Maryland, My Maryland 
(Continued from page 433) 
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country without the least suggestion of a 
village and each is set in the midst of its 
cemetery and shadowed by most magnifi¬ 
cent oak trees. These folks understand 
the beauty of a great tree better than we 
do in New York. Around All Hallows 
church, south of Annapolis, I found the 
graves of men who died before 1690. Either 
tiicrc was a burial place here before there 
was a church or, more probably, the stones 
were set up in later years in memory of 
men who died long before. 
We went to church on Sunday morning 
at one of those historic sanctuaries. It 
stood in a lonely spot, in the midst of a 
sparsely settled region of large farms, but 
the attendance was larger than is common¬ 
ly found in country churches, and the rec¬ 
tor preached with grace and dignity and 
force. I suppose that perhaps no where 
in America can be found a region where 
the white population is more nearly of ab¬ 
solutely pure English racial stock. 
I have found these historic memories so 
interesting that I have almost forgotten 
to speak of its agriculture. It is preemi¬ 
nently a one crop region and that one crop 
is tobacco. So far as I can learn it has 
been, the one great crop from the very be¬ 
ginning, and its supremacy has never been 
disputed by any other type of agriculture. 
I am sure that “Herb” Cook and I hope 
some other one of my readers will remem¬ 
ber dear, delightful, whimsical “Joe” Wing 
°f Ohio, a man who walks the earth no 
longer, but who I had the privilege of 
knowing very intimately, and whose per- 
American Agriculturist, December 20, 1924 
for the truth of the statement, but they tell 
me that this is the freest burning tobacco 
in the.world and much in demand for blend¬ 
ing with inferior tobaccos to increase com¬ 
bustibility. It is said that you make take a 
sonahty was best characterized by the word properly cured leaf and touch a spark to 
“lovable.” In his time he did a good deal one end and it will slowly consume the en- 
of Farm Institute work in Maryland, and tire leaf down to the midrib—a test that no 
like every one else he marveled much at other leaf can measure up to. A large 
some. of the things he saw in old St. part of the crop is still packed and shipped 
Mary’s County. He was a contributor to in great hogsetts—the form of package 
the Breeders’ Gazette, and once wrote them that has held its own for near three hun- 
in this wise, “I saw no green thing upon dred years. In the early days a bar was 
the landscape except tobacco. I saw, in- put through the hogsett, projecting a little 
deed, a few lean cows that looked as if from each head and a mule or ox hitched 
they would desire to eat, and I fell to won- to this rolled the package down to the mar- 
dering if it mights not be possible to edu- bet- This custom still survives in memory 
cate these cows—a little at a time—to chew at least in the name of a certain highway 
tobacco.” , “The Rolling Road.” 
Well, tobacco still holds the stage. I am I have said that it is emphatically a one 
not personally a consumer of the Indian crop region. Of course there is a little 
weed, but. it is surely a most beautiful grass and considerable good corn, but these 
crop, with its scrupulously clean culture and after all are to feed the mule that will cul- 
its broad, vivid greenness. A man may al- tivate the plant for whose sake men toil 
most walk out of sight in a well grown and in the odor of whose sanctity they 
field of Maryland tobacco. The crop was will die. Of course everybody agrees that 
very late this year, and October first saw a one crop husbandry in the end spells ag- 
less than half of it hanging in the bams, ricultural disaster, but here is a region 
Prices this year are excellent^-as high as where the tobacco plant seems particularly 
62 cents per pound for the choicest leaf, at home, and moreover the people—black 
although there is an almost endless num- and white alike—are skilled in its culture 
ber of grades, depending upon many dif- with the hereditary skill of many genera- 
ferent factors, and ultimately most of all tions. I judge that the wisest agriculture 
upon the skill of the grower. Just this is not necessarily less tobacco, but more of 
year the Southern Maryland tobacco plant- other things in addition. Only very slowly 
er is not talking about the agricultural de- do people change their fixed agricultural 
pression. On the contrary, his face wears 
a sunny smile. I, of course, cannot vouch 
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habits. During the eighteen years since I 
was here before, there have been some 
changes. Notably the state has built some 
good roads into a region that before was 
cut off from all transportation, save the 
visits of the steamers that poked their nose 
up every little river at rather infrequent 
intervals. The spirit of progress is in the 
air. The infrequent and tiny hamlets show 
more paint and less whitewash. There are 
some attempts to grow legumes, and even 
an occasional patch of alfalfa, but I do not 
believe there is any attempt to displace the 
ancestral crop. 
This is the “black belt” of Maryland. 
The tobacco counties have always required 
a large supply of field labor, and until the 
recent northern exodus, which threatens to 
bring about fundamental economic changes, 
there were large sections where the negroes 
outnumbered the whites. Riding through 
it today, one feels that the whites must be 
in hiding, while the blacks come out to 
show themselves 
In Civil War days, the status of this sec¬ 
tion of the State was peculiar. Officially, 
Maryland was a loyal State, but on this 
peninsula almost every man of military 
age stole away some stormy, moonless 
night and crossed the Potomac to link his 
fortunes with Lee or Johnson. Just the 
other day I talked with a man—he was 
seventy-five years old—a Judge of the 
Maryland courts, with a life long connec¬ 
tion with public affairs, and in the archives 
of whose memory is stored a vast mass of 
the unwritten history of his time. He told 
me that at the second election of Lincoln, 
he received just one vote in all St. Mary’s 
County. 
All this locality is very intimately as¬ 
sociated with the assassination of Lincoln 
and the flight of his murderer. Men talk 
of it, not as some history that they have 
read in books, but rather as a neighbor¬ 
hood happening and a fireside tale. We 
passed over the highway, then as now, the 
main road leading south from Washington, 
down which Booth made his wild night 
ride following the fatal shot. Booth him¬ 
self was a Marylander, born at Bel Air, 
near the Pennsylvania line, but nevertheless 
he sympathized most passionately with the 
Confederacy. The last days of his life 
were horrible enough. Escaping from the 
theater, he rode for many miles astride a 
galloping horse, although his broken leg 
must have caused him unutterable agony. 
Some considerable distance south we saw 
the old brick hotel, probably very little 
changed since that night where a halt was 
made and a country physician, Dr. S. J. 
Mudd, was summoned to set the leg “of a 
(Continued on page 436 ) 
