“‘Slavery is doomed, the question is how it should be eliminated:’ The Long Arc of Emancipation in Maryland”
A Thesis Presented To the Faculty of the Graduate School of Millersville University, Pennsylvania
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
By Sarah Brucksch May 2018
This Thesis for the Master of Arts Degree by
Sarah Brucksch
has been approved on behalf of the
Graduate School by
Thesis Committee: (signatures on file)
Tracey M. Weis, Ph.D. Research Advisor
Robyn Lily Davis, Ph.D. Committee Member
Clarence V. H. Maxwell Committee Member
______May 2018______Date
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PREFACE
Maryland’s position as a loyal Union border state during the Civil War Era has been a point of interest for me. To explore evidence of the struggle that transpired among the various populations within the state and see how individuals sought to change their own future has been extremely intriguing. Exploring Maryland’s progressive journey towards emancipation seemed to satisfy my curiosity of individualized perseverance. While researching I discovered a vast amount of evidence which proved that emancipation took place within the state in three strategies that seemed to overlap with one another: abolition/manumission, colonization, and emancipation. As a Marylander I was absolutely surprised by the evidence and I found myself wanting to learn about the struggle towards freedom and how various narratives contributed to the larger understanding of emancipation. I want to thank Dr. Robyn Davis and Dr. Clarence Maxwell for all their insightful comments, guidance, and remarks on my research. And I personally would like to thank Dr. Tracey Weis for being my mentor and counselor, who encouraged me to look beyond the evidence to dig a deeper to find the narrative and story waiting to be told.
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ABSTRACT OF THESIS
“’SLAVERY IS DOOMED, THE QUESTION IS HOW IT SHOULD BE ELIMATED:’
THE LONG ARC OF EMANCIPATION IN MARYLAND
By
Sarah Brucksch
Millersville University, 2018
Millersville, Pennsylvania
Directed by Dr. Tracey Weis
Emancipation is one of the greatest accomplishments in American history. It spanned two centuries creating a long arc towards freedom in Maryland, a loyal border state, through three strategies of abolitionist movements/manumission, colonization, and emancipation. Antislavery supporters petitioned to free the enslaved through the legal documentation of manumission, but some enslaved took it upon themselves to petition individually for their freedom. The continuously growing free black population in Maryland caused pro and antislavery supporters to turn to colonization, but many free blacks disagreed with forced emigration, deciding to stay and fight for freedom. Antislavery, proslavery, and free blacks struggled and debated over gradual vs. immediate emancipation which resulted in various state and federal legislation to gradually achieve freedom. Maryland experienced a long arc towards emancipation through these three strategies that resulted in a divaricate pursuit of various groups and individuals who sought to create a society built on freedom.
Signature of Investigator Sarah A. Brucksch Date May 2018
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Table of Context
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………iii
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………...iv
List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………..vi
List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………vii
Timeline……………………………………………………………………………….viii
Introduction and Historiography……………………………………………………….1
Abolition and Manumission…………………………………………………………....5
Colonization……………………………………………………………………………17
Emancipation…………………………………………………………………………..28
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...45
Biography/References………………………………………………………………….51
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List of Tables
Table 1.1 Gradual manumission in Baltimore: Length of service between deed of manumission and date of freedom, 1789-1830 10
Table 1.2 African American Slave and Free Black Population in Maryland, 1790-1830 12
Table 1.3 African American Slave and Free Black Population in Maryland, 1840-1860 29
vi
List of Figures and Map
1. Location of Monthly Meetings of Baltimore Yearly Meeting 5 2. Location of Monthly Meetings of Baltimore Yearly Meeting 5 3. Map of West Coast of Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas including the colony of Liberia 19
4. “Arrival of freedmen and their families at Baltimore, Maryland – an every day scene” 38
vii
Timeline of Events in Maryland and the United States
1664 Maryland legalizes slavery 1672 First Baltimore Yearly Meeting 1775 Revolutionary War Begins 1783 Maryland prohibits the importation of Slaves The Revolutionary War Ends 1796 The Maryland General Assembly liberalizes State manumission laws regarding how a slaveowner can free the enslaved 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves 1809 Maryland General Assembly creates a law for the status of children born to manumitted female slaves 1816 Creation of the American Colonization Society (ASC) 1831 Creation of the Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS) 1832 Maryland legislature prohibits free blacks from entering the state Nat Turner Rebellion 1850 Fugitive Slave Law 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Court Case 1858 Maryland State Legislature enacts a law that any slave older than 45 will not be manumitted 1860 Maryland General Assembly outlaws Manumission by deed or will Abraham Lincoln is Elected President 1861 First Confiscation Act The Civil War Begins 1862 Second Confiscation Act Emancipation in the District of Columbia (D. C.) 1863 Emancipation Proclamation 1864 Slavery is abolished in Maryland 1865 The Civil War Ends The 13th Amendment Creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau 1868 The 14th Amendment 1870 The 15th Amendment
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Introduction and Historiography On March 28, 1863, almost two years into the Civil War, the Easton (Md.)
Gazette declared, “Slavery is doomed, the question is how it should be eliminated.”1 This
statement echoed the same sentiments conveyed in early 1863 at the Union State Central
Committee by former Baltimore Mayor and Conservative Maryland Unionist Thomas
Swann. Swann stated at this meeting, “We are in the midst of a revolution. We could not
bring slavery back if we desired it.”2 The revolution Swann referred to was, in fact, the
Civil War. The Civil War was partially caused by the political, economic, religious, and
cultural debate on the topic of slavery – was it morally wrong to own another human
being and how does slavery fit into the principles of freedom and democracy in the new
republic? Marylanders' viewpoints on slavery gradually changed as the Civil War
continued longer than anyone anticipated. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on
January 1, 1863, excluded Maryland; this document stirred abolition momentum toward
the destruction of slavery in the state. Maryland was a divided state, much like the rest of
the nation, where abolitionists and slaveowners fought to preserve their beliefs on the
issues that surrounded slavery. Was slavery wrong? What would happen if all the slaves
were freed? Where would the plantation owners and farmers get their labor from? What
does emancipation mean? How do anti-slavery supporters eliminate slavery? The latter question was one that Maryland would have to discover the answer to itself through the long arc toward emancipation.
