Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly in the
South than in the North, and it seems probable that one of the principal
reasons for this may be found in the fact that settlers throughout the
South lived generally at peace with the Indians, whereas the northern
settlers were obliged to congregate in towns for mutual protection.
Thus, in colonial days, while the many cities of New York and New
England were coming into being, the South was developing its vast and
isolated plantations. Farms on the St. Lawrence River and on the
Detroit River, where the French were settling, were very narrow and very
deep, the idea being to range the houses close together on the river
front; but on such rivers as the Potomac, the Rappahannock and the
James, no element of early fear is to be traced in the form of the broad
baronial plantations.
Nevertheless, when Baltimore began at last to grow, she became a
prodigy, not only among American cities, but among the cities of the
world. Her first town directory was published in 1796, and she began the
next year as an incorporated city, with a mayor, a population of about
twenty thousand, and a curiously assorted early history containing such
odd items as that the first umbrella carried in the United States was
brought from India and unfurled in Baltimore in 1772; that the town had
for some time possessed such other useful articles as a fire engine, a
brick theater, a newspaper, and policemen; that the streets were lighted
with oil lamps; that such proud signs of metropolitanism as riot and
epidemic were not unknown; that before the Revolution bachelors were
taxed for the benefit of his Britannic Majesty; and that at fair time
the "lid was off," and the citizen or visitor who wished to get himself
arrested must needs be diligent indeed.
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