USA > Maryland > Men of mark in Maryland Johnson's makers of America series biographies of leading men of the state, volume I > Part 27
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
The people of Towson regard Major Yellott as perhaps the most valuable citizen of the town during his residence. He has built many houses in the town and is interested in farming in different sections of the county. Of late years he has gradually withdrawn from prac- tice and has not cared to participate in the rough-and-tumble contests of the courts.
While only once a member of the legislature, and not desirous of repeating that experience, he has been exceedingly useful in preparing and helping to secure enactment of many of the laws passed for the advancement of his section and the protection of the farming interests.
Major Yellott believes that thorough honesty, sobriety, striet appli- cation and moderate ambition will generally result in success in busi- ness. He further believes that every American citizen should be a politician in the better and higher meaning of the term; that he should have correct ideals as a citizen, consistently live up to them, but never be so mueh a partisan as to be willing to sacrifice the public good for party advantage. As political matters now stand he would be classed as an Independent, with Democratic leanings.
Major Yellott has lived a long and useful life, characterized by steady industry and single-minded devotion to duty; resulting from this he has won the esteem of a constituency as wide as his acquaintance.
101-407
a. Kcc
4/13
/
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
A LOYSIUS LEO KNOTT is a native of Frederick county, Mary- land, and the son of Edward and Elizabeth Sprigg (Sweeney) Knott. Edward Knott was a native of Montgomery county, Maryland, and a farmer and planter, and a descendant in the fifth generation from James Knott, of Yorkshire, England, who, at the age of twenty-three, emigrated to Virginia in 1617, where he married and settled. Edward Knott was a lieutenant in the United States Army and served in the War of 1812.
In 1643 James Knott, with some of his children, removed to the province of Maryland, settling in Charles county, in which he obtained the grant of a large tract of land from Governor Leonard Calvert. As he came from the same county, Yorkshire, in England, as the Calverts, it is believed he removed to Maryland on that account. That there was intimacy between Leonard Calvert and James Knott is shown by the fact that Governor Calvert directed his administrator, Giles Brent, to pay to his friend, James Knott, the sum of £50 borrowed from him. James Knott died in Maryland in 1653, leaving a will of record in Annapolis, disposing of a large landed estate in Maryland and Virginia, and descendants in both colonies.
On his mother's side Mr. Knott is descended from Colonel Edward Digges, governor of Virginia, 1655-1659, a son of Sir Dudley Digges, a member of the Long Parliament, and Master of the Rolls temp: Charles I, whose son, Colonel William Digges, emigrated to Maryland in 1680 and was deputy governor of that province and commander of the forces of Charles, Lord Baltimore, in the Protestant Revolution of 1689; also from Thomas Gerard, a descendant of Sir Thomas Gerard, of county Kent, England, from Nehemiah Blackistone, son of John Blackistone, a member of the Long Parliament from Yorkshire, and one of the Regicide judges, from Captain James Neale and from Henry Sewall, secretary of the province, whose widow, Jane (Lowe) Sewall, married subsequently Charles, third Lord Baltimore, and second pro- prietary of Maryland, who resided several years in the province and was
404
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
governor. Neale and Gerard were among the first settlers of the prov- ince and all of these ancestors held prominent positions in the province, until the occurrence of the event known in Maryland colonial history as the Protestant Revolution of 1689. Most of them and their descend- ants, being Catholics, were thenceforth excluded from all the offices under the royal and proprietary governors and until the American Revolution of 1776. Of this faith the subject of this sketch is a mem- ber. Mr. Knott spent his early boyhood in the country. He was entered a pupil of St. John's Literary Institute, Frederick City, an institution founded and conducted by the Jesuits, in which he remained for a year. On the removal of his family to Baltimore City he became a student of St. Mary's College, Baltimore.
This college was founded for the education of Seculars, in 1191. by French emigrés priests of the illustrious order of St. Sulpice. France, who sought refuge in Maryland from the storms of the French Revolution. This college attained a distinguished reputation as an cdu- cational institution and graduated many prominent citizens of the city and state and also of other states. On the celebration of its centenary in 1891, Mr. Knott delivered the oration on behalf of the alumni. It is now an institution for the education of ecclesiastics of the Catholic church exclusively.
