During his lifetime, John Woodland Crisfieldwas one of the most notable political and economic figures on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His career encompassed all the major regional developments of the time: land speculation, oyster production, the secession crisis, and railroad development. He served in the State House of Delegates and the United States Congress.

Born near Chesterown, in Kent County, Maryland, on November 8, 1806, Crisfield was educated at Washington College in Chestertown. Later, he studied law and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1830, practicing law in Princess Anne in Somerset County. He quickly became active in local politics as a member of the Whig Party and was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1836. As a young lawyer, Crisfield championed internal improvements, particularly canals and railroads. His lawyer skills made him an influential broker for the construction of flourmills and shipyards in Somerset County and the lower Eastern Shore. He was elected as a Whig Congressman and served in the Thirtieth Congress (1847-1849). During that period he became friends with a young Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.

Crisfield remained a staunch unionist and counseled against the doctrines of states rights, during the late antebellum period. He served as a delegate to the Maryland state constitutional convention in1850. As the secession crisis deepened, Crisfield defended both the rights of slaveholders and the union. Crisfield, a slaveholder himself, was allied by marriage and business association with most of the planter families on the Eastern Shore. In 1861, Crisfield was a member of the national Peace Conference of 1861 held in Washington, D.C.

Elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress (1861-1863), Crisfield had a stormy and controversial tenure. He represented the First District of Maryland, which was a hotbed of secessionism and defied local firebrands who wanted their region to join the Confederacy. In Congress, Crisfield supported Lincoln, a fact that did not endear him to Somerset County, where Lincoln in 1860 had received three votes. Crisfield also clashed with Lincoln over his proslavery views. Crisfield and his fellow unionists from the border states of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were in the very difficult position of being pro-slave and pro-union at a time when such a position was becoming untenable. In 1863, Congressman Crisfield broke with the Lincoln position over the president’s plan to initiate compensated emancipation in Maryland for slaveholders. Crisfield also angered republicans and generals in Washington.

In his bid for reelection in 1863, John Crisfield was defeated by John A. Creswell, a pro-emancipation candidate from Cecil County. During the election there was excessive tampering with the ballot boxes at election stations in Somerset County and other Crisfield stronghold areas. On Election Day, the United States military ordered the polling places in Princess Anne closed. After his defeat, Crisfield appealed the results to the Maryland Committee on Contested Elections of the legislature. The House Committee on Elections, which comprised a majority of Lincoln and Creswell supporters, found that the use of the military in the election had been “necessary and proper.”

After the Civil War, Crisfield organized and served as president of the Eastern Shore Railroad and built a line from Salisbury to Somers Cove in Somerset County. He was instrumental in transforming the local oyster industry there into a nationally oriented business. The grateful citizens of Somers Cove renamed their town Crisfield in his honor. John Crisfield died in Princess Anne, Maryland on January 12, 1897.

Wennersten, John R. “John W. Crisfield and Civil War Politics in Maryland.” Maryland Historical Magazine 99 (Spring 2004).