Maryland Was Six Days From Missing the Declaration of Independence. The Record of How It Got There Says More About Annapolis Than It Does About 1776.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews | July 4, 2026
Tonight, Maryland celebrates 250 years of American independence. Fireworks over the harbor, flags on the courthouse lawns, the full Semiquincentennial production. And every bit of it rests on a fact the commemorative programming will not mention:
Maryland almost said no.
Not quietly, either. Not as a technicality. In the spring and early summer of 1776, Maryland’s governing convention in Annapolis was one of the last two holdouts against independence in all thirteen colonies — alongside New York — and it held that position on paper until six days before the vote. The reversal, when it finally came, did not come from the leadership. It came from the counties, and from one Annapolis lawyer who refused to let the convention hide behind its own instructions.
The people had fire. Annapolis smothered it as long as it could.
The receipts are all public. They sit in the Maryland State Archives and in the Founders Online collection at the National Archives, timestamped down to the hour. Read in sequence, they tell a story Maryland’s political establishment has spent two and a half centuries declining to tell about itself: the people had fire. Annapolis smothered it as long as it could.
The Instructions: Stay Against It
Start with the official position. Maryland’s convention had bound its congressional delegates against independence since December 1775 — the Journals of the Continental Congress record that the instructions finally recalled on June 28 were “given to their Deputies in December last.” And when the moment came to reconsider, Annapolis doubled down. After the Continental Congress adopted John Adams’s May 15 preamble — the resolution effectively calling for the end of royal government in the colonies — Maryland’s delegates walked out of Congress and sent home for direction. The direction came back on May 20: the convention rejected the preamble and instructed its delegation to remain opposed.
That is not hesitation. That is a standing prohibition on independence, seven months old by the Fourth of July, reaffirmed by formal vote seven weeks before it.
It got worse. On June 21 — with the independence question scheduled to come before Congress on July 1 — the convention passed a resolution urging its congressional delegates to leave Philadelphia and come home to Annapolis, on the condition that Congress agree to postpone the questions of independence, foreign alliances, and confederation until they returned. Maryland’s official posture, ten days before the most consequential vote in American history, was: can we push this to a later meeting?
Massachusetts was waiting on Maryland to do right.
Congress read the resolution and put the question of whether Maryland’s delegates should have leave to go home. The answer was no. The vote was coming on July 1, whether Annapolis was ready or not. Adams, writing to Samuel Chase on June 24, laid out the arithmetic: Pennsylvania’s county committees had just voted for independence, New Jersey had elected five new delegates — “independent souls,” in his phrase — and instructed them to vote yes. Then he added the line that should hang in the State House: “I hope that before Monday Morning next, We shall receive from Maryland, Instructions to do right.”
Massachusetts was waiting on Maryland to do right. That was the state’s reputation in June 1776.
The Reversal: Fire, If Not Smothered
What changed in the next four days was not the convention’s judgment. It was the ground under the convention’s feet.
Samuel Chase — Annapolis lawyer, congressional delegate, and by every contemporary account the most relentless man in Maryland politics — had been months ahead of his own convention. Back in April, he’d told Adams flatly that there was “no alternative between Independency and Slavery,” and urged him to stop debating and start preparing for war. Now, with his colony’s official position blocking the vote he considered inevitable, Chase went home and took the question over the convention’s head, to the counties. Local meetings across Maryland passed resolutions demanding independence. County by county, the convention’s official position became untenable, because it was now provably out of step with the people it claimed to speak for.
On Friday, June 28, 1776, the Annapolis Convention rescinded its instructions and voted — unanimously — to authorize Maryland’s delegates to support independence.
At nine o’clock that evening, Chase wrote to John Adams. He apologized for the brevity: he was, he explained, at that moment come from the House to arrange an express rider to chase down the regular post and carry the convention’s unanimous vote for independence to Philadelphia. And then he added the two sentences that are the true epitaph of Maryland’s road to July 4th:
“See the glorious Effects of County Instructions. Our people have fire if not smothered.”
Read that again. Chase — the man at the center of it — did not credit the convention. He credited the county instructions, the local resolutions that had forced the convention’s hand. Not our leaders. Our people. The distinction was Chase’s, made in real time, on the night of the vote. The fire was in the counties. The smothering had been done in Annapolis, and it had been official policy until roughly dinnertime that same day.
The express rider made it. On July 1, in the committee of the whole, Maryland voted for independence. Adams reported the scene to Chase the same day: Maryland “behaved well,” and William Paca acted “generously and nobly.” On July 2, Congress adopted the Lee Resolution. On July 4, it adopted the Declaration. Maryland’s name was on it — by a margin of six days.
Maryland’s name was on it—by a margin of six days.
The Man Who Made It Possible Missed It
Here is where the documented record turns from indictment to something closer to heartbreak.
Samuel Chase — the man who flipped Maryland, the reason the vote was unanimous instead of absent — was not in Philadelphia on July 4. He was detained in Annapolis: by his own illness, according to his biographers; tending his gravely ill wife, by other accounts. On July 5, not yet knowing whether the deed was done, he wrote Adams:
“I hope ere this time the decisive blow is struck. Oppression, inhumanity, and Perfidy have compelled us to it. Blessed be men who effect the work, I envy you! How shall I transmit to posterity that I gave my assent?“
How shall I transmit to posterity that I gave my assent? The one Marylander who unambiguously earned the moment was agonizing, from eighty miles away, over whether history would record that he’d been for it. In the same letter, he settled any question of where he stood: he would make peace with Britain, he wrote, but would never again trust her with “the least particle of power over us.”