In this college, Mr. Knott went through the full course of six years and was graduated with honor at nineteen years of age, receiving the degree of A.B., and subsequently the degree of A.M. from that institution. The curriculum of studies necessary for graduation em- braced the Greek, Latin and French languages, the latter being the language of the college, mathematics and the sciences generally. Mr. Knott's favorite authors in Greck were the dramatists, Homer, and Demosthenes; in Latin, Tacitus, Cæsar and Horace.
Mr. Knott has gone through a pretty full course of English litera- ture. The authors which most impressed him were Addison, Boling- broke, Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold and the prose writers of the Victorian era; in history, Gibbon, Macaulay and Lingard; in poetry, the Elizabethan dramatists, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Byron and Tennyson, and the great orators of England and America of the last two generations, especially Burke, Fox and Webster.
Mr. Knott's first experience in active life was as assistant principal in the Cumberland Academy, a private institution, in which he had charge of the classes of Greek, mathematics and surveying.
-
405
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
At the end of a year Mr. Knott returned to Baltimore, when he entered upon the study of the law in the office of William Schley, an eminent practitioner at the bar of that city. While prosecuting his law studies, Mr. Knott was offered and accepted the position of tutor in Greek and algebra in his alma mater, St. Mary's, for two hours in the afternoon.
Mr. Knott subsequently founded and was master for two years of the Howard Latin School near St. John's church, Howard county. Returning to Baltimore, he completed his law studies under Mr. Schley, and was admitted to the bar. He formed a professional connection with the late Mr. James HI. Bevans, which lasted two years, at the end of which he entered on the duties of his profession alone. Mr. Knott's first essay in politics was as a member of the Reform party organized in 1859, against the Know Nothing party, which had secured complete control of the city and state.
This party had been started a few years before and had swept every Northern state by large majorities and carried Maryland. It was directed especially against the Roman Catholics and foreigners. Its short-lived career in Baltimore was marked by deeds of crime and violence that brought great discredit on the city and injury to its business.
The reform movement failed in the city, owing to the fact that the Know Nothing ruffians were sustained in their acts of violence at the polls by the mayor and police of the city, and a corrupt administration of the city criminal court. In the counties, however, reform was suc- cessful, and, having secured a majority of the general assembly of 1860, the reformers passed a stringent election law and a police bill taking the appointment and control of the police officers out of the hands of the mayor, and placing them in the hands of a board of commissioners appointed by the governor. These two measures dealt a fatal blow to the Know Nothing party.
But greater events were at hand : the Civil war was impending.
Like other young men of that day, Mr. Knott took a profound interest in the great questions then under discussion, but, unlike many others, he made a thorough and personal investigation of the contro- versy, even to the extent of visiting Washington to hear the debates in the Senate on the subject of the status of slavery in the territories, which divided the Democratic party, and which subsequently led to its disruption. As a member of the city Democratic committee, Mr. Knott
-
406
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
was present when the split in the national convention took place on its reassembling in the Front Street Theater, Baltimore, after its ad- journment at Charleston, S. C. Convinced, by his study and examina- tion, that the attitude of Judge Douglas and the regular Democracy on the subject of slavery in the territories was the attitude held by that party in the compromise measures of 1851 which had been affirmed and reaffirmed by that party in its platforms in 1852 and 1856, on both of which it had been successful-on that issue overwhelmingly defeating in 1852 and breaking up the Whig party, which in the North had passed completely under the control of Mr. Seward and the opponents of those compromise measures-and convinced also that secession from the party meant, and could logically only mean, secession from the Union, and that secession from the Union could only lead to civil war, and to the defeat and ruin of the South, Mr. Knott supported Judge Douglas and the regular Democracy in the Presidential election of 1860, making speeches explaining these views in many parts of the state. Mr. Knott has never regretted the position he took on that occasion.
On the outbreak of the war, though the forms of civil government were maintained, Maryland practically passed under military control, and that small minority of its population which was in sympathy with the radical republicanism of that day became the controlling force. The Democratic party ceased indeed to maintain an organization.