1 William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 268. 2 Harris, Lincoln and the Border States, 268. Historians have taken multiple approaches to interpreting the Civil War and the
history of slavery in the United States, but only a handful have carefully examined
slavery and the struggle of Maryland, a border state, towards emancipation. Charles
Wagandt’s informative work, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland,
1862-1864 (1964) and Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle
Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (1985)3, place Maryland’s struggle with slavery and emancipation at the forefront. Charles Wagandt focuses on the period of
1862-1864 as a political movement when Maryland debated on the grounds of freedom for enslaved men and women. He labels this political movement as a “revolution” that vibrated throughout the United States over the struggle for freedom in an old-fashioned social and economic order.4 Barbara Fields introduces the term “middle ground” to address the state's geographical, geopolitical, and social position during the Civil War
Era. She further examines how the relationships among various populations (enslaved,
free blacks, slaveholders, and non-slaveholders) in Maryland experienced a series of
tense confrontations between slavery and freedom to reach emancipation. Wagandt and
Fields have different approaches to the elimination of slavery that produced a political
revolution/struggle or created a social/political middle ground in Maryland’s pathway
towards emancipation.
Anita Aidt Guy examines antislavery activity in Maryland by tracing the
activities/movements of the enslaved seeking freedom in Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit
to End Slavery, 1850-1864 (1997). Guy’s evidence evaluates the antislavery movement in
3 Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 4 Charles Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864 (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), vii. 2
Maryland’s struggle against slavery that occurred in three approaches: manumission,
colonization, and emancipation. These three approaches are continuously intertwined
throughout Guy's argument as a precursor and progression toward emancipation. Because
of Maryland's unique geographical position between the north and south as a border state,
it "had to find a middle ground if [it] was to remain united during this period of sectional
turmoil."5 Guy concludes that valiant efforts were taken to eliminate slavery, but it did
not completely subdue the racial division between whites and blacks. Military action taken during the Civil War shifted the focus from slavery to military policies. But the shift still gave antislavery advocates a platform to grant freedom to slaves who enlisted in the Union army. Compared to the historiographical works of Fields and Wagandt, Guy’s research discovers that the approach and movements of manumission, colonization, and emancipation resulted in Maryland’s divaricate pursuit towards freedom.
Ira Berlin, a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland, has written several books on the topic of slavery in the United States on the subcategories of free blacks in the antebellum south, the long history of slavery in the United States from the beginning and contributed to co-authored books on emancipation and the Civil War. In
The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States argues “that freedom’s arrival was the product not of a moment or a man, but of a process in which many participated – in the case of the United States, a near-century-long process.”6 The
destruction of slavery was not achieved by a proclamation or occasion, but by a
movement with a complex history and multiple people and narratives. For Berlin, the
5 Anit Aidt Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit to End Slavery, 1850-1864 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), 451. 6 Ira Berlin, The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015), 8. 3
demise of slavery did not end with the Civil War but continued into reconstruction when
free blacks actively sought and created their post-emancipation status. Slavery’s destruction was achieved with the same determination and brutality that created it when the United States was formed to reach the long-awaited emancipation.7 The
historiography of Maryland has focused on a period, for example, 1862-1864, or certain
political or social movements towards emancipation. Building on Berlin, Fields, Guy, and
Wagandt’s work, my extensive examination of manumission/abolition movements,
colonization, and emancipation reveals that Maryland developed a long divaricate pursuit
towards the achievement of freedom through the movements of individuals, narratives,
and movements/causes to reach the long arc of emancipation.
7 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 10-11. 4
Abolition and Manumission
Figure 1 and 2. Location of Monthly Meetings of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. Map from A History of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends by Bliss Forbush.
Quakers were among the most ardent abolitionists who sought to end slavery
during this long emancipation in Maryland. During the American Revolution (1775-
1783) many white Americans re-evaluated their stances on slavery while many enslaved men and women and Quakers continued to strive towards freedom. Historian Ira Berlin surmised, “throughout the new Republic, a coalition of patrician revolutionaries and evangelical sectarians joined Quakers, long the mainstay of the antislavery movement, to
5
challenge slavery.”8 Revolutionary men and women were reconsidering the meaning of
“freedom” and “liberty” against slavery, and the evangelical sectarians such as
Methodists and Protestants joined the Quaker’s cause to challenge slavery. The Baltimore
Yearly Meeting Society of Friends, which first met in 1672, was organized into small
regional quarters that allowed the Quakers to combat the issue of slavery in Maryland
(Figs.1-2). After the Revolutionary Era, Quaker members of the society and church
leaders were motivated to combat slavery by prohibiting members of the Society of
Friends from owning slaves, which created a gradual manumission procedure for those
who owned enslaved men and women.9 The Baltimore Yearly Meeting took
individualized action towards legislative bodies (between 1850-1864) to improve the
lives of enslaved men and women who were seeking freedom on their own. Such
challenges included petitioning the Maryland General Assembly to grant enslaved men
and women freedom suits, restricting the slave trade, aiding enslaved fugitives towards
the free northern territories via the Underground Railroad and other means. Black
abolitionist and activist William J. Watkins created the Watkin’s Academy for Negro
Youth (between 1820-1828) to educate the free African American children thus improving their lives.10 Manumission gave white abolitionists the ability to strive towards
individualized freedom while the petition for freedom suits sought by enslaved men and
women gave them the chance to obtain freedom on their own accord.
8 Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 20. 9 Anita Aidt Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit to End Slavery, 1850-1864 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), 147. 10 “William Watkins (b. 1803 – d. 1858),” Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series), MSA SC 5496- 002535, https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/002500/002535/html/002535bio.html, (Accessed June 22nd, 2018). 6
There were three ways in which a slaveowner would want to manumit their
enslaved men and women: on the grounds of economic, political, or religious beliefs.
