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The Province of Maryland had been a British colony since 1632, when George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore received a charter and grant from King Charles I of England and first created a haven for English Catholics in the New World, with his son, Cecil, equipping and sending over the first colonists to the Chesapeake Bay region. The first signs of rebellion against the mother country occurred in 1765, when the tax collector Zachariah Hood was injured while landing at the Annapolis dock, arguably the first violent resistance to British taxation in the colonies. After a decade of bitter argument and internal division, Maryland declared its independence as a free state from Great Britain in 1776, along with the other Thirteen colonies. Four Marylanders - Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed the Declaration of Independence on its behalf. Although no major Battles of the American Revolutionary War occurred in Maryland itself (although the British Royal Navy fleet passed through and up the Bay to land troops at the "Head of Elk"), this did not prevent the state's soldiers from distinguishing themselves through their service. General George Washington counted the "Maryland Line" regiment who fought in the Continental Army as among his finest soldiers, and Maryland is still known as "The Old Line State" today. During the war itself, Baltimore served as the temporary capital of the colonies when the Second Continental Congress met there during December 1776 to February 1777, after Philadelphia had been threatened with occupation by the British. Towards the end of the struggle, from November 26, 1783 to June 3, 1784, the state's capital Annapolis, briefly served as the capital of the fledgling confederation of the United States of America, and it was in the Old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House on State Circle in Annapolis that George Washington famously resigned his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783. It was also there that the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, was ratified by the Confederation Congress on January 14, 1784. Like other states, Maryland was bitterly divided by the war; many Loyalists refused to join the Revolution, and saw their lands and estates confiscated as a consequence. The Barons Baltimore, who before the war had exercised almost feudal power in Maryland, were among the biggest losers. Almost the entire political elite of the province was overthrown, replaced by an entirely new political class, loyal to a new national political structure. ==Background== (詳細はProvince of Maryland, an English settlement in North America that was founded in 1632 as a proprietary colony of the Lord Baltimore, who was George Calvert (1st Baron Baltimore), (1579-1632), who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World. But the first Lord Baltimore and former Secretary of State to His Majesty, King Charles I, but had converted to Catholicism. After having visited the Americas and earlier founding a colony in the future Canadian province of Newfoundland called "Avalon", he convinced the King to grant him a second territory in more southern temperate climes, before his untimely death. The Grant, therefore was transferred to his eldest son Cecil. The earliest European landing by the ships "The Ark" and "The Dove"sent by Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (1605-1675) landed on March 25, 1634 (thereafter celebrated as to the 21st Century as "Maryland Day"), at Blackistone Island, thereafter known as St. Clement's Island, off the northern shore of the Potomac River, upstream from its confluence with the Chesapeake Bay and Point Lookout. This was just north and across the river from the future boundary with the Virginia Company's colony, previously settled at Jamestown, further south on the James River in 1607 with the famous leadership of Captain John Smith, who later explored the upper Chesapeake Bay and its many rivers the following year, visiting the future lands of Maryland and many of its future cities and towns such as Baltimore, Annapolis, Easton, Havre de Grace, Head of Elk, Kent Island, Cambridge, and Salisbury. Here at St. Clement's Island, led by Father Andrew White, they raised a large cross, and held a Mass (according to the rite of the Roman Catholic Church), giving thanks to God. Later, the following month of April, 1634, Lord Baltimore's ships, under the command of his younger brother Leonard Calvert, (16XX-1647), as the first colonial governor made a settlement at what was named: "St. Mary's City", founding a capital town, which endured until 17XX when the colony's capital was moved north to the more central, newly established "Anne Arundel's Town (also briefly known as "Providence") - also dominated by newly-powerful Protestants, later renamed as "Annapolis". "Historic St. Mary's City" (a historic preservationist/tourism agency) has been established which protects the ruins of the original 17th Century village, and several reconstructed historic provincial (state) buildings little of which remains intact today. Nearby is the modern town and its well-known liberal arts, humanities institution "St. Mary's College of Maryland". The colony/province remained under the control of the several Lords Baltimore until 1775-1776 (with several exceptions of periods of rebellion by early Protestants and later colonists, during England's "Glorious Revolution" of the 1680s), when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and eventually became the independent and sovereign U.S. State of Maryland. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maryland in the American Revolution」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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