Echoes Forward

Now that our eardrums and livers are hopefully recovered from the 250th Fourth of July celebration, it’s time we continue discussing the Eastern Shore and Caroline County’s part in the American Revolutionary War. For context, see July’s edition of Echoes Forward.  

While Caroline is considered landlocked, the Eastern Shore as a whole was an incredibly turbulent place during the War, as the same things that made the Chesapeake Bay valuable to the Americans caused it to be targeted heavily by redcoats. The British attacked and patrolled the Bay with both Naval vessels and privately hired Privateers. Privateering was a tactic used by warring nations in which ship captains could lease out their services as a sort of subdued pirate to plunder the commercial vessels of their enemy, with the goal of hurting their opposition economically. Although they were not necessarily permitted to take drastic measures, many of history’s finest pirates started out as Privateers (see Blackbeard or Captain Kidd).   

In retaliation, Maryland gathered its own fleet of Privateers to patrol the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers, including the Choptank. The original scrolls on which they attempted to keep track of these Privateers are preserved at the Maryland Archives. Between 1776 and 1777, a total of 39 individuals were documented as sanctioned Privateers for the Province of Maryland. This first document is hastily thrown together, including lots of shorthand writing while only listing names of captains and vessels, indicating that the situation was too dire to take the time to properly organize their information. To a historian’s eye, this could mean a plethora of things; that the British posed an early threat to the area, that mobilization for volunteers to support the cause was overwhelming, simply that Americans had little to no formal Navy and relied heavily on Privateers, or a combination of these. In subsequent scrolls, the specifics about these Privateers are much better documented. From 1777 to 1779, 104 individuals were hired as Privateers in the state, almost all of them being from Baltimore and Annapolis. More and more Eastern Shore dwellers show up as the years pass from 1779 and 1782, specifically from Dorchester and Talbot counties, implicating the Choptank River itself as being a potential warzone between British and Patriot Privateers.  

Back on land, several Caroline Countians were eager to join the fight, with many becoming pretty prominent leaders despite their humble Caroline County origins. Col. William Richardson was the one who first introduced the creation of Caroline County to the Maryland General Assembly in 1773. In August 1776, Richardson was commissioned as a Colonel of the Eastern Shore Battalion of the Maryland Flying Camp, a regiment that notably demonstrated bravery at the Battle of Harlem Heights and earned commendation from General George Washington, according to one of Richardson’s descendant’s applications to The Sons of the Revolution. Following the disbandment of the Flying Camp in December 1776, Richardson continued his service as a colonel of the re-enlisted men, forming the Fifth Regiment of the Maryland Line. In this role he commanded many of his neighbors from Caroline. In February 1777, Richardson was tasked with suppressing “Tory” (the derogatory term for loyalist) activities in Somerset and Worcester Counties. When the British threatened Philadelphia in December 1777, Richardson was entrusted to relocate the Continental Treasury to Baltimore, safeguarding the nation’s finances.  

Thomas Hardcastle was also active in the sociopolitical realm of both Caroline County’s establishment and the Revolution, although he had little to no formal military career. Born in what would become Caroline County in 1737, he would play a significant role in the American Revolution and the early political landscape of Caroline County, Maryland. In 1777, he was appointed by the court to establish a temporary location for court proceedings amidst the conflict between holding court at Denton and Bridgetown. Hardcastle served as the quartermaster for Maryland and was a member of the Council of Safety (a Revolutionary local government of sorts), which first convened in Denton on August 2, 1775. Before and throughout the war, he was sent to the provincial convention in Annapolis to report on what had been discussed at the council’s meetings in Caroline. Family lore suggests that Hardcastle led an independent group of Patriots to join General Washington at the Battle of Brandywine, though this is unconfirmed.  

One heroic story we can count on is that of Thomas Carney, a free African American who volunteered to fight for the cause early on. He became one of approximately 95 African American soldiers from Maryland who served in the Continental Army, fighting at the Battle of Germantown in Pennsylvania on October 4, 1777 as part of the Maryland militia. In May of 1778 he enlisted in the 5th Maryland Regiment of the Continental Army as a private, so Col. William Richardson was his Colonel for a short while. He eventually transferred  to the 7th Maryland Regiment and was promoted to Corporal, making him one of only four known African American Continental soldiers to attain that rank during the Revolutionary War. Though he was involved in several battles, he earned his place in history at the Siege of Ninety Six in 1781. His Captain, Perry Benson (later a Brigadier General), was seriously wounded, and Carney carried him on his shoulders through the battlefield to the surgeon while continuing to carry his musket. He collapsed from exhaustion and heat after reaching the surgeon, but upon recovering, attempted to return to combat. He was ordered to remain with Benson to protect and look after him. For his service he received a cash bonus and one hundred acres of land on the frontier in western Maryland. Benson visited Carney often after the war.  

The war took its toll on communities like Caroline, during and long after the conflict. Historians have noted that passion for the cause was highly influenced by proximity to British troops. Being in a place that was constantly on alert meant that the community was never really able to relax and focus on surviving the everyday. It did not help that the war’s toll on local economies left many destitute, including those in Caroline County. One man wrote, “each year that this great and glorious conflict continued…depreciated Caroline’s finances until they had almost if not yet reached the vanishing point.”  

Several remnants of the war’s impact on our area remain. A great example is our abundance of Methodist and Quaker churches, despite the fact that by the late 18th century the most practiced religion in the Maryland colony was Anglican. Patriots took issue with the colonial government supporting the Church of England via taxes. To add fuel to the fire, Anglican priests had to be ordained in England, making them guilty by association when colonists began uniting against the British government and all those intertwined with it. These priests often lived relatively lavish lifestyles when compared to the common folk they led, making them unfit for the mold of a humble American countryman that became popularized during the Revolution. Methodism appealed to the radical colonists who saw the minimal salary of a Methodist priest – a whopping average of six dollars a year – as more acceptable. Methodists also didn’t charge a church tax that would directly benefit England. Some drifted toward Quakerism also for these reasons, especially if they also tended to oppose the war on a moral basis. Religion during the Revolution was tricky; each side of the war was looking for some kind of divine intervention to prove that their cause was the worthy one, and it is obvious from this physical religious shift that most people on the Eastern Shore believed that American Independence was God’s true will, and they’d be damned if they were going to be on the wrong side of that.  

I cannot stress enough that this is a broad overview of some of the parts and players in Caroline County’s revolutionary history. But I hope it gives you a little bit of local flare as we continue to celebrate America’s semiquincentennial.