Maryland Toleration Act

Examples of Maryland Toleration Act in the following topics:

• Maryland

  • The Calvert family recruited Catholic aristocrats and Protestant settlers for Maryland, luring them with generous land grants and a policy of religious toleration.
  • In 1649, Maryland passed the Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, a law mandating religious tolerance for Christians.
  • Passed by the assembly of the Maryland colony, it was the first law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies.
  • Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers was common in the early years.
  • Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution.

• Religion in Early New England

  • Catholicism first came to the colonies in the form of the "Maryland Experiment," when King Charles I issued a generous charter to Lord Cecil Calvert, a prominent Catholic convert from Anglicanism, for the colony of Maryland.
  • In the new colony, religious tolerance (for Christians only) was preserved by Calvert until 1654, when Puritans from Virginia overthrew Calvert's rule.
  • In 1689, the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary ignited a new anti-Catholic revolt in Maryland.
  • In 1692, the famous Religious Toleration Act officially ended, and the assembly of Maryland established the Church of England as the official state religion supported by tax levies.

• Troubled Neighbors

  • In 1634, Maryland, a narrow strip of land north of Virginia and south of Pennsylvania, was settled as a Catholic colony via a royal charter.
  • Fifteen years later, in 1649, the Act of Toleration proclaimed religious freedom for its colonists, among whom Protestants would become the majority despite the original charter.
  • After the governor's death several years later, Margaret Brent, the wife of an esteemed landowner in Maryland, executed his will as governor of the colony.

• The Old South

  • Many individual acts of manumission freed thousands of slaves in total.
  • The percentage of free blacks in the Upper South increased sharply from one to ten percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
  • For some that meant the immediate abolition of slavery because it was a sin to hold slaves and a sin to tolerate slavery.
  • The other states north of Maryland began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model.
  • (Virginia had also attempted to do so before the Revolution, but the Privy Council had vetoed the act.)

• From Annapolis to Philadelphia

  • Prior to the Annapolis Convention and the 1787 Philadelphia convention that saw the drafting of the United States Constitution, delegates from Virginia and Maryland met at George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, Virginia in March 1785.
  • The report contained thirteen proposals known as the Mount Vernon Compact, ratified by both Maryland and Virginia.
  • It declared the Potomac, which was under Maryland's sole jurisdiction, to be a common waterway for use by Virginia as well.
  • Instead, he introduced a proposal in the Virginia General Assembly to act on the suggestion of the Compact commissioners for further debate of interstate issues.
  • New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina had appointed commissioners who failed to arrive in Annapolis in time to attend the meeting, while Connecticut, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia had taken no action at all.

• The Transformation of Law

  • In 1803, the Marshall Court struck down an act of Congress in Marbury v.
  • In 1819, the state of Maryland attempted to impose a tax on the Maryland branch of the Second Bank of the United States in McCulloch v.
  • Maryland .
  • Maryland decision, handed down March 6, 1819, as recorded in the minutes of the Supreme Court of the United States.
  • Marshall affirmed the supremacy of the federal government over the state of Maryland in this decision.

• Powers of the Assemblies

  • The Sugar Act increased duties on non-British goods shipped to the colonies.
  • The same year, the Currency Act prohibited American colonies from issuing their own currency.
  • The Massachusetts Assembly suggested a meeting of all colonies to work for the repeal of offensive Acts, and all but four colonies were represented.
  • Eventually the Maryland Convention formally asked the Governor to leave, and Governor Eden finally departed Maryland for England in the ship Fowey on June 23, 1776.
  • " speech against the Stamp Act of 1765.

• The Expansion of the Federal Government

  • Maryland and Gibbons v.
  • The Court, with Marshall as chief justice, found that Marbury did have a right to his appointment, and that the Judiciary Act of 1789 provided him with a remedy known as a writ of mandamus.
  • This was the only time the Marshall Court would strike down an act of Congress; however, that precedent was enough to establish the Court as a co-equal branch by branding it as the final interpreter of the Constitution.
  • The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland.
  • Though the law, by its language, was generally applicable to all banks not chartered in Maryland, the Second Bank of the United States was the only out-of-state bank then existing in Maryland, and the law was recognized in the Court's opinion as having specifically targeted the U.S.

• Minorities and the New Deal

  • For example, the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) drove many black farmers from the land.
  • In June 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 (sometimes referred to as the Fair Employment Act).
  • In January 1935, Donald Gaines Murray sought admission to the University of Maryland School of Law.
  • Marshall argued that Maryland failed to provide a "separate but equal" education for Murray as required by the 14th Amendment.
  • The case did not outlaw segregation in education throughout Maryland and was not binding outside of Maryland but it set an important legal precedent.

• Colonies in Crisis

  • Andros, commissioned governor of New England in 1686, had earned the enmity of the local populace by enforcing the restrictive Navigation Acts, denying the validity of existing land titles, restricting town meetings, and appointing unpopular regular officers to lead colonial militia, among other actions that were part of an attempt to bring the colonies under the closer control of the crown.
  • Maryland saw Coode's rebellion, or the Protestant Revolution of 1689.
  • This was an armed insurrection by Maryland Protestants against the colonial government, seen by the rebels as dominated by Catholicism.