Maryland's economic situation was deteriorating because tobacco no longer proved to be
a profitable crop on the market, many slave owners sold their slaves to other slave owners
in the state or in the South who needed slave laborers. Some slaveowners decided to stop
producing tobacco and released all their slaves, while others sought the profit of switching from tobacco to the less labor-intensive production of grains and cereals. There were two forms of manumission: immediate and delayed; the latter worked in favor of the slaveowner who bargained with their enslaved to reap the labor and profit. Then after a
set number of years, the enslaved individual would be manumitted. Historian T. Stephen
Whitman maintained that a master might manumit his slaves due to benevolent behavior,
egalitarian principles of morality, fear for their soul, desire for economic gain, or all the
above.11 In accordance with egalitarian principles, many religiously motivated
individuals viewed slavery as a strike against God’s will to own another human being and
intermixed with the political principles of liberty and freedom upon which American
society was created. The Baltimore Methodists and Quakers in Maryland in the early
1780s denounced slaveholding and sought to ban slave dealing and holding. By the 1790s
the Baltimore Quakers took further action by exerting their efforts in petitioning the
Maryland General Assembly and Congress to develop laws restricting the slave trade. In
the Chesapeake, “manumissions created a substantial class of free black people in the
region for the first time, thereby severing the connection between race and servitude…”12
11 T. Stephen Whitman, The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 96. 12 Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of the Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 419. 7
Manumissions were executed by slaveholders while freedom suits were pursued by
enslaved men and women, thus proving a way towards the destruction of slavery and by
1830, 35% of the total population in Maryland was African American. The decline in
tobacco production, Quaker denunciation of slavery, and legislative manumission started
to dissolve the stronghold of the slavery connection between race and servitude.
Throughout the eighteenth-century wheat production increased in both Maryland and Virginia due to the lull in the tobacco market. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop that needed a constant working force to harvest it all year round and the crop caused harmful effects to the soil thus making it difficult to harvest anything other than tobacco.
With the combination of “ the dislocation in mercantile ties and the depression which accompanied independence speeded the shift to cereal crops and transformed the agricultural patterns of the Upper South.”13 The decrease in tobacco production,
accompanied by the shift to cereal farming, along with the increase in the free black
population from manumission, gave free blacks the opportunity to work on their own.
Slaveowners were not ready to abandon their human property, but the current economic situation with the decrease in the tobacco market, soil exhaustion, and deterioration of authority over their enslaved men and women, forced many owners to consider freeing individuals through manumissions.14 In Maryland, enslaved men or women were either sold to other plantation owners who needed more enslaved laborers or were manumitted.
In other cases, enslaved men and women obtained their own freedom by running away.
Masters who wanted to capture fugitives placed advertisements in the local newspapers
13 Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 26. 14 A Guide to the History of Slavery in Maryland, The Maryland State Archives, Legacy of Slavery in Maryland: An Archives of Maryland Electronic Publication, https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/intromsa/pdf/slavery_pamphlet.pdf, (Accessed May 27th, 2018), 13. 8
with rewards to encourage slave catchers and other masters to capture the runaway
enslaved men and women. W. N. Dorsett of Prince George’s County offered "Fifty
dollars reward for negro boy SAM, or SAM MACKALL…I will gave $20 for him if he
is caught in Prince George's County, and delivered to me, or committed to jail…and the
above of $50 if he shall be caught out of the county…"15 Runaway ads provided a way
for slaveowners to recapture their property to maintain their accustomed power over the
enslaved.
When slaveholders delayed or gradually manumitted enslaved men and women it
allowed them to take advantage of the labor, while the enslaved worked harder to build a
reputation for future employment outside the bondage of slavery. While the Anne
Arundel County Court manumission records do not specify a slaveholder’s motives for
manumission, the records do include the name and residence of the slaveholder followed
by the first name (possibly the age) of the slave/slaves being freed and date of age in
which freedom would be granted. Other records provided a further physical description
of the person being freed and, in some cases marital/parental status, as well as the names
of the spouse and children. Jemingham Drury an Anne Arundel slaveowner proposed a
negotiated manumission for five of his bonds people (Ruth, Daniel, Levi, Jem, and
Hilliary). Negotiated manumissions extended service warrants for self-hiring or self-
purchase. Drury did not manumit his five slaves all at once but set dates that maximized
economic gains through their labor.
15 “Advertisement, FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD… (January 8, 1840)”, National Intelligencer (Washington DC) Beneath the Underground: The Flight to Freedom and Communities in Antebellum Maryland, Maryland State Archives, http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000000/000096/images/18400108ni.pdf (Accessed June 5th, 2018). 9
Daniel to be free on the twenty fifth day of December seventeen hundred and ninety eight, Levi to be free on the twenty fifth day of December eighteen hundred and nine Jem to be free on the twenty fifth day of December eighteen hundred and ten, Hilliary to be free on the twenty fifth day of December eighteen hundred and Eleven…16
There are two different forms of manumission – immediate and delayed/gradual. Delayed
manumission allowed masters to “ensure flexibility regarding the length of a slave’s term
of service or price of self-purchase.”17 In the case of Drury, he delayed manumitting his five slaves at various times to, like other slave owners, take advantage of the economic
slave labor until the recorded date (see table 1.1).
TABLE 1.1
Gradual manumission in Baltimore: Length of service between the deed of manumission and date of freedom, 1789-1830 Years to be served Percentage of all gradual manumissions <5 15%
5-10 33%
11-15 21%
16-20 15%
>20 16%
Source: Stephen Whitman, "Table 3 Gradual manumission in Baltimore: Length of service between the deed of manumission and date of freedom, 1789-1830," in "Diverse Good Causes: Manumission and the Transformation of Urban Slavery," Social Science History, 19, no. 3 (Autumn, 1995): 347, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171490, (Accessed June 23rd, 2018).
16 Anne Arundel County Court, Manumission Record, 1797-1807, Vol. 825, Archives of Maryland Online, MSA CM48-1, http://aomol.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000825/html/am825--3.html (Accessed May 10th, 2018), 3. 17 Whitman, Price of Freedom, 103. 10
The slave population in Maryland projected a steady incline until it reached a
peak in 1810, and in the subsequent years decline due to the growing interest in
manumission and increase of fugitive slaves. Manumission was a complex matter.
