Print by John Goddard, c. 1640, British Museum; “Envy” (perhaps a caricature of the Earl of Abingdon), Anonymous, 1796, British Museum. The founding of Maryland has often been explained through a familiar question: did the Calverts seek to build a Catholic refuge, or did they pursue land, status, and profit? The question is useful, but it is also too narrow. It assumes that religion and economy belonged to separate worlds of motivation, and that political calculation can be s
Lewis William Rubenstein, Macumba or Maccumba, ca. 1940–1963. Lithograph. On Easter Monday, April 7, 1817, a gathering of free and enslaved Black people at St. Inigoe’s in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, became the subject of a small but revealing chain of newspaper reports. White editors and correspondents called it a riot, an insurrection, a drunken disturbance, and a symptom of the evils of dram shops. One account insisted there was “no rational or practical scheme, nothing b
