Maryland in The American Revolution - Economic Tensions

Economic Tensions

See also: Tobacco Lords See also: Tobacco in the American Colonies

Among the many tensions between Maryland and the mother country were economic problems, focused around the sale of Maryland's principle cash crop, tobacco. A handful of Glasgow tobacco merchants increasingly dominated the tobacco trade between Britain and her colonies, manipulating prices and causing great distress among Maryland and Virginia planters, who by the time of the outbreak of war had accumulated debts of around £1,000,000, a huge sum at the time. These debts, as much as the taxation imposed by Westminster, were among the colonists' most bitter grievances.

Prior to 1740, Glasgow merchants were responsible for the import of less than 10% of America's tobacco crop, but by the 1750s a handful of Glasgow Tobacco Lords handled more of the trade than the rest of Britain's ports combined. Heavily capitalised, and taking great personal risks, these men made immense fortunes from the "Clockwork Operation" of fast ships coupled with ruthless dealmaking and the manipulation of credit. Maryland planters were offered easy credit by the Glaswegian merchants, enabling them to buy European consumer goods and other luxuries before harvest time gave them the ready cash to do so. But, when the time came to sell the crop, the indebted growers found themselves forced by the canny traders to accept low prices for their harvest simply in order to stave off bankruptcy.

In neighbouring Virginia, tobacco planters experienced similar problems. At his Mount Vernon plantation, future President of the United States George Washington saw his liabilities swell to nearly £2000 by the late 1760s.Thomas Jefferson, on the verge of losing his own farm, accused British merchants of unfairly depressing tobacco prices and forcing Virginia farmers to take on unsustainable debt loads. In 1786, he remarked:

“A powerful engine for this was the giving of good prices and credit to the planter till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay without selling lands or slaves. They then reduced the prices given for his tobacco so that…they never permitted him to clear off his debt.”

Many Marylanders sought to use the opportunity posed by war to repudiate their debts. One of the "Resolves" later adopted by the citizens of Annapolis on May 25, 1774 would read as follows:

"Resolved, that it is the opinion of the meeting, that the gentlemen of the law of this province bring no suit for the recovery of any debt, due from any inhabitant of this province to any inhabitant of Great Britain, until the said act be repealed"

After the war, few of the enormous debts owed by the colonists would ever be repaid.