Maryland’s free black population doubled from 1790 to 1800 and then from 1800 to 1810
there was another increase, but from 1810 to 1820 the free black population increased by
only 5,775. Then from 1820 to 1830, there was an increase of 11,690 free blacks in the
state and as the free black population increased the slave population seems to gradually
increase and then decline after 1810 (see table 1.2). This fluctuation attributed to
slaveholders’ desires to maximize profit, while the enslaved desired to negotiate/secure
freedom for themselves and their family. Even “[t]hough state law discouraged the
manumission of slaves too old or infirm to take care of themselves – between 1796 and
1832 owners were forbidden to emancipate slaves over 45 – manumission provided a
tempting means of casting away slaves who had become a burden…”18 It gave the
Maryland State Government the authority to prevent slaveholders from casting away any
enslaved man or woman over the age of 45 from being manumitted. The 1796 law was a
revision of the 1790 law that stated no enslaved exceeding the age of 50 years old would
be granted manumission. On December 31, 1796, the Maryland General Assembly
passed an act that declared, "it shall not be lawful…to import or bring into this state, by
land or water, any negro, mulatto, or other slaves, for sale, or reside in the state…"19 The
1796 law consisted of several impactful provisions that reaffirmed the law of bringing
18 Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, 32. 19 Laws of Maryland: Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1796, Vol. 105, Chapter 67, Archives of Maryland Online (Maryland State Archives: October 31st, 2014), https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000105/html/am105--249.html (Accessed May 14th, 2018), 249. 11 slaves into the state. It also prevented manumitted slaves from petitioning against whites that led to constant challenges by the enslaved men and women for freedom throughout the Chesapeake. Ira Berlin concluded, “the defenders of slavery hit upon a mechanism that would both restrict manumissions and reduce the state’s free black population.”20 It required that newly freed slaves leave the state shortly after being manumitted. In the
Chesapeake, the greatest fear among the slaveholders was the growing class of free blacks. Free blacks challenged the foundations of slavery through individualized petitions of freedom which was gradually tearing apart the connection between the enslaved and slave masters.
TABLE 1.2 African American Slave and Free Black Population in Maryland, 1790-1830
Year Slaves Slaves as a Free Free Blacks as Total Percentage of Blacks a Percentage Population Total of Total Population Population 1790 103, 036 32.2%** 8, 043 2.5%** 319, 728 1800 105, 635 30.9%** 19, 587 5.7%** 341,543* 1810 111, 502 29.3%** 33, 927 8.9%** 380,546* 1820 107, 356 26.3%** 39, 702 9.7%** 407, 350 1830 102, 994 23.6%** 51, 392 11.8%** 435, 123
Source: Data adapted from The Maryland State Archives: Legacy of Slavery in Maryland: An Archives of Maryland Electronic Publication, “Black Marylanders 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830: African American Population by County, Status & Gender,” http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/research/census1790.html (Accessed May 12th, 2018). *Data adapted from University of Maryland Baltimore County User Pages, “Slave, Free Black, and White Population, 1780-1830,” https://userpages.umbc.edu/~bouton/History407/SlaveStats.htm (Accessed May 31st, 2018). **Calculations were done by hand by dividing the slave and free black populations numbers against the total population numbers for the State of Maryland.
20 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 99. 12
The restrictions on manumissions did not end with the age cap but were taken
further in November 1809 when the Maryland State Legislature introduced a law which
was implemented to resolve the divaricate pursuit of the enslaved, citing that their
mother’s manumission constituted their release from slavery. The law gave slaveowners
the authority to determine the status of freedom of a child born of a female slave that was
manumitted. But if no such status document was presented to the court then the state would deliver the condition of status. This was a gray area when procuring manumission for enslaved men and women if these slaves were not granted their freedom they
achieved it through self-purchase or their masters found other ways around the law. In
Anne Arundel County, John Adams, a free man of color, freed a 31-year-old woman
named Rachel and her son John, to whom she gave birth while enslaved. They were
declared free along with a three-year-old little girl named Elvina Anne in 1818.21 This
law encouraged the slaveholders’ power over those in bondage and according to Jessica
Millwood, “the 1809 law represented what lawmakers, slaveholders, and bond people
already knew – that freedom like enslavement was tied to a bondwoman’s womb.”22 This
restriction ushered in post-birth status that gave planters and slaveowners the
authority/power to profit from the child’s labor or until the child reached a suitable age to
stand on their own. The implementation of the 1809 manumission restriction law explains
why there was an increase of about 6,000 free slaves in Maryland (see table 1.2), but
21 Anne Arundel County Court, Manumission Record, 1816-1844 Vol. 831, Archives of Maryland Online (Maryland State Archives), https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000831/html/am831--93.html (Accessed May 16th, 2018), 93-94. 22 Jessica Millwood, ‘That All Her Increase Shall Be Free’: Enslaved Women’s Bodies and the Maryland 1809 Law of Manumission,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 3 (July 2012): 364, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, (Accessed May 16th, 2018). 13
there were some enslaved who continued to petition for freedom or simply fled toward
the free Northern states.
Even with the restricted laws on manumission the abolitionists and the Baltimore
Methodists and Quakers sought loopholes in the law while pushing back against the
defenders of slavery. A group of Quakers residing in Baltimore created a Baltimore
Yearly Meeting of Friends organization (established in 1672 to further the spread of
Quakerism), a smaller sector to The Society of Friends, to forbid Quakers from owning, buying, or selling slaves. The punishment against said actions was the removal of membership from the Society. One of the most Quaker-populated towns in Maryland was
Brookeville in Montgomery County. The Brookeville Friends were not true abolitionists who advocated for a nationwide ban on slavery, but “they ardently condemned enslavement in their own families and religious meetings…”23 Some Quakers in
Brookeville and surrounding towns were more likely to give up their slaves to strive
towards abolitionists ideologies, but there were some who still held onto their slaves or
did not own slaves at all. Brookeville Quakers granted freedom to adult slaves. They did,
however, promise freedom to young boys and girls once they reached the age of eighteen
and twenty-one, ages in which the enslaved boys and girls would become adults and be
able to sustain a life for themselves. According to James Martin Wright’s study of free
Negros in Maryland, “the law against manumitting the young or aged was frequently
violated or evaded.”24 Evidence of this violation was present in Anne Arundel County in
23 Megan O’ Hara “This iniquitous practice’: Brookeville’s Slave Problem,” Brookeville 1814. (2014), Maryland State Archives Online, https://msa.maryland.gov/brookeville/slavery.html (Accessed May 15th, 2018). 24 Sumner Eliot Matison, “Manumission by Purchase,” The Journal of Negro History 33, no. 2 (April 1948): 150, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2715069 (Accessed May 13th, 2018). 14
1830 when two of the largest deeds manumitting slaves were written by women, Sarah E.
