Baltimore oriole

“ It might be added that Bullock's, like the orchard, but unlike the Baltimore, pipes a real tune, with something of a theme running through its intermittent outbursts. The plumage of the young [Pg 35] bird undergoes some curious changes, and what I took to be the year-old males seemed to be the most spirited musicians.
Maurice Thompson's tribute to the Baltimore oriole will apply to that bird's western kinsman. He calls him:—
"Athlete of the air—
Of fire and song a glowing core;" ”

“ There are always Baltimore orioles in the elms about my house on the morning of the eighth day of May. No one has yet seen one on the seventh, though the neighborhood takes an interest in the matter and keeps careful watch. ”

“ The Abbott Iron-works, in the eastern part of the city, have the largest rolling-mills in the United States. An industry peculiar to Baltimore is the packing of oysters in air-tight cans for shipment to all parts of the world. ”

“ Her territory extends on both sides of a great inland water communication, and is at the natural Atlantic outlet, by railway, of the Valley of the West. Baltimore in the Union is sure to be inferior to Philadelphia and New York: Baltimore out of the Union is sure to become a great commercial city. In every way, whether we regard her own people or their usefulness to other States, I think the interests of Maryland would be promoted by secession. ”

“ Men and women can endure to be ruined, to be torn from their friends, to be overwhelmed with avalanches of misfortune, better than they can endure to be dull.
Baltimore is, or at any rate was, an aspiring city, proud of its commerce and proud of its society. It has regarded itself as the New York of the South, and to some extent has forced others so to regard it also. In many respects it is more like an English town than most of its transatlantic brethren, and the ways of its inhabitants are English. ”

“ Largely Southern in its population, traditions and political sympathies, yet Northern in its aggressive spirit and industrial enterprise, the city of Baltimore perhaps is entitled to be called “American” more than any other big city on the Atlantic seaboard. It has always been American, and in this war has only proven anew what has always been known by those who knew Baltimore. A hundred years or so ago, in the War of 1812, its citizens fought and fell gloriously in defense of their city before the British. ”

“ Baltimore had done more than any other Eastern city to ally herself with the West and to obtain its trade. She had instinctively responded to every move made by her rivals in the great game. If Pennsylvania promoted a Lancaster Turnpike, Baltimore threw out her superb Baltimore-Reisterstown boulevard, though her northern road to Philadelphia remained the slough that Brissot and Baily had found it. If New York projected an Erie Canal, Baltimore successfully championed the building of a Cumberland Road 144 by a governmental godmother. ”

“ Through the business channels of this young and enterprising city flowed a large proportion of the products of the mills and factories of New England, assisting materially the business activity of the place, and it is quite likely that the interests of Baltimore and New England at that time being so connected is an explanation why so many New England people migrated to Baltimore in those days of her prosperity. ”

“ A business identified with the very earliest days of the city's existence, growing and assuming in its movement a condition of vigor and prosperity that is encouraging for the future, has given to Baltimore a name and fame that places her in an enviable position at the very head of the hat-manufacturing cities of this country. ”

“ The line of march was through as bad a slum as an American city could then show. Grog-shops swarmed in it and about every grog-shop swarmed the toughs of Baltimore. They were known locally as "plug-uglies." Like the New York "Bowery boys" of that time, they affected a sort of uniform, black dress trousers thrust into boot-tops and red flannel shirts. Far too poor to own slaves themselves, they had gathered here to fight the slave-owners' battles, to keep the Massachusetts troops from "polluting the soil of Maryland," as their leaders put it, really to keep them from saving Washington. ”

“ A few miles up this estuary is the great city and port of the Chesapeake, Baltimore, so named in honor of Lord Baltimore, and containing, with its suburbs, over six hundred thousand people. The spreading arms of the Patapsco, around which the city is built, provide an ample harbor, their irregular shores making plenty of dock room, and the two great railways from the north and west to Washington, which go under the town through an elaborate system of tunnels, give it a lucrative foreign trade in produce brought for shipment abroad. ”

“ Now let’s catch up with our mythical refugee from Washington, who comes to Baltimore for only one purpose—and that’s no good. You can be sure he finds what he wants in Baltimore. It’s got everything that’s no good. ”

“ Baltimore used to be in the days of Slavery one of the most difficult places in the South for even free colored people to get away from, much more for slaves. The rule forbade any colored person leaving there by rail road or steamboat, without such applicant had been weighed, measured, and then given a bond signed by unquestionable signatures, well known. Baltimore was rigid in the extreme, and was a never-failing source of annoyance, trouble and expense to colored people generally, and not unfrequently to slave-holders too, when they were traveling North with "colored servants." ”

“ No one, that has sojourned in Washington, can be ten minutes in Baltimore without being aware of a great and refreshing change. You leave the hurry and bustle of traffic behind at the railway station, and are never subjected to such nuisances till you return thither. Even in the exclusively commercial squares of the city there reigns comparative leisure, for, except in the establishments of government contractors, or others directly connected with the supply of the army, business is by no means brisk just now. ”

“ But see, yon pirate strangling lies, and crushed with splashing heel, While o'er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel; Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store, There 's one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore!
Midsummer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds begin to sing; They see not now the milking-maids, deserted is the spring! Midsummer day, this gallant rides from the distant Bandon's town, These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown. ”