Mr. Knott, though not reared as a Democrat, allied himself, at a meeting held in Annapolis, with that party ; and when, in February, 1864, it was decided to make an effort to reorganize the Democratic party in Maryland in the interest of constitutional government, Colonel (afterwards Governor) Oden Bowie was made chairman, and Mr. A. Leo Knott secretary of the State Central Committee. In that year Mr. Knott was sent as a delegate to the convention which met in Chicago and nominated General Geo. McClellan as the Democratic candidate for President. The Democratic party, however, was defeated.
The next three years were years of stress and turmoil in Maryland. The constitution of 1864, fathered by the extreme wing of the Repub- lican party, had been forced upon the people in a manner which all men now know to have been illegal, and, despite the whole power of the federal government, inspired and directed by President Lincoln per-
.
407
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
sonally, and was only " counted in " by the siender majority of 218 votes. Vast numbers of the Democrats were practically disfranchised.
Undismayed by the powers arrayed against them, the Democrats determined to put a full ticket in the field, and Mr. Knott was the nominee for Congress in the third district. He was charged with being a rebel sympathizer and a warrant was made out for his arrest at the polls, but on the remonstrance of one of the judges it was not served, and Mr. Knott was dismissed, but without voting. By methods now well understood the state was carried for Lincoln. The Democrats continued to fight and they began to get recruits from moderate men who had been co-operating with the Republicans. Among these were the governor, Thomas Swann ; Montgomery Blair, Lincoln's first post- master-general; Edwin Webster, collector of the port of Baltimore; W. H. Purnell, postmaster of Baltimore, and others of similar character. Naturally such influential men brought a considerable following to the reorganized Democracy, and in the last desperate battle, fought the 6th of November, 1866, the Democrats carried every legislative dis- trict in Baltimore City, which, with their majority in the state at large, gave them two-thirds of each house of the general assembly, and en- abled them thereby to formulate a call for the new constitutional con- vention. The main fight was in the city of Baltimore.
Governor Swann had removed the two Republican police com- missioners, Messrs. Woods and Hindes, after trial, on the ground of gross misconduct in conducting the municipal election in the previous October and had appointed in their places Messrs. Valiant and Young. The removed commissioners refused to surrender their offices and, with the aid of the mayor, Judge Bond, the state's attorney and the police force, resisted the execution of the order of the governor.
The two gentlemen appointed by the governor, and Mr. Thompson, the sheriff of the city, were arrested and confined in the city jail with- out bail, on Saturday, November 3, 1866, before the election, by order of Judge Bond of the Criminal Court, on the charge of riot wrong- fully preferred against them by the state's attorney. They were kept in jail until after the election. Subsequently, under habeas corpus proceedings, this action of the judge and the state's attorney was de- clared by Chief Justice Bartol of the Court of Appeals to be illegal, and the gentlemen so unjustly arrested and imprisoned were dis- charged. It was the desperate effort of a faction, unscrupulous in
408
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
means but insignificant in numbers, to perpetuate its ill-gotten power in the state.
Governor Swann then called on President Johnson for the aid of the federal government in suppressing this insurrectionary move- ment against the authority of the state. Generals Grant and Canby were despatched one after the other by the President to Baltimore to examine into, and report upon, the condition of things in the city. Before calling on Governor Swann, they both held interviews with the leaders of the Republican insurgents, and returning to Washington they reported against any interference on part of the government. Nor, after the visits of Generals Grant and Canby and their conduct while in the city, did the Democratic conservatives desire any inter- ference of the federal government. for they felt convinced that if any interference should take place it would be exerted to support the recalci- trant police commissioners and the Republican party, and not to sus- tain Governor Swann and the oppressed people of Maryland. All these occurrences tended to dismay but not to discourage the Democratic conservatives, who entered on the election held on the 6th of November, 1866, without a single judge or clerk, although these had been assured to them by both Grant and Canby, and against the combined and violent opposition of the city authorities, the judge of the Criminal Court, the state's attorney's office, and the police force supplemented by 500 special officers collected from the canaile of the city, achieved a brilliant victory, carrying the three legislative districts, assuring thereby a majority of two-thirds of each house of the general assembly, and the passage of a bill for the call of a constitutional convention.
