The region of the Chesapeake Bay is located along the mid-Atlantic coast and is bordered by the states of Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake hosted the first permanent settlement by the British in the New World—Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607—and other early settlements, such as St. Mary's, Maryland, in 1634. Those early settlements were the first on the North American mainland to use, justify, and become dependent upon the institution of racial slavery. In the nineteenth century, the Chesapeake (also known as the Upper South) became a middle ground between North and South, between free and slave.
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary, where fresh and salt water mix, on the North American continent and provides more crabs and other fresh seafood to the United States than any other body of water. Though the bay itself comprises just under 3,230 square miles of water, the Chesapeake ties together a vast geographical area through its watershed, which covers sixty-four thousand square miles spread over six states—Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York—and the District of Columbia.
During the eras of the Revolution and the early Republic (1754-1829), the Chesapeake was an economically, politically, and strategically important region. In the eighteenth century, its main economic activity was the cultivation of tobacco. Tobacco shaped many of the characteristics of Chesapeake society, including the prominence of its landed gentry, the dispersed settlement pattern organized around plantations, the limited number of towns and cities, and the reliance on enslaved labor. Between 1690 and 1770, planters imported 100,000 people of African descent to the Chesapeake to work in the tobacco fields. By the 1740s, planters were less reliant on the slave trade as the size of the enslaved population became large enough to reproduce itself naturally. The African American population in the Chesapeake was therefore probably the most acculturated plantation society, meaning that the enslaved peoples adapted to and adopted aspects of the dominant Anglo culture.
Although the Chesapeake had what one historian has called a "tobacco culture," tobacco was not the Chesapeake's only economic activity. By the 1750s, the Chesapeake was also an important producer of grains, especially wheat. Virginia alone exported 600,000 bushels of wheat annually by 1774. In addition, the Chesapeake annually exported tons of iron to England. Plentiful and accessible deepwater shipping, waterpower provided by falls, and abundant raw materials combined to make the Chesapeake the leading exporter of iron during the eighteenth century. This diversity before the Revolution helped the Chesapeake feed and arm the Continental Army during the war, earning the region the nickname of "the breadbasket of the Revolution."
The region's wealth, population, political activism, and location made it a target of constant raiding and fighting by the British during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). In 1774 residents of Annapolis, Maryland, staged their own tea party and Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House of Burgesses for criticizing Britain's punitive policy in Boston. Chesapeake political leaders like Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, among others, led the Revolutionary effort and organized associations, boycotts, and the Continental Congress. These leaders played key roles in declaring independence on 2 July 1776 and forming a new nation. The Chesapeake saw heavy fighting and raiding in 1777 and between 1779 and 1781. Campaigns by Lord Dunmore and General Sir William Howe in 1777, Admiral Richard Howe in 1779, and Benedict Arnold in 1780 and 1781 resulted in the burning and plundering of the Virginia towns of Portsmouth, Suffolk, Norfolk, Petersburg, and Richmond, among others. The Revolutionary forces achieved victory in two crucial battles that took place in the Chesapeake. The Battle of the Chesapeake was a naval battle that occurred near the mouth of the bay on 5 September 1781 between Rear Admiral Thomas Graves's British fleet and Rear Admiral Comte de Grasse's French fleet. The French were victorious, preventing the Royal Navy from resupplying Lord Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, and ensuring that George Washington would receive reinforcements from New York through the Chesapeake. As a result of this defeat, the British under Cornwallis were compelled to surrender at the Battle of Yorktown on 19 October 1781 and to recognize the independence of the United States. In 1783 Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the war while convened in Annapolis, seat of the new federal government.
After the war, citizens of the new nation began to build the institutions and infrastructure necessary for a new nation. The region's inhabitants continued to deemphasize tobacco, especially in Maryland, in favor of grains and industry; built a variety of internal improvements; and developed more towns and cities. Though slavery remained important, wheat agriculture required fewer laborers than tobacco. Virginians therefore played a significant role in the development of the internal slave trade with the Deep South. Due to the region's strategic importance, shipbuilding became an even more prominent industry after the Revolution. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, founded in 1767 and burned by the British in 1779, became the Continental Navy Yard in 1801, two years after the creation of the Navy Yard in the new national capital of Washington. Fells Point and St. Michaels in Maryland were important centers for building the famous Baltimore clipper ships.
Trade stimulated urban growth and internal improvements after the war. Baltimore (founded 1729, incorporated 1796), Norfolk (founded 1682, incorporated 1736), and Richmond (founded 1737, incorporated 1742, and became Virginia's capital in 1780) grew significantly and became leading supply centers. Smaller towns, like Chestertown in Maryland and Alexandria, Charlottesville, and Leesburg in Virginia, also expanded. Entrepreneurs and investors built new roads, turnpikes, and canals, like the James River and Kanawha and the Potomac in the 1780s and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1820s.
After tense debates, Congress followed President Washington's suggestion to place the capital of the new nation on the Potomac River on lands donated by Maryland and Virginia. In 1791 the planning, surveying, and construction of the District of Columbia began. The federal government moved from Philadelphia to Washington City in 1800. Hostilities once again erupted between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, and in 1814 British troops burned Washington's public buildings and besieged Baltimore. The burning of Washington helped cement the federal government's home there and the city was quickly rebuilt and expanded. The British shelling of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor was the last time a foreign navy fired in the Chesapeake region; the attack prompted Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner," which later became the national anthem.