Murray, and Amey Howard. Sarah Murray freed a 10-year-old boy named Edward, who was handed over to his grandfather until he turned eighteen and Amey Howard freed seven women and eleven men ranging from the age of 1 to 41.25 Murray’s manumission effort falls in line with the example implemented by the Quakers of Brookeville while
Howard’s effort ignores the restriction on manumission for young and old enslaved men and women. Almost all of Murray’s slaves were granted immediate manumission, except
Edward, while most of Howard’s slaves were given delayed manumission due to their young age.
Manumission of slaves continued following the age parameters, but the Nat
Turner Rebellion caused a frenzy in 1831 that prompted Maryland to create a new manumission law. According to this new law “Masters were permitted to free their slaves of all ages by wills or deed, provided the freed slaves consented to leave Maryland.
Those who refused to depart would be arrested and transported out of the state.”26 The
law benefitted the abolitionist, but only if the freed slave gave consent to leave Maryland.
In some cases, the enslaved renounced their freedom out of fear of family separation
caused by manumission. Individualized or group manumission occurred through
slaveowners petitioning the county courts to grant the enslaved freedom which allowed
the masters to draw out manumission. But a question that remained on the minds of
abolitionists was - what about nationalized emancipation? Shouldn’t the long arc towards
emancipation be a national movement and not a state-wide notion? When enslaved men
25 Sean Condon, “The Significance of Group Manumissions in Post-Revolutionary Rural Maryland,” Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 1 (March 2011): 77, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (Accessed May 15th, 2018). 26 Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit, 17. 15
and women were not granted manumission, they obtained their own freedom by running
via the Underground Railroad with aid from the abolitionist Quakers. Samuel Green, who
was born in 1802 near Dorchester County close to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay,
found a way of obtaining his freedom without the involvement of the Underground
Railroad. When Green’s master, Henry Nicholas, died in 1832, his will outlined that
Samuel Green would put in five more years of work as a slave, but after those five years,
he would become a free man.27 Shortly after his master’s death, Green secured enough
money to obtain self-liberation for himself and his wife Kitty several years later. Self-
liberation provided a way for slaves like Green to reunite their families and sustain a
place for manumitted slaves in society.
By 1845, one Baltimore politician observed, “With all the restrictions which
legislation has imposed on manumission, they still go on… ‘It may be taken for certain
that they will go on; that nothing can stop them.”28 Thirteen years later in 1858, the
Maryland State Legislature tightened up the law once again by setting the age limit at
forty-five with the ability to be self-sufficient. But the true question was – who would
determine if an enslaved was self-sufficient or not? Would it be the court system or the
masters? The tide changed once again when The Cecil Whig published on June 9, 1860,
that a law was passed prohibiting manumissions as of March 1, 1860. But during the
three months from the first of March to the first of June “there was an unprecedented
number of one hundred and thirty-six deeds of manumission placed on record in this
27 Jim Duffy, Tubman Travels: 32 Underground Railroad Journeys on Delmarva (Cambridge, Maryland: Secrets of the Eastern Shore, 2017), 116. 28 Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 142-143. 16
county [Frederick County].”29 Manumission caused a labor shortage, but the law did not
prevent slaveowners during this three-month interval from giving freedom to their enslaved laborers at a brisk rate through manumission. This illegal action ratio of manumission deeds has been taken from the aggregate of slaves in Maryland and adds to the extensive free black population. There were many in Maryland who saw the
institution of slavery unraveling through economic changes from tobacco to cereal grain
farming, the increase in the free black population through manumission and self-
purchase, and the religious argument that all men are created equal under God.
Manumission gave way to the growth of the free black population, but the petitions for
freedom among the enslaved encouraged more progressive actions towards freedom.
Anxiety spread among the white slaveowners who feared the growing presence and
motives of the free black population. The only foreseeable strategy to calm such anxieties
was to revert to the idea presented by Thomas Jefferson.
29 The Cecil Whig. (Elkton, Md.), 09 June 1860. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016348/1860-06-09/ed-1/seq-2/ (Accessed May 26th, 2018). 17
Colonization In early January 1811, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Lynch on his personal
views towards colonization. He stated, “I have no hesitation in saying that I have ever
thought it the most desirable measure which could be adopted for gradually drawing off
this part of our population most advantageously for themselves as well as for us.”30
Transplanting free blacks to Africa with the existing inhabitants would return the country back to its origin civilization. Jefferson furthered colonization efforts in 1821, “Nor is it less certain that the two races [whites and blacks], equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”31 Colonization was a scheme for achieving social order and returning to the
homogenous ideals of the eighteenth-century republic. Slavery maintained the social
hierarchy that allowed slave owners to extort economic gains from the labor of the
enslaved. But the existence of the free black population posed a contrast and threat to a
homogenous society. Colonizing free blacks in a foreign land was the answer to
Jefferson's statement that the two races could not coexist.32 Deportation of free blacks to
colonize Africa satisfied Jefferson’s assertion that the two races could not coexist and the
distinctive line that separated both races continued through the argument of colonization.
