Chapter 15: Winter Gave Way to Spring

That turbulent winter the fifth Provincial Convention met in unruly Annapolis, declared its loyalty to and admiration of the British constitution and urged its delegates at the Continental Congress to seek reconciliation. Despite its obvious truculence and obdurate nature, the convention disclaimed any thoughts of independence, a position that seemed to please many more Marylanders than it angered but left the leaders of strident Virginia and incendiary Massachusetts fuming and disappointed.

The rump assembly also regularized the organization of the colony's armed forces, authorized a navy, and established a gun factory at Frederick Town and another in Georgetown. Almost immediately, George Wells laid the keel of the first Maryland warship, the 22-gun Defense, at his Baltimore yard. The "regular" state infantry units soon included a battalion under feisty William Smallwood and seven independent companies. The convention divided Maryland into five districts, made ironmaker Thomas Johnson a brigadier general and put him in charge of the first district which included all of huge and rebellious Frederick County.

At about the time of the first killing frost spread across the coastal plain, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, took refuge on a British warship and churned up a bloody tumult on the lower Potomac, especially around Hampton and Norfolk. His loyal agents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland also raised several small companies and attempted to disrupt insurgent militia activities on that peninsula. In a November proclamation Dunmore lost much of his support among the wealthier classes when he offered freedom to the servants and slaves of those landowners in the Chesapeake region who would not come to his support, "rebels" he dared to call them. Some Maryland minutemen helped put down the trouble Dunmore started and even recaptured a schooner taken by a group of slaves who had hoped to join the British forces. In the fighting that followed, Norfolk was sacked and burned.

Those Marylanders refusing to pledge their loyalty to the colonial cause and to the de facto government established by the Provincial Conventions were urged to leave peacefully, taking their property with them. The "non-associators" who stayed soon found themselves subject to triple taxation as well as various forms of extra-legal, often nocturnal, harassment, and to the rapidly-growing and easily-believable threat of property confiscation.

The harried Governor, stripped of almost all his functions and powers, remained at his isolated "palace" above the Severn, an object of scorn and disbelief. At the busy circle on the other end of East Street, the tall-windowed "Stadt House" displayed a large and elaborate wooden dome to replace the more modest one a vicious windstorm had torn apart. Both sides scoffed at talk of portents.

As the revolutionary caldron bubbled and spat, Governor Eden along with his councilors and advisors, including the diligent Millard Conroy, worked for a peaceful settlement of the irredeemably divisive issues. The governor even met with the most fanatical leaders of the country or "popular" party including both Thomas Johnson of Frederick County and Major Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, who had broken with his governor over relations with the Carroll family. Some of the more classically educated Whigs compared Eden's task to that of Sisyphus.

That winter, for the first time in anyone's memory, Annapolis enjoyed no social season although a few sparsely attended cotillions for the younger set took place at the Assembly Room on Duke of Gloucester Street, one of which ended in a fist fight. The local semptresses as well as the purveyors of smuggled French, Dutch and Belgian silks, satins and lace were, obviously, bereft if not bankrupt.

The Conroys occasionally entertained, but found that many of their long-time friends would no longer visit the gracious house on State Street, preferring instead to dine on the other side of ramshackled St. Anne's with the imperious Pacas, the fulminating Chases or at the spacious new home William Buckland designed and built for the Hammonds. Other Conroy friends and associates had vanished on board British ships, quietly departing for the mother country or various of her friendly colonies in warmer climes.

The Reverend Jonathan Boucher, who had preached his love of King and country with loaded pistols on the pulpit cushion for much of the year, took his reluctant wife and left Maryland still proclaiming his belief that Parliament ruled with "parental tenderness" and that the colonies should remain loyal children of the Crown. Mrs. Conroy wept at their departure and took to her room.

That winter Matthew worked with MacCorm's enlarged slave crew to build a twin-forge foundry where pig iron could be melted and pounded into wrought iron, a finery and a chafery Jacob Martz called it during his short visit in December. Despite the occasional snow, Matthew also continued to drill with his militia company which had become associated with the regular First Battalion despite its rag-tag appearance and inability to make proper turns or volley fire with any regularity. He became a better shot; his first attempt almost always hit the target board, and he could usually fire three well-aimed balls in less than two minutes. He learned to rip open paper cartridges with his eye teeth but remained disgusted with the bitter taste of gunpowder. The men now paired off with long staves to practice bayonet use, trying not to laugh as their thrust and parry practice generally degenerated into quarterstaff battles suitable for a country fair or the forecourt of some rowdy tavern. Few of them liked the idea of sticking someone with a bayonet, but most had heard how the battle on the hill near Boston ended with the Redcoats driving the colonials out of their trenches on their third attack and then gigging the stragglers like so-many hapless frogs.

That long winter an outbreak of the dreaded smallpox swept across southern Maryland and leapt the Potomac into the Northern Neck of Virginia before it died out in the trackless Wilderness. Some blamed Dunmore's fanatic operatives, but the disease probably began with an infected sailor being put ashore at Port Tobacco. He had a high fever and complained of pains in his back but showed none of the hard, red pimples that signify the dread disease. After the usual treatment, cupping, his fever abated, but as he was about to rejoin his ship, the frightening rash appeared.

