Baltimore

“ We reached Baltimore in the middle of the night, but finished our repose on board the steam-boat, and started for Washington at five o’clock the next morning.
Our short abode amid the heat and closeness of a city made us enjoy more than ever the beautiful scenery around Stonington. The autumn, which soon advanced upon us, again clothed the woods in colours too varied and gaudy to be conceived by those who have never quitted Europe; and the stately maize, waving its flowing tassels, as the long drooping blossoms are called, made every field look like a little forest. ”

“ From Norfolk our voyage to Baltimore surpassed all my former ideas of rapidity. We passed up to Baltimore in so short a space of time, and in such a steam-boat, that I dread your incredulity were I to give you particulars. Let it suffice that but a few hours brought us to Baltimore, reputed to be in commercial importance the fourth city in the Union. You know it was my first object to visit the respectable gentlemen in this place to to whom I have letters, and most of whom have at one time or another done business with our house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The writer of the Marshes of Glynn had passed away before I visited Baltimore, but I heard so much about him that I feel as though I had seen him. The delicately-moulded ivory features, the profuse and silken beard, the wonderful eyes waxing and waning during the feverish action of lecturing, surely I have witnessed the fascination which these exercised? Baltimore would not have been Baltimore, would have been untrue to its graceful, generous, and hospitable instincts, if it had not welcomed with enthusiasm [Pg 79] this beautiful, pathetic Southern stranger. ”

“ I went through many introductions that evening; and, in the next fortnight, received ample and daily proofs of the proverbial hospitality of Baltimore. There are residents—praisers of the time gone by, who cease not to lament the convivial decadence of the city; but such deficiency is by no means apparent to a stranger.
If gourmandize be the favorite failing in these parts, there is surely some excuse for the sinners. Probably no one tract on earth, of the same extent, can boast of so many delicacies peculiar to itself, as the shores of the Chesapeake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During this visit to Baltimore, I had changed my scene of action from the "Front Street" to the "Holiday Theatre;" smaller, but more comfortable than my first quarters: this city is not so theatrical as the others I have visited, but no audience can be more agreeable; they certainly ought to like a play, for when they do come they enjoy it heartily; and during my present visit the house was unusually well attended. As a residence I like Baltimore much; its market is equal to any other in the States, and cheaper than either Philadelphia or New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is fitting that last of all should be mentioned the man who views you with keen eye as you arrive in Baltimore, and who watches you depart. If you are in Baltimore he knows it. And when you go away he knows that, too. Also, during racing season, he knows whether you bet, and whether you won or lost. He is always at the station and always at the race track, and if you don't belong in Baltimore he is aware of it the instant he sets eyes upon you, because he knows every man, woman, child, and dog in Baltimore, and they all know him. ”

“ Baltimore is to-day free from flagrant commercialized vice. And if not quite all the old cobble pavements and open-gutter drains have been eliminated, there are but few of them left—left almost as though for purposes of contrast—and the Baltimorean who takes you to the Ghetto and shows you these ancient remnants may immediately thereafter escort you to the Fallsway, where the other side of the picture is presented. ”

“ The large blocks of grey rock, now close upon its edge, and now retiring to give room for a few acres of bright green herbage, give great interest and variety to its course.
Baltimore is, I think, one of the handsomest cities to approach in the Union. The noble column erected to the memory of Washington, and the Catholic Cathedral, with its beautiful dome, being built on a commanding eminence, are seen at a great distance. As you draw nearer, many other domes and towers become visible, and as you enter Baltimore-street, you feel that you are arrived in a handsome and populous city. ”

“ A good post-midnight conversationalist—and Baltimore is not without them—can stand mops, buckets, and dim lights, but turn cold drafts upon his back and he gives up, sends for his coat, buttons it about his paunch and goes sadly home. ”

“ Every one in Baltimore is proud of the Fallsway, but particularly so are the city engineers who carried the work through. While in Baltimore I had the pleasure of meeting one of these gentlemen, and I can assure you that no young head of a family was ever more delighted with his new cottage in a suburb, his wife, his children, his garden, and his collie puppy, than was this engineer with his boulevard sewer. ”

“ So wide an expanse of fresh running water is in itself a fine object. We crossed the narrow neck of land between the Delaware and the Chesapeake on a railroad with one of Stephenson's engines....
The railroad was full of knots and dots, and jolting and jumping and bumping and thumping places. The carriages we were in held twelve people very uncomfortably. Baltimore itself, as far as I have seen it, strikes me as a large, rambling, red-brick village on the outskirts of one of our manufacturing towns, Birmingham or Manchester. ”

“ Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The success of our march through Baltimore to-day is as indelibly fixed and will ever be as fresh as that of nineteen years ago, and our reception will remain in our hearts and minds as long as life lasts. ”

“ About forty years ago the two towns of Baltimore, and the Point, contained only two brick houses, and a few wooden ones: in a late edition of Salmon's Geography, I find Baltimore described as consisting of a few straggling houses, scarcely deserving the name of a town. Within these fifteen years it has increased in size and population beyond all precedent. It now contains nearly twenty thousand inhabitants; and, in point of trade, Baltimore is the fourth town in America. ”

“ The Colonel told us he expected trouble in Baltimore, and impressed on each man not to fire until he was compelled to. The singing ceased, and we then thought we had serious business before us, and that others besides South Carolina had lost their balance. When we reached the Baltimore Depot some of the cars had gone ahead, and four companies—young men—were in the cars unconscious of what was going on outside. We thought the people of Baltimore and Maryland were of the same Government, and if not they ought to be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If one excepts five or six large streets, Baltimore does not seem to be very animated, or, above all, very busy—I just now had to consult my guide-book to assure myself that it contains four or five hundred thousand souls. Have the tales of travelers positively misled me concerning the activity of Americans? What sort of epicurean or dilettante existence can they have led in Europe who find that people live so fast here, or even in New York? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This, we may anticipatorily explain, was the “freedom of the city” in a written address, of folio size, and bound between two leaves of massive silver; the whole enclosed in a case of red velvet. It was suitably and creditably magnificent; and its history would not all be told without mentioning that it received a kiss from Madame Kossuth—Mr. Brantz Mayer having mindfully and courteously presented it to that lady—the Governor’s Secretary insisting on taking charge of it—and she refusing to release it before pressing it to her lips. Baltimore’s blood will warm with the compliment. ”

“ On the south of the town is the harbour, which affords about nine feet water, and is large enough to contain two thousand sail of merchant-vessels.
The greatest number of private houses in Baltimore, are of brick; but many, particularly in the skirts of the town, are of wood. In some of the new streets, a few appeared to be well built; but, in general, they are small, heavy, and inconvenient. [The public buildings have very little architectural beauty.
In the year 1817, Baltimore contained fifty thousand inhabitants; and was still rapidly increasing.] ”

“ When the Revolutionary War broke out, the citizens of Baltimore showed that they were not a bit behind the other colonies of America in their spirit of independence.
81. Summary.—King Charles the First of England gave Lord Baltimore, an English Catholic, a part of Virginia and named it Maryland, in honor of his wife, Queen Mary. A company of emigrants came out to Maryland in 1634. It was the first settlement in America in which all Christian people had entire liberty to worship God in whatever way they thought right. That liberty they owed to Lord Baltimore. ”

“ Continuing the category of contrasts, one may observe that while the general appearance of Baltimore suggests a northern city rather than a southern one—Philadelphia, for instance, rather than Richmond—Baltimore society is strongly flavored with the tradition and the soft pronunciation of the South; particularly of Virginia and the "Eastern Shore." ”