“ I arrived in this city this morning, in the steamboat, from Norfolk, and have found a number of letters from you and brother W. From the present aspect of affairs in this city, I fear that I shall make but a short stay. At no period has the face of affairs been more trying to the feelings of the citizens. Baltimore has never seen but two days which will compare with last Friday: one of those was the mob day, the other was the day of the attack by the British.
"Nearly one half the city, embracing its most active and hitherto wealthiest citizens, have stopped or must stop payment. ”

“ Baltimore strikes one as a quiet, solid, somewhat provincial town. It is an eminently middle-class looking city. There is no great wealth in it, no great activity; but, on the other hand, there is little poverty; it is a well-to-do city par excellence. The famous Johns Hopkins University is here, and I am not surprised to learn that Baltimore is a city of culture and refinement.
A beautiful forest, a mixture of cultivated park and wilderness, about a mile from the town, must be a source of delight to the inhabitants in summer and during the beautiful months of September and October. ”

“ The residential section of the city expanded, and in 1888 a large area or ‘belt’ of suburban territory was annexed to the corporate limits. The diversification of manufactures, the growth of commerce, the extension of trade, the increase of population, the influx of foreign elements, the rise of economic standards, the development of civic consciousness have been the essential elements in the later municipal history of Baltimore. ”

“ In laying out possible landward routes from the Ohio River to the seaboard for the Cumberland National Road, the commissioners found that the route to Baltimore was thirty-nine miles shorter than to Philadelphia, and forty-two miles shorter than to Richmond. The distance from the seaport of Baltimore to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela, where navigation by boat was almost always possible, was only two hundred and eighteen miles. Thus Baltimore was the natural eastern metropolis for the trade of the West. ”

“ The question of the fidelity of the State to the Union was first tried by the arrival at Baltimore of a certain Commissioner from the State of Mississippi, who visited that city with the object of inducing secession. It must be understood that Baltimore is the commercial capital of Maryland, whereas Annapolis is the seat of Government and the legislature—or is, in other terms, the political capital. Baltimore is a city containing 230,000 inhabitants, and is considered to have as strong and perhaps as violent a mob as any city in the Union. ”

“ As there are no existing detailed statistics of the business of Baltimore during the Revolutionary War, the record of some business firms has been entirely lost, and although some trades have received slight mention in the published histories of the city, a trace of the existence of but two hatters, who afterwards continued in business, is to be found. ”

“ A party of colonists went at once to Newfoundland in 1623, but various affairs detained Lord Baltimore at home until 1627, when he came with his wife and children to dwell in this New World paradise of Avalon. The trail of the serpent was already there. A French fleet came to attack the colony, meditating revenge for Argall's treatment of the French at Mount Desert and Port Royal, but Baltimore's ships were heavily armed and well handled, and the Frenchmen got the worst of it. ”

“ Baltimore is exceeded in population only by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Detroit. It has passed Boston, St. Louis and Cleveland, and is growing. It is a combination of an anachronism and a boom town. Labor is flocking in to work its mushrooming airplane factories, huge wholesale trading houses, needle-trade shops and ship works. These are mostly people without roots.
But Baltimore is getting the gravy that overflows from crowded Washington, the hot money out for the kind of fun not tolerated in the District. ”

“ Baltimore looks more ancient and respectable than the towns I have passed through, and the site on which it stands is undulating, so that the houses have not that flatness and uniformity of height which make the streets of New York and Philadelphia resemble those of a toy city magnified. ”

“ There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
—Montaigne.
Following the incorporation of the city, Baltimore grew much as Chicago was destined to grow more than a century later; within less than thirty years, when Chicago was a tiny village, Baltimore had become the third city in the United States: a city of wealthy merchants engaged in an extensive foreign trade; for in those days there was an American merchant marine, and the swift, rakish Baltimore clippers were known the seven seas over.
The story of modern Baltimore is entirely unrelated to the city's early history. ”

“ It is situated on an estuary of the Patapsco River, at the head of navigation, about fourteen miles from Chesapeake Bay, and is on the Baltimore and Ohio, the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and other railroads. A good harbor and fine geographical situation give Baltimore unusual trade advantages, and it has become one of the great export centers of the United States. ”

“ All were united in a determination to resist at every hazard the passage of troops through Baltimore.... Armed men were marching through the streets, and the military were moving about in every direction, and it is evident that Baltimore is to be the battlefield of the Southern revolution. ”

“ Trade and Industry. Natural geographical situation, favorable trade connections, and unusual harbor facilities constitute Baltimore's chief commercial advantages. At the entrance to the harbor, the Patapsco River divides into the northwest, southwest, and middle branches. The northwest pierces 21⁄2 miles into the very heart of the business portion of the city. The southwest and middle branches envelop the southern and southwestern sections, giving a long expanse of water front in close proximity to the lines of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. ”

“ The value of the industrial establishments of the city is estimated at considerably above 4,000,000l. From the above, I leave the reader to judge of its prosperity.
The people in Baltimore who enjoy the widest—if not the the most enviable—reputation, are the fire companies. They are all volunteer, and their engines are admirable. They are all jealous as Kilkenny cats of one another, and when they come together, they scarcely ever lose an opportunity of getting up a bloody fight. They are even accused of doing occasionally a little bit of arson, so as to get the chance of a row. ”

“ When Washington first went to the Ohio there were only twenty-five houses in Baltimore, but in 1770 there were twenty thousand people, and the new city was drawing trade from Philadelphia.108 In 1826, when the Erie canal was building, Baltimore had become a city of sixty thousand inhabitants. Now it has more than half a million people, and is the sixth American city. ”