Of the House of Delegates of that general assembly Mr. Knott was a member from the second district of Baltimore. He was active in the proceedings, being a member of the joint committee of the Senate and House, of which Judge Carmichael, of Queen Anne's, was chairman, to report a bill for a call for a convention to frame a new constitution in the place of the constitution of 1864 adopted by the Republican party during the war. He was also a member of the Committee on Federal Relations, which reported a resolution refusing the assent of Maryland to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. He was the chairman of the Committee on Internal Improvements that re- ported the bill for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, and served on other committees.
The general assembly was now within three weeks of the close of
409
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
the session and neither the convention bill nor the military bill had been passed, both necessary and vital measures. The former had en- countered unexpected opposition from some of the more timid and con- servative members, who, alarmed by the threats of the Republicans, thought we should be content with a general enfranchisement aet passed early in the session. There were grave doubts as to the consti- tutionality of this act enfranchising the people en bloc under the 4th Sec., Art. 1, of the constitution of 1864, and this course therefore would have left the question of the emancipation of the people open to the construction of a hostile judiciary. To this course there were in- superable objections. A cauens of the party was called at which Mr. Knott offered and advocated the following resolution : " Resolved, that laying aside all private and public bills, the Democratic conservatives hereby pledge themselves to devote the remainder of the session to the passage of the convention bill and the military bill."
During the session of the legislature violent threats had been made and resolutions adopted at meetings of Republicans in the city and throughout the state against the course pursued in that body by the Democratie conservatives in restoring the people to their rights, even to the extent of deelaring that the federal government would be invoked to suppress " the rebels and traitors " who were trying to gain possession of the state and renew the rebellion.
To meet any such contingencies as were threatened, should they arise, and admonished by the weakness of the state authorities in the events preceding the election of November 6, 1866, it was deemed necessary to provide, arm and equip an adequate military force and place it in the hands of the governor. The resolutions offered by Mr. Knott were unanimously adopted by the eaueus; and these two meas- ures were immediately taken up and passed by the general assembly. The election of November 6, 1866, thus accomplished its work. The people of Maryland, after a long and arduous struggle, had at length come into their own. It was under the military bill then passed that the Fifth Regiment, now the pride of Baltimore City, was organized in the spring and summer of 1867.
The constitutional convention submitted the new constitution which was ratified, and in the fall of 1867, Oden Bowie, who during three years had led the struggle as chairman of the committee of which Mr. Knott was secretary, was nominated and elected governor by forty thousand majority. Mr. Knott was nominated and elected state's at-
410
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
torney of Baltimore by a majority of twenty thousand, and was re- elected to this office in 1871 and again in 1875, making three terms, covering a period of twelve years. During his incumbency of this office he was engaged in many prominent and notable trials. He was recog- nized as a vigorous prosecutor, not a rigorous one, esteeming it his duty to protect the innocent as well as to punish the guilty. In this position Mr. Knott attained a high reputation as an able, forcible and eloquent forensic orator and a keen cross-examiner. His retentive memory en- abled him to dispense entirely with the taking of notes at the trial table. On his retirement from this office in January, 1880, he received the warm commendation of the newspaper press of the city for the zeal, ability, fidelity and fairness with which he had administered the im- portant and responsible duties of his office and also had the cordial approval of the judge then presiding in the criminal court.
In 1883. Mr. Knott was a candidate for a position on the supreme bench of the city and was warmly supported by the Baltimore Sun and a large number of his professional brethren, but being antagonized by the city organization, then under the supreme control of the late Wil- liam Pinkney Whyte, the mayor, he withdrew. The organization nomi- nated all of the old judges. An independent movement was at once started, and Mr. Knott was solicited to become a candidate on the inde- pendent ticket, but declined. The people rose up and defeated the regular ticket by 11,000 majority-an overwhelming rebuke to boss rule, but its effect was transient. In 1884, Mr. Knott warmly sup- ported Mr. Cleveland in the Presidential election, making speeches in a number of the Middle states, and in 1885 was tendered by President Cleveland the office of Second Assistant Postmaster-General. He was disposed to decline this office, but at the earnest request of Mr. A. S. Abell, the proprietor of the Baltimore Sun, of Robert Garrett, president of the Baltimore & Ohio, and other prominent men who felt that he could be of great service, he accepted the position and entered upon the duties of the office April 1, 1885. In December, 1886, Governor Lloyd offered Mr. Knott, through Mr. George W. Dobbin, a seat on the bench of the supreme court of Baltimore City, then vacant. He at first ac- cepted this appointment, but when he visited President Cleveland to inform him of it, the President persuaded him to decline the offer and retain his position in the Post Office Department. He did so and so greatly improved the mail service as to receive at the end of his term
411
ALOYSIUS LEO KHOTT
the warm commendation of Postmaster-Generals Vilas and Dickinson. In 1889 he resumed the practice of his profession.