The pox spread like a spring flood with no respect for age or social class although the very young and the enfeebled elderly seemed to make up most of the long death lists that appeared in the newspapers of both Georgetown and Alexandria. At M'Kenna's Disappointment both Jenny and Elizabeth helplessly watched their children die of raging fevers with pus filled pock marks all over their small, inert bodies. In delirium Miranda also succumbed as did three other slaves, two of them children, plus the senile and enfeebled old butler who had so long served the family. Several of the field hands would carry the marks of the disease all the rest of their lives.

The plantation's dead were buried in the unmarked slave cemetery near a willow grove on the Patuxent. Andrew would not allow Elizabeth to inter her child in the M'Kenna family plot. He had a raging tantrum at the suggestion, so the tiny half-sisters, wrapped in their blankets, were laid side by side in the same grave while their grieving mothers stood trying to comfort each other in the midst of mournful singing and ancient chants. A cold rain made puddles in the mud atop the small, unmarked mound. Several slaves long remembered Elizabeth's keening and her stricken face when they discussed the odd behavior of mourning whites around their sputtering hearth fires.

That frigid winter, despite the outbreak of smallpox, Andrew M'Kenna and what he called his "Loyal Legion" enjoyed playing hares and hounds with militia companies in central Prince George's County and along the lower Bay and tidal Potomac. It was a time of great unrest in much of Maryland with recurrent rumors of slave insurrections and servant discord. Dunmore's actions had encouraged Tory adventures, some of which turned deadly and destructive.

At times Andrew and his friends became screaming night riders who attacked the homes of disloyal leaders in the dark of the moon, setting them afire and then shooting from ambush at the fleeing men, women and children. On Saturday afternoons they occasionally charged through rural militia companies on their parade grounds, knowing their weapons would be unloaded. They left behind angry and confused mobs bleeding from saber cuts and hoof marks. They might not have killed anyone yet, but it was not from lack of intent.

In the rural taverns they bullied men wearing the black cockade, hazed the inn keepers who served them and abused their serving wenches. When Andrew read in the Gazette that militia desertions were becoming a serious problem, he celebrated the news with his fellow fox hunters in a drunken orgy that spread over four days and left an old patriot's home in shambles, his tobacco barn burned, his pregnant daughter and pubescent grand-daughter cruelly beaten and repeatedly raped.

On the last Saturday of February young M'Kenna and a half dozen of his well-mounted mates spent most of the afternoon drinking and carousing at a tavern near the mouth of the Eastern Branch, about eight miles south of bustling Georgetown. They had enjoyed scaring off the few locals in the place and then harassing the inn keeper's wife and fondling his barely-nubile twin daughters while the tavern owner himself was off drilling with his militia company.

It was almost sunset when Andrew and his pack of roistering followers, just a bit unsteady, mounted their thin-ankled horses, found the main road along the river and headed north at a fast trot, planning to pillage the home of Christopher Lowndes, if they found it unprotected. They intended to spend the night near Bladensburg at the plantation of one of their number who promised to put "a willing slave wench in every bed." As they rounded a gentle curve in the sparse woods, the riders spotted a handful of roughly uniformed men carrying muskets and pikes who were shambling toward them, their long coats flapping, faces painted ochre by the setting sun.

"Let's drive 'em off," Andrew cried, drawing his prized sword and kicking his rested horse. "No quarter," he howled.

"Tally ho," yelled another, "Loose the hounds!" Together they galloped toward the militiamen who began to scramble across the ditch and into the marshy land beside the road, shading their eyes as they looked into the huge ball of oblate sunset. One beardless boy, the fifteen-year-old company fifer, stepped into a rabbit burrow on the verge and fell awkwardly. He scrambled to his feet, soaked to his knees, his back to the road and fear in his heart. The boy ignored the approaching hoofbeats, braced himself with his home-made lance and dragged his foot out of the muck just as Andrew leaned down from his saddle to swing at him. The charging horse ducked away from this slanted spear, but the fire-hardened wooden tip entered Andrew's throat just under his chin and drove up through his mouth, brain and skull, lifting him from the saddle and depositing his twitching body in the road, three feet of splintered stake still in him.

The other riders, yelping their hunting cries, galloped on into the dusk, laughing at the rustics they had sent sprawling into the mud and diving for cover among the sawgrass and cattails. Andrew's horse followed them for a few dozen yards and then stopped to graze. The excited loyalists trotted two miles up the road before they noticed that one of their number was missing. They assumed he had taken a different trail through the woods hoping to beat them to Molly, the slatternly tavern girl who was their compliant favorite.

The bulky leader of the small militia party, who was, in fact, owner of the nearby tavern and father of the harried twins, poked at Andrew's body with his newly-issued bayonet, and getting no response, said, "I think y'done for 'im, Danny." The young fifer still stood in the ditch, vomiting into the swamp and holding his broken pike, half of which transfixed Andrew's bleeding head, surmounted by his dislodged wig. "Come on, boys, let's see what we got here," the inn-keeper and part-time sergeant said with a grin.

Ignoring the body's gaping grimace, he went through Andrew's clothes, found his leather purse, pulled off his rings, and then started cutting the silver buttons from his coat sleeves while another militiamen yanked off the young corpse's English-made boots and a third removed his sword belt and leather scabbard and went looking for the blade. It had disappeared into the reeds and ooze, spinning from Andrew's suddenly nerveless hand like a wing-shot goose. Danny was sent after the horse and soon returned leading him, smiling and trying to forget his brief glimpse of the startled man's bulging eyes and stretched neck. What was left of him now lay, spread eagled in the middle of the country road, stripped to his fair, almost-hairless skin. Looking a bit, Danny decided, like one of the rabbits his mother prepared for the stew pot.