During the winter of 1816-1817, the American Colonization Society (ACS) was
created to push forward the strategy and implication of colonization. It was Robert
30 Thomas Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson to John Lynch, 21 January 1811,” Founders Online, National Archives, Last modified June 13th, 2018, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-03-02- 0243, (Accessed October 13th, 2018). 31 Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, Excerpts on Slavery, 1821, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/documents/ih199642.htm (Accessed September 28th, 2018). 32 David M. Streifford, “The American Colonization Society: An Application of Republican Ideology to Early Antebellum Reform,” The Journal of Southern History 45, no. 2 (May 1979): 204, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2208152, (Accessed October 11th, 2018). 18
Finely, a New Jersey Presbyterian minister, and Elias B. Caldwell, Henry Clay, along with Marylanders Robert Goldsborough and Robert Goodloe Harper who created the
American Colonization Society.33 The mission of the American Colonization Society
(ACS), also known as the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in
the United States, was to facilitate the emigration of free or recently manumitted men and
women to freedom in Africa with their consent. The goal of colonizationists was to
restore society to its republican ideals of homogenous and egalitarian communities
composed of vitreous citizens.34 Two terms that were used interchangeably among both
white and black supporters and opponents was colonization and emigration. Colonization
was the process of establishing control over an area while emigration was the act of
settling permanent residency in another country; arguably the free blacks who emigrated
to Libera were achieving both. Over time the ACS hoped it would gain enough political
influence and support to persuade the federal government to finance the creation of a
Liberian colony on the west coast of Africa.35 In 1817 Maryland embraced colonization
by forming an auxiliary to the national organization, the Maryland State Colonization
Society (MSCS).
But by 1831 it became an independent organization that established its own
colony known as Cape Palmas on the southeast end of Liberia, Africa. Coincidently the
same year MSCS became independent Virginia enslaved laborer Nat Turner stirred a
rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Historian Eugene D. Genovese noted, “Nat
33 Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit, 252. 34 Streifford, “The American Colonization Society,” The Journal of Southern History 45, no. 2 (May 1979): 202, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2208152, (Accessed October 11th, 2018). 35 Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation, Edited by C. Peter Ripley, Coedited by Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, and Donald Yacovone (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 2. 19
Turner raised only about seventy slaves but won fame by killing an unprecedented
number of whites. Since the previous plots and risings in Virginia had failed to draw white blood, Turner’s accomplishment stood out all the more.”36 The rebellion pushed
further the cause of separating the two races and encouraged Maryland legislators
towards colonization. Like the slaveholding states, Maryland legislators instituted new laws following the rebellion to regulate and restrict flight of free blacks and enslaved.37
The Southampton insurrection intensified the fear of slave rebellion among whites, but it
gave encouragement to blacks to control their own destiny. According to Anita Guy,
"Disgust over the few emigrants being sent from the state provoked Marylanders to
establish their own society rather than allow the national association to reap the financial
benefits of Maryland's donations."38 As an independent organization, the society
possessed the ability to secure funds toward the new colony of Cape Palmas also known
as Maryland in Liberia (see figure 3).
36 Eugene D. Genovese, “Book Four: Whom God Hath Hedged In,” Roll, Jordon, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 592-593. 37 “Maryland State Colonization Society Overview,” Maryland State Colonization Society, Legacy of Slavery in Maryland: An Archives of Maryland Electronic Publication, The Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/casestudies/mscs_overview.pdf (Accessed May 19th, 2018), p. 1. 38 Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit, 252. 20
Figure 3. Map of West Coast of Africa from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas including the colony of Libera. Located at the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D. C. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8882c.lm000002
In 1827 a prominent group of Maryland colonizationists met in Baltimore to
reorganize their branch society and encourage colonizationists to establish a multitude of local chapters throughout the state. Both pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters responded favorably to this new society. The support allowed the Maryland General
Assembly to grant the American Colonization Society an annual grant of $1,000 along with provisions to be sent with the free blacks who were leaving Maryland to emigrate to
Libera.39 The Nat Turner Rebellion (1831) spurred Maryland legislators to regulate
slavery and limit the amount of newly enslaved entering the state. The Rebellion brought
attention to the progressing relationship between the enslaved and the thriving free black
population in the state. This growing relationship was the catalyst for the creation of the
ASC and it's smaller state localized societies that fueled the colonization effort. To aid
39 Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, 1817-1902. Film no. M 13224-0014, http://mdhistory.msa.maryland.gov/msa_sc5977/scm013224/html/msa_sc5977_scm13224-0014.html (Accessed May 26th, 2018), 3. 21
colonization efforts the Maryland state treasurer was instructed by the Colonization
Society to pay the Board of Managers whatever financial funds were needed not
exceeding $20,000 the first year and no more than $200,000 over a span of twenty
years.40 With secured funds it allowed those in favor of colonization, such as traveling
agent Robert Smith Finely, to remove free blacks from the state from which manumission
was a part of the way towards removal. The pathway towards colonization would not as
be apparent or favored as the MSCS and ASC had hoped.
The farmers and fishermen opposed colonization because of its immediate effect
upon the laboring force in Maryland. One yeoman farmer in the state admitted: "that he
opposed the colonization society because it would ‘make Labouring men scarce.”41
Yeoman farmers and fisherman along the Chesapeake Bay depended on the labor of the free black population to harvest their crops and tend to their nets. Many tidewater farmers contributed to the discussion against the opposition of the growing free black population while others viewed colonization as robbing them of a free labor force. Not only did white farmers and fishermen oppose the colonization, but the free black population had their own opinions on the topic. John H. Kennard, a local travel agent for the colonization society, kept a documented journal of the individual enslaved who were manumitted and consented to leave their respective counties in Maryland to emigrate to Liberia. He writes in 1839 about the opposition among the blacks about colonization, that stated:
They [free blacks] are taught to believe and do believe, that this is their country; their home. A Country and home, now wickedly withholden from them, but which and they will presently possess, own and control. Those
40 Penelope Campbell, Maryland in Africa: The Maryland Colonization Society, 1831-1857 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 36. 41 Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 207. 22
who Emigrate to Liberia, are held up to the world, as the vilest and veriest traitors to their race, and especially so, towards their brethren in bonds.42
Kennard noted that free blacks saw the United States as their home, a place where they
are in bondage, but those who sought a new life in Liberia were labeled as “traitors to
their race”.