On October 12, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the dis- covery of America by Columbus, Mr. Knott delivered the oration on the occasion of the unveiling of the statue of the great discoverer erected in Druid Hill Park by the Italian societies of Baltimore City.
In 1892, Mr. Knott warmly supported Mr. Cleveland for a renom- ination, but the control of the Democratic party of the state by the late Senator A. P. Gorman enabled that political boss to throw a part of the vote of Maryland in the convention against Mr. Cleveland. Mr. Cleve- land, however. secured the nomination and was re-elected. By his in- vitation, Mr. Knott visited Mr. Cleveland at Lakewood in February, 1893 ; cabinet officers, foreign appointments and other matters touching the incoming administration were discussed, and there also Mr. Knott learned that Mr. Gorman had served notice upon Mr. Cleveland that he must under no consideration appoint Mr. Knott to any place whatever, as he would make a personal matter of it. Mr. Gorman's antagonism to Mr. Knott grew out of a publication in March, 1892, wherein George Alfred Townsend had made unfounded claims for Mr. Gorman in con- nection with the resuscitation of the Democratic party in 1865. This statement being absolutely incorrect, Mr. Knott published in the Balti- more Sun a refutation of it. This was the sum of his offending against Mr. Gorman. Mr. Knott warned Mr. Cleveland that he could not rely upon Mr. Gorman's friendship in any way, and the result proved the correctness of his diagnosis. In 1899, at the earnest request of the party leaders, Mr. Knott accepted an election to the general assembly, and at the solicitation of Governor John Walter Smith and of Mr. Wilkinson, speaker of the House, accepted the position of chairman of the Committee on Corporations in that body. In that capacity he was instrumental and took a prominent part in passing the law for the reduction of the price of gas in Baltimore City from $1.50 to $1.10 per thousand feet. He also earnestly advocated the creation of a public franchise commission, which measure had in view the same objeet con- templated by the Public Utilities Commission created by the recent legislature of 1910. But owing to the opposition of the corporations and of the State Democratic organization the measure failed. This bill had two advantages over the act of 1910. It was framed on the model of the law passed by the State of Texas, the constitutionality of which had been sustained by the supreme court of that State, and by the
412
ALOYSIUS LEO KNOTT
Supreme Court of the United States, and the expenses of the commis- sion were not to exceed $15,000 annually.
In 1900, Mr. Knott was chosen professor of elementary law and of constitutional law in the Baltimore University Law School, and in 1904 of international law, resigning the chair of elementary law, and in 1905 was elected dean of that law school.
The great fire of 1904 burned the Calvert building, in which he had his office, and he lost a large and valiable law library.
In 1907, he practically retired from active practice and spent four- teen months abroad with his family. Since that time he has confined himself to his private affairs and to the duties devolving upon him as the dean and a professor in the Baltimore University Law School.
Mr. Knott is a member of the Maryland Club since 1871, of the Society of the War of 1812, of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Maryland, and is president of the Maryland Original Research Society, and a member of the Maryland Historical Society. He has delivered many addresses on a variety of subjects in Baltimore, Wash- ington and New York, and has contributed many articles and papers to the periodical and newspaper press on political, literary and historical subjects. He is the author of a monograph entitled "The History of the Redemption of a State," being a narrative of the political revolution which took place in Maryland in 1866 and 1867. Mr. Knott is also the author of a "History of Maryland," in the Encyclopedia Americana recently published.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.