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4 7%e Constitution: That Delicate Balance
their cargo holds swollen with coffee from South American plantations,
would tie up to wooden wharves jutting out from the land. The coffee
would be off-loaded into adjoining four-story warehouses, warehouses that
also held cotton which the ships would carry away to northern mills to
be spun into cloth. This was a profitable and highly competitive business,
with only one indisputable requirement: a deep-water location and ser-
viceable dock. Craig and Barren's dock was one of the few in Baltimore
that could accommodate vessels of four and five hundred tons "drawing
upwards of seventeen feet of water."2
Today, Craig and Barren's warehouse is, of course, gone, but its
location can still be seen on the aged maps that decorate the entrance to
the Baltimore Historical Society. And from those maps the problem
becomes evident. Craig and Barren had decided to locate their shipping
operation at the foot of Aliceanna Street on the point. This location gave
them access to the markets and placed them on the eastern extremity of
the point. It also placed them closest to the mainland — probably out of the
sweep of the more powerful currents of the Patapsco River, but, unfortu-
nately, in the way of runoff from the city itself.
The boom that allowed Fell's Point to expand so quickly also had
its impact on the city of Baltimore. Building went on continually and
construction meant excavation; the excavation combined with the rain
and the swollen streams of Baltimore County meant vast amounts of
silt-laden runoff pouring into the Patapsco River, and settling, as it turned
out, beneath the docks of traders like Craig and Barren. Just two years
after the purchase, the wharf was under siege from silt and mud. Fearing
for their business, the owners decided to fight city hall — a decision that
led ultimately to the first real test of the Bill of Rights. The question was
whether Baltimore could deprive Craig and Barren bf their property
without due process and without just compensation.
THE LEGAL BATTLE BEGINS
In 1817 Hezekiah Waters and ten other enraged wharf owners, in-
cluding Barren and Craig, wrote to the city charging that "Our Wharves
are likely to be filled upe and ruinned by reason of the large torrent or
collection of rain Water which descends from Washington Street directly
to the front of Our Wharves. . . . [F]or within one year last past, many parts
of Our Wharves have been filled up with sand and dirt from four to six feet.
We apprehend, and fear, that if the City Commissioners continue digging
diteches to alter the Water Course . . . that Our Wharves will be useless to
us, and intirely ruinned."3 The wharf owners then requested that the sand
and dirt be dredged at the expense of the city.
But the city of Baltimore turned a deaf ear to the businessmen, and
the paving of streets, dam building, and regrading continued. By 1822
Barren and Craig had endured all they could and hired a lawyer, Charles
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