Robert Goodloe Harper correspondence

Robert Goodloe Harper, congressman and Baltimore lawyer, was born near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in January, 1765, the only son of cabinetmaker Jesse Harper and his wife Diana Goodloe. When Robert Goodloe was about four, his parents moved to Granville, North Carolina, where he and his eight sisters grew up. At age fifteen he volunteered as a militiaman under General Nathanael Greene, and seemed headed toward a military career. His father, however, insisted that he attend college, so in 1784 Robert Goodloe Harper set out for the College of New Jersey at Princeton. Because of his meager funds, he had to earn his tuition and board by tutoring in grammar school. Harper had entered The College of New Jersey in June, 1784; he was able to graduate in September, 1785, Harper's autobiography, dated January 10, 1801, and filmed in this publication, discusses his college career. In Princeton University, General Catalogue (Princeton, 1746-1908), he is listed as having graduated in September, 1785, and received a LLD in 1820.

He returned to the south, this time to Charleston, South Carolina, to study law. Admitted to the bar in 1786, Harper entered practice in the remote Ninety-Six District of South Carolina. There he became involved in the cause of reapportionment of the under-represented up-country districts. In 1794 Harper served briefly in the state legislature, but his political ambitions were national, and while a state legislator he won a seat in the Fourth Congress from Ninety-Six. Before he could take that office, a vacancy occurred in the Orange-burg District when the incumbent died. Harper was successful in obtaining that seat. Thus he set out for Philadelphia to serve in the Third Congress before being seated in the Fourth.

Harper's career in Congress, and the controversy over his party affiliation, has been fully treated by Joseph William Cox in Robert Goodloe Harper: The Evolution of A Southern Federalist Congressman. Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1967. (Published on demand by University Microfilms.)

Party labels and divisions on national issues seem to have had little effect on the South Carolina up-country. While political opponents charged that Harper had been elected as a Republican and deserted his constituents in becoming a Federalist, Harper seems at first to have considered himself an independent. Until the quasi-war with France in 1798, his Federalist sentiments were of less importance than the interests of his section. His constituents must have agreed with his politics—and he kept them well informed by letters--or they would not have returned him to Congress until 1801. A good speaker, and a natural leader, Harper became prominent, serving as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1797 to 1801.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 made the Federalist Party suspect in most of the South. Harper's own Federalism had become increasingly radical, and he had risen in importance in the party councils. By 1799, however, with winds of change in his own district, Harper decided to leave politics and return to the practice of law. Earlier land speculations had left him deeply in debt, and he badly needed financial security. The magnificent opportunities in the growing port of Baltimore attracted him, and having friends there, Harper decided to open a Baltimore law practice in the summer of 1799 while still representing Ninety-Six in the House.

His decision to move north may have been influenced by his friendship with Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his daughter Catharine Carroll. Kitty, as she was called by her family, was young, attractive, and very rich. Her elder sister, Mary, had in 1786 married the handsome and impecunious Englishman, Richard Caton, and it was Caton who pleaded Harper's case before his prospective father-in-law. Harper also presented Charles Carroll with an autobiographical sketch, explaining his background, the root of his indebtedness (land speculation) and his career in Congress. The elder Carroll was finally convinced that Harper was a worthy suitor, and the marriage took place in May, 1801.

The young couple moved to Gay Street in Baltimore, where Harper had his practice. There they enjoyed the society of many of Maryland's wealthiest and most influential families. Harper's wealthy new friends shared his interest in Federalism and land speculation. His correspondence reveals friendship with John Eager Howard, John Ross Key and the Samuel Chases.

An able orator, Harper's practice prospered. He was frequently in Washington, pleading cases and leading the defense in the impeachment trials of Judge Pickering and Justice Chase. As a successful attorney, Harper had students, such as Virgil Maxcy, Robert Walsh, Jr. and Christopher Hughes, Jr., reading law under his tutelage. Law and politics were often intertwined, not only in the impeachment cases but also in the case of the Federal Republican riots in

Baltimore in July, 1812. The anti-administration editorials of Alexander Contee Hanson had made him and his paper the object of hatred among local Republicans. His editorial opposing war with Britain on June 20, 1812 led to a mob attack on June 22, and again on July 27, after the paper had removed its operation to Georgetown. This last attack on the Baltimore offices of the paper led to the death of a member of the mob and the protective confinement of the paper's defenders, including Hanson, General James M. Lingan and General Henry Lee, to the Baltimore City jail, from whence they were dragged by the mob, beaten, and Lingan killed. Hanson was tried for the death of the member of the mob, Harper acting as his attorney. Harper's own sentiments were decidedly pro-peace with Britain, as shown by his correspondence with English diplomat George Henry Rose, whom he met when the latter was on a mission to the United States in 1807. Harper was a devoted Federalist, and his defense of Federalism before the bar and in the papers led to personal and political clashes. At least one, with leading Maryland Republican John Francis Mercer in 1800, nearly led to a duel. Most of his cases, however, were nonpartisan. For example, he represented Baltimore merchants in claims arising from the French spoliation of American commerce.