Every man woman and child who leaves this Country for Africa is considered one taken from the strength of the colored population and by his departure, as protracting the time when the black man will by the strength of his own arm compell those who despise and oppress him, to acknowledge his rights, redress his wrongs, and restore the wages, long due and inniquitously withholden.43
Emigrating to Liberia gave individual free blacks and families an opportunity to seek
emancipation. But by staying in the United States to fight for the complete emancipation
of all African Americans meant more than migrating to a country that was no longer their
home.
Freedom’s Journal was the nation’s first black newspaper that published
opposing views against colonization where many critics, such as William J. Watkins used
the paper to vocalize anticolonization sentiments. One publication voiced, “we are
opposed to colonization in principle, object, and tendency…There are many friends of
colonization, whom we respect…Their objects are emancipation; the salvation of Africa;
42 Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, 1817-1902. Manumission Lists, 1832-1834. Film no. M 13248-1, Records of Manumissions reported to the Board of State Colonization Managers. http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc5977/scm013248/html/msa_sc5977_scm13248-0124.html, (Accessed May 26th, 2018), 54-55. 43 Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society, 1817-1902. Manumission Lists, 1832-1834, Records of Manumission reported to the Board of State Colonization Managers, http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc5977/scm013248/html/msa_sc5977_scm13248-0124.html, (Accessed May 26th, 2018), 54-55. 23
and the extermination of the slave trade.”44 The Journal’s platform allowed free blacks to
express opposition to colonization and vocalize the identity of African Americans in
society without the fear of misrepresentation. How would the benevolent men of the ACS
and MSCS know what is best for the interest of the free blacks better than the free blacks
themselves? William Watkins questioned the true benevolent intentions of the society
and stated, “it appears very strange to me that those benevolent men should feel so much
for the condition of the free coloured people, and, at the same time cannot sympathize in
the least degree…”45 Anticolonization supporters and African American leaders, such as
Watkins, revealed that the colonization movement did not have antislavery goals but
intensified racial prejudice. If the free blacks remained at home, it would demonstrate
their place in society as citizens and undermine the foundation of slavery and contribute
to fracturing the racial divide.
Freedom’s Journal was one of several newspapers that questioned the mission of
colonization as well the sincerity of its supporters. The American Republican and
Baltimore Daily Clipper took a standby publishing an article on December 22, 1846, in
favor of the Maryland State Colonization Society. It evaluated, “…the Colonization
Society aims at their [free blacks] forcible expulsion from this country…The
Colonization Society proposes to stand between the colored man and oppression, and it is time to question the sincerity of its profession when it can be made to appear that any one
44 “COLONIZATION SOCIETY,” Freedom’s Journal (New York, New York: June 8, 1827), African- American Newspapers: The 19th Century, http://www.accessible.com.proxy- millersville.klnpa.org/accessible/print, (Accessed August 28th, 2018). 45 Bettye J. Gardner, “Opposition to Emigration, A Selected Letter of William Watkins (The Colored Baltimorean),” The Journal of Negro History 67, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 156, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717573, (Accessed August 8th, 2018). 24
man has been injured by its action.”46 Was the true mission and purpose of the MSCS to become the shield between the free blacks and the oppressive and racial power of the masters? To white and black anticolonization supporters the movement seemed to uproot free blacks and transplant them in Liberia, so they would no longer cause panic in
Maryland. Moving the free black population to the colony in Liberia intended to create a geographic separation between whites and free blacks without directly addressing the issue of slavery. Even though the free black population welcomed any aid from the manumission societies, such as the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Society of Friends, the free blacks had to rely on their own movement against slavery through churches, schools, and civic associations.47 One free black newspaper declared, “Colored men will have all
their rights in America, or there is no righteousness…” 48 If the free blacks wanted to combat the racial division between themselves and the whites, it rested on the shoulders of free blacks to increase the anticolonization movement.
Abolitionist supporter, African American social reformer, and orator Frederick
Douglass, an enslaved laborer who escaped from his bondage in Baltimore towards freedom in the northern states had his own thoughts on the idea of colonization. On
January 26, 1849, The North Star (Rochester, New York) printed a segment written by
Douglass that stated: “We look upon the recent debate in the Senate of the United States, over this wrinkled old “red herring” of colonization as a ruse to divert the attention of the
46 American Republican and Baltimore Daily Clipper. (Baltimore, Md.), 22 Dec. 1846. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83009567/1846-22-12/ed-1/seq-1/, (Accessed June 5th, 2018). 47 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 105. 48 “Why not let us alone? The American Colonization Profess,” The Colored American, (New York), October 20, 1838, African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century, http://www.accessible.com.proxy1.athensams.net/accessible/print, (Accessed September 15th, 2018). 25
people from the foul abomination [slavery]…”49 Colonization in the eyes of Douglass
was just a diversion from the bigger problem and forced the free black population
throughout the United States to move to Liberia. Speaking for the free black population
Douglass further explains, “We [free blacks] are of the opinion that the free colored people generally mean to live in America, and not Africa; and to appropriate a large sum for our removal, would merely be a waste of public money.”50 Why waste public funding to the American Colonization Society (ACS) and its branch organization the Maryland
State Colonization Society (MSCS) when the free black population wished to remain.
The free black population was not going to stand idle when so many of their people remained in bondage throughout the south and in the border states such as Maryland. The free black population was divided over the idea of colonization, so shared the views of
Douglass to stay in America while others saw it as an opportunity to achieve a life away
from the bonds of the slavery.