And there’s a coda that deserves more attention than it gets: on July 6, still not knowing what Congress had done two days earlier, the Maryland Convention issued its own declaration of independence — declaring, as Chase exulted to Adams on July 8, the throne vacant and the people absolved of their allegiance, “this too before You have done it,” as far as Annapolis knew. He promised Maryland would exert every nerve to force the cause. Once the counties had dragged the convention across the line, the state ran hard. The fire was real. It had simply needed the smothering hands removed.
Chase didn’t reach Philadelphia until July 17. He signed the engrossed parchment with the rest on August 2 — which, contrary to the national folklore, is when nearly everyone signed it. Posterity got his assent after all. The famous legend of Chase’s heroic overnight ride to sign on July 4th is just that — legend. The real story, the documented one, is better: he missed the party because he was the one who’d made it possible.
The Rest of the Delegation, Honestly Told
Maryland sent four signers, and the honest ledger on them is mixed — which is exactly why it’s worth telling straight.
William Paca earned Adams’s on-record praise for the July 1 vote — “generously and nobly” is not a phrase Adams spent casually.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton — the wealthiest man in the colonies and the Declaration’s only Catholic signer — was elected to Congress on July 4 itself, arrived too late to vote, and signed on August 2 anyway, putting the largest fortune in America on the line with a stroke of the pen. Decades later, in an 1829 letter, he explained what the moment meant to him: he signed with a view not only to independence from England but to the toleration of all Christian sects — a pointed statement from a man whom Maryland law had barred from public office for his faith. (The beloved anecdotes — that he added “of Carrollton” at the signing table so the British would know which Carroll to hang — are apocryphal. He’d been signing his name that way since at least 1765. The documented record needs no embroidery.)
Thomas Stone of Charles County was the convention’s temperament in human form: a reluctant revolutionary who favored reconciliation deep into 1776 and left almost no recorded words about the moment at all. He signed. History has largely respected his silence.
And on August 17, 1776 — with the deed six weeks done and irreversible — the Maryland Convention resolved unanimously to maintain the freedom and independence of the United States “with their lives and fortunes.” It was one of the only unanimous votes of the entire session. Commitment came easily once the outcome was already inked.
Two Hundred Fifty Years Later
It would be comfortable to file all this under quaint. It isn’t quaint. It’s a pattern, and Marylanders in 2026 can recognize it without squinting.
The pattern is this: Annapolis does not lead. Annapolis waits. It reads the county resolutions, checks which way the express riders are running, and reverses course the evening before history arrives — then votes its unanimity after the risk has passed, and spends the anniversaries taking bows. The fire, when there is fire, comes from below, and the first instinct of the leadership class is to manage it, postpone it, or ask whether the whole question can be tabled until they get back.
The May 20 instructions have modern descendants. So does the June 21 request to push the vote. So, for that matter, does the July 5 anxiety about how posterity will record one’s assent — Maryland has never lacked for officials more focused on how the record will read than on what the moment demands, and voters watching the current occupant of Government House spend 2026 tending a national audience while Maryland’s business waits may find the posture strangely familiar. Committed here, officially. Attention already somewhere down the road.
But Chase’s June 28 letter cuts the other way too, and it’s the reason this story belongs to July 4th rather than to a grievance file. See the glorious effects of county instructions. Our people have fire if not smothered. The counties moved first in 1776. The convention followed. The signature on the parchment reads “Maryland,” but the credit, then as now, belongs a level down from the men who held the pen.
Two hundred fifty years on, that’s the part worth celebrating tonight — and the part worth remembering in every year that isn’t an anniversary.
The Receipts
- Maryland delegate instructions of December 1775 and their recall, as read into the Journals of the Continental Congress, July 1, 1776 (“the Instructions given to their Deputies in December last, be recalled”) — Founders Online, National Archives (Adams Diary and Autobiography, entry for July 1, 1776).
- Maryland Convention rejection of the May 15 preamble, May 20, 1776; resolution seeking postponement, June 21, 1776; rescission of instructions, June 28, 1776 — Proceedings of the Maryland Conventions, Maryland State Archives.
- Samuel Chase to John Adams, April 28, 1776 (“no alternative between Independency and Slavery”) — quoted in Carol Berkin’s signer biography, National Constitution Center.
- Samuel Chase to John Adams, June 28, 1776, 9:00 p.m. (“See the glorious Effects of County Instructions. Our people have fire if not smothered.”) — Adams Papers Digital Edition, Massachusetts Historical Society (Papers of John Adams, vol. 4); also on Founders Online.
- John Adams to Samuel Chase, June 24, 1776 (“Instructions to do right”) and July 1, 1776 (Maryland “behaved well”; Paca “generously and nobly”) — Founders Online, National Archives.
- Samuel Chase to John Adams, July 5, 1776 (“How shall I transmit to posterity that I gave my assent?”) and July 8, 1776 (Maryland’s July 6 declaration; “this too before You have done it”) — Founders Online, National Archives.
- On Chase’s absence on July 4: James Haw et al., Stormy Patriot, attributes it to Chase’s illness; the National Constitution Center’s biography states he was caring for his gravely ill wife.
- Congressional resolution of July 19, 1776, ordering the engrossed Declaration “signed by every member”; general signing August 2, 1776 — Journals of the Continental Congress.
- Maryland Convention resolution of August 17, 1776 (“lives and fortunes”) — Maryland State Archives.
- Charles Carroll of Carrollton to George Washington Parke Custis, published February 26, 1829 (religious toleration as motive for signing).
- On the August 2 signing and the Chase ride legend: James Haw et al., Stormy Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase (Maryland Historical Society, 1980); Journal of the American Revolution.
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