Harper's success in law, his popularity as an orator, and the survival of the Federalist party in Maryland after the War of 1812 led him to return to the political arena. His war record was no detriment. He had a command at the Battle of North Point in September, 1814, and served as major general in the Maryland militia. In 1816 he was elected by the General Assembly as Federalist Senator from Maryland. His tenure, however, was brief, and he resigned in December under the press of private business. While in the Senate, he had found time to run as Federalist candidate for Vice-President, and he again sought that office in 1820. By the election of 1824, like Maryland Federalists Virgil Maxcy and Roger Brooke Taney, he was supporting Andrew Jackson. Harper was preparing to again run for Congress when he died suddenly in January, 1825.

In addition to his political concerns, Harper played a leading role in the colonization efforts of the early nineteenth century. While in Congress from South Carolina, Harper had opposed abolition, but had not supported efforts to reopen the African slave trade. In Baltimore, however, Harper must have found attitudes toward slavery different. In 1808 he became one of the original members of Samuel J. Mill's society for the colonization of Negroes in Ohio or in Africa, which became the American Bible Society. When the American Colonization Society was formed, he was one of those who defended its objects, and he became an influential member of the Maryland State Colonization Society, along with John H. B. Latrobe and Moses Shepherd. It was he who proposed the name Liberia for the American Colonization Society's settlement in Africa, and for him the town of Harper, near Cape Palmas, was named.

Harper was also interested in maintaining Baltimore's commercial prosperity in an era when the city that had canal connections to the middle west would be assured of commercial dominance. In December, 1823 he spoke to a public meeting called by the mayor of Baltimore on the expediency of a canal connection between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Canal connections with the Susquehanna, however, were preferred, and a survey was proposed.

Much of Harper's professional and social life centered around his wife's family. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was one of the wealthiest men in America, and his financial affairs were cared for more by his two sons-in-law than by his son, Charles Carroll of Homewood. The latter had married heiress Harriet Chew and lived at Homewood House (now part of The Johns Hopkins University). Charles of Homewood does not seem to have been particularly close to his younger sister, and so Catharine and her family spent most of their time with the Catons. Richard Caton had been a merchant and land developer, but was never independent of his wife's money. Mary Carroll Caton had been given land near the present Catonsville, called Castle Thunder, but the Catons divided most of their time between their Baltimore mansion on Lombard Street and their Baltimore County estate, Brooklandwood. Richard Caton may never have had financial success, but his daughters, known as the American Graces, were among the first to trade American fortunes for British titles. Three, Mary, Elizabeth, and Louisa married members of British or Irish nobility. The youngest, Emily, married British diplomat John McTavish, but settled in the United States to raise her family. All kept their aunt and uncle Harper constantly informed of their activities.

Harper's family life was not idyllic. He seems to have been out of touch with his own sisters after he moved to Baltimore. There is some correspondence with Elizabeth Harper Hyde concerning the education of his nephews, and near the end of his life Harper was in contact with his sister Mary Goodloe, and her husband, Baltimore physician Joseph Speed. Catharine Harper was perhaps not the ideal wife. Her letters to her husband are filled with complaints over his frequent absences and allusions to her frail health (although she outlived her husband, and all but one daughter, dying in 1861.) One wonders how much Harper's absences from home were influenced by the press of business, and how much by his wife's complaints. Home to the Harpers in fact seems to have been quite mobile. They had an estate, Oakland, near Brooklandwood in Baltimore County, and a city mansion on Gay Street, but Catharine seems to have preferred the society of Annapolis, where her father had an elegant mansion. The house, on Spa Creek, is now owned by St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Seven children were born to the Harpers: Charles Carroll, Mary Diana, Richard Caton, Elizabeth Hyde, Emily Louisa, and Robert Goodloe, Jr. Richard died as an infant, and only Charles Carroll and Emily Louisa lived past teenage. The children enjoyed all the material advantages of their parent's station. The Carroll tradition of a European education--begun when Charles Carroll of Annapolis sent his son, the future Charles of Carrollton, to France--was continued with the Harper children. They were educated in Baltimore by Elizabeth Bailey Seton (Mother Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity), then sent to Mount St. Mary's in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Charles, Mary Diana, and later Robert, Jr. were sent to Paris to complete their education, and Charles went to Harvard in 1821.

Throughout his life, Robert Goodloe Harper played influential roles: as a politician and Federalist leader, as an attorney, and as a leading spirit in the colonization of American Negroes in Africa. Yet much of the man has remained unexplained to posterity. His career after his marriage to Catharine Carroll is poorly documented; only family letters survive to any extent, and these reveal little of the man or his motives. He certainly enjoyed being the center of the political and of the social arena, and must have been pleased when the Baltimore city registers elevated him from attorney-at-law to gentleman. His championing of the cause of colonization, however, reveals a man with foresight and commitment. Harper will never be considered among the great men of his time, yet he was atypical, and his rise from cabinetmaker's son to wealth and prominence should not go unrecorded.