subscribers have associated under the title of the Philanthropic Society for the relief and protection of free blacks, and people of color unlawfully held in bondage, or otherwise oppressed, and for effecting these purposes have adopted the following Constitution.
This Constitution, of which the above was the preamble, was sub- scribed by many prominent and influential citizens of the county, and the society maintained its existence down to times within the recollection of many now living.
From what has now been said, with a greater digressiveness than is probably allowable by the canons of literary criticism, the reader will be able to trace the motives or incentives of Mr. Gibson when he made public his financial scheme for the achievement of both an economi-
420
HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
cal and a benevolent purpose. This scheme it is proposed to lay before the reader in the form of an abstract, as the original article published in the Republican Star of Feb. 28, 1804, and republished at the author's request, in the following issue of the same journal, is too long and too full of Gibsonian idioms for insertion entire. The article thus opens:
TO THE PUBLIC: Long have I been a suffering witness, with the rest of the community, to the bending and groaning with unjust oppression, to the commercial interest of our country, and to the bowing of many of our country merchants, who are laboring under equal embarrass- ments, to the lordly importer rolling in luxury at our common expense.
He then proceeds to contrast the advantages enjoyed by the large merchants of the cities with the embarrassments of the mechanics and farmers in borrowing money, the banks furnishing facilities to the former of obtaining funds at a low rate per centum, while the latter have to submit to a discount of from 15 to 25 per centum, exacted by usurers, to obtain money to carry on their business. He complains that while the importer can borrow in order that he may await a market for his goods, the ship builder is driven to the sacrifice of his vessels that he has constructed in order to continue his business; and the laboring mechanic often has to suffer a discount of 25 per cent upon his daily wages, because the master builder can not obtain ready money to pay his journeymen. The farmer, too, is not able to retain his grain in his garners to wait the rise of price, but must sell his crop to the millers as soon as prepared for market, because he can not afford to pay the heavy discount exacted by capitalists, and there are no banks from which he can obtain money at reasonable rates. He says incidentally
Six per cent is no object to any man at this day.
To remedy all these evils, and withdraw that county at least in which I live, and where I have a large stake, [Mr. Gibson was a farmer on a grand scale], I have matured a plan that if carried into execution, which I am determined shall be done, will effectually place us in an independent situation, and will enable the farmers, mechanics, and country merchants to assume a position of equality with the importers and millers. * * I will open a bank in Easton for the accommoda- tion of all descriptions of people, who shall secure the payment of their notes by good and common securities. *
* * I will deposit in the bank, as a capital, under the direction of Nicholas Hammond, Wm. Hayward, Edward Lloyd and Thomas J. Bullitt, Esquires * *
* the sum of 30,000 dollars, or more if they require it, as a security for any notes that may issue like other bank notes. These gentlemen shall at all
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JACOB GIBSON'S BANK
times or at stated periods, have access to the bank, its papers, books, and capital, and shall control its policy like other directors. Vacancies among them may be filled by the citizens of Easton. They shall see that the stock in bank shall always be sufficient to take up all notes in circulation.
Let us pause here to contemplate this preposterous provision of having as directors of a bank, those who have no personal interest in the insti- tution and of having vacancies in the board filled by a popular vote of the citizens of this town. Mr. Gibson proceeds to say the bank should be opened on the first day of January, 1805, with a specie capital of 10,000 dollars, to be paid in by himself, and that the remaining 30,000 dollars should be deposited in equal instalments of 4,000 dollars every six months. To secure the payment of this 20,000 dollars he obligated himself to give to the gentlemen above mentioned a mortgage upon one third of his real estate, without stay, and he agreed that in order to give greater security for the payments of the bank issues and to give confidence in the entire solvency of the institution, that this mortgage might continue in force as long as he retained any connection with it. He then proceeds to make division of the profits resulting from the bank- ing operations. No more than six per cent was to be charged for the use of money. Of these six per cent, four only were to be retained by him for interest upon the capital stock, one per cent was to be funded for the ultimate extinguishment, or repayment of the capital, and one per cent was to be devoted to the payment of the necessary expenses, or so much of it as might be requisite, and the remainder, if any, should go to the formation of a fund, to be placed at the disposal of the directors for "THE MANUMITTING THE SLAVES AMONG Us!" He goes on to say that at the end of five years he would resign all benefit that might be derived from the bank, and join with "the public in purchasing the stock at par for the exclusive purpose of conducting the bank for the manu- mission of all the negroes in our county." In order that the institution should be conducted entirely for this benevolent purpose, he proposes that after the five years mentioned, 10,000 dollars of his capital stock should remain in the bank at the rate of five per cent per annum pro- vided the public would reimburse him the other 20,000, thus leaving the working capital intact. For the state or municipality to take stock in banks was a favorite method of raising capital in those days, and it has been but recently that Maryland divested herself of her bank stock, if indeed she have not a small interest still in our own at this place. Mr. Gibson entertained such ideas of the magnificent profits of
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HISTORY OF TALBOT COUNTY
banking that be asserts in five years the whole capital could be paid off, and
in fifteen years or less every slave in the county, and probably in the district, might be redeemed, especially if the discounts are propor- tionally and equally great with other banks.
But in order "to aid the institution in its liberating principle," he proposes that a tax for five years be laid upon all the negroes that might be liberated through the agency of the bank, of ten dollars upon the men, five dollars upon the women, and two and a half dollars upon all children above ten years of age. In addition, he proposes the legis- lature should tax all negroes whatever, already free, to the amount of three dollars to be paid by the men, one dollar by the women, and one half dollar by the children above the age of ten years. The funds thus derived should be employed in purchasing and emancipating the slaves. He then enters into a statement "to prove the utility and practicability of its [the bank's] redeeming principle." He estimates the interest upon the capital to be derived from discounts, provided the profits prove to be anything like what they are in similar institutions, at $5400. This amount laid out in negro slaves at $120 per head, which he regards as the average cash value of men, women and children at the time, would emancipate the first year 45 slaves. By taxing these pur- chased slaves according to the rates before stated, they would yield an average tax of eight and one-fifth dollars [his arithmetic seems here to be a little at fault] or "say eight dollars," and an aggregate of 360 dollars in the second year. The tax on negroes previously free would yield at least 500 dollars. These sums added to the annual interest from the bank would give 6,260 dollars to be laid out in the purchasing of more slaves. The number thus emancipated would increase each year with
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