On February 4, 1858, the Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser
newspaper from Charles County, Maryland dedicated a special column to MSCS on the
progress of the society’s removal of free blacks to Liberia. “The report of the Board of
Managers of the Maryland State Colonization Society has been made, and contains a
good deal of matter interesting to those who sympathize with the cause.”51 The formation
of MSCS was met with success outlined the Port Tobacco Times, “The whole number of
49 Frederick Douglass, “Colonization,” in The North Star, Rochester: 26 January 1849, Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture, edited by Stephen Railton and the University of Virginia, http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abar03at.html, (Accessed June 20th, 2018). 50 Douglass, The North Star, Rochester: 26 January 1849, Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture, http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abar03at.html, (Accessed June 20th, 2018). 51 Port Tobacco Times, and Charles County Advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.), 04 Feb. 1858. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060060/1858-02-04/ed-1/seq-2/, (Accessed May 18th, 2018). 26
emigrants for the past two years was 99, of whom 38 were from the State of Maryland,
44 from Virginia, 15 from Tennessee and 2 from Kentucky.”52 Samson Ceasar, a free black who traveled to Liberia wrote to his former master about the conditions of life beyond bondage. He wrote: “…Since I landed I must Say that the people are doing better than I expected them two agreat many of them got rich…there is Some that are doing bad like in all other places…I hav Seen and heard that any body Can liv in this place if they will be industrous…”53 According to Maryland abolitionists, colonization was the price
of emancipation through uprooting and implanting free black men, women, and children gradually to Liberia. During 1858 the society continued its efforts in a limited form of
$5,000 in annual payments. With continuing colonization efforts, the state legislature
made modifications to the manumission laws. The laws stated once an enslaved man,
woman, or child had been freed they were required to leave Maryland within a confined
number of days. Colonization was a viable option for achieving emancipation, but the decreasing free African Americans willing to immigrate to Liberia severed the support of funds and the movement.
When pro-slavery and anti-secessionist Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday
Hicks delivered his inaugural to the Senate on January 13, 1858, he spoke very highly of the colonization. He stated, “Upon this matter [colonization] of her free colored
52 Port Tobacco Times, and Charles County Advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.), 04 Feb. 1858. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060060/1858-02- 04/ed-1/seq-2/, (Accessed May 18th, 2018). 53 Samson Ceasar, “Samson Ceasar to David S. Haselden 1834 February 1834,” University of Virginia Library, http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=legacy_mss/uvaBook/tei/liberian_letters/L340207.xml&chunk.id =d5&toc.id=&brand=default, (Accessed July 12th, 2018). 27
population, the State of Maryland is deeply concerned.”54 Alarmed by the exponential
growth of the free black population, and their increasing presence as freely-laboring
domestics and laborers in the city and in various counties throughout the state. Hicks
complained that the free black population clogged the industrial progress of the state, “It
is a matter every way worth our attention…and we may find in the favorite Maryland
policy of colonization [to assist] the Colonization Society.”55 According to Hicks the removal of the free black population would achieve the ultimate goal of colonizing
Liberia and secure future funds for the colonization movement. There were some white abolitionists who opposed slavery and granting civil rights to blacks. The fight towards civil rights was a contentious issue that divided the abolitionist movement, resulting in the gradual progression to emancipation.
Fewer than 1,200 free blacks from Maryland sailed to Liberia under the Maryland
State Colonization Society from 1831 to 1857 which did little to affect slavery through removing the racial hate directed at the free blacks or strengthen the bonds of servitude.56
Even though colonization provided a little effect on slavery, it did allow free blacks to
achieve a bit of safety by emigrating out of the range of racial discrimination and white
rage. Abolitionists and colonization supporters believed that establishing colonies in
Africa would regulate the growing free black/manumitted population as a strategy towards gradual emancipation. In 1862 other locations, other than Liberia, were sought out as possible colonization options. Colonization slowly disintegrated in the 1860s due
54 Thomas Holliday Hicks, “The Inaugural Address of Thomas H. Hicks, Governor of Maryland, Delivered in the Senate Chamber, at Annapolis, Wednesday January 13th, 1858,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.71538/?sp=12 (Accessed June 12th, 2018), 12. 55 Thomas Holliday Hicks, “The Inaugural Address of Thomas H. Hicks, Governor of Maryland,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.71538/?sp=13 (Accessed June 12th, 2018), 13. 56 Campbell, Maryland in Africa, 242. 28
to the foreseeable decline of free black emigrants transported to Africa. The
administration’s declining numbers of free blacks emigrating to Liberia also caused a cut-
off of support and funding from the colonization effort.
The rejection of colonization and the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation hints at a larger role for former slaves in the Union war efforts.57 Abolitionists sought to
free the enslaved through manumission, but the enslaved took matters into their hands by
petitioning for freedom suits and creating slave uprisings. Colonization intention was to
deal with the removal of the free black population to Liberia, but there was a pushback
among parts of the free black population that led to the demise of Thomas Jefferson’s
colonization. Dr. Orestes Augustus Brownson, an eminent Catholic met with President
Abraham Lincoln to discuss colonization and emancipation. From which, “Brownson
agreed with the President on the subject of colonization but urged Emancipation as a
means of saving the country…”58 Manumission increased the free black population while colonization was a means of transplanting free blacks to Liberia. Abolitionists, free blacks, and slaveowners proclaimed different strategies of achieving freedom through manumission and colonization, thus creating a mess. Emancipation was the final strategy in obtaining freedom and as Dr. Brownson stated, emancipation would be the means of saving the country from destruction.
57 Ira Berlin, et al, Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 121. 58 St. Mary’s Beacon, Leonard Town, Md, 04 Sept. 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060119/1862-09-04/ed- 1/seq-1, (Accessed October 6th, 2018). 29
Emancipation William Green, a former slave, penned, “My friends, my soul is roused within me
when I reflect what wrongs and sufferings my people have endured and are still enduring
because of this iniquitous system.”59 The fight towards freedom by both enslaved men
and women, free blacks, and abolitionists dates to the eighteenth century when Thomas
Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia about the foreseeable and inevitable
decline of slavery. It stated, “The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising
from the dust…preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation…”60
Manumission and colonization slowly chipped away at the power of the master, thus
giving enslaved men and women the opportunity to rise from the dust of bondage to fight
toward total emancipation. Still, slaveowners found ways to deny freedom to blacks
through restricted manumission laws and by uprooting and implanting free blacks
through colonization to the Maryland colony in Liberia (see table 1.3). In return, the
enslaved found other ways to obtain their freedom. Historian Ira Berlin maintained,
“Enslaved black men and women wanted out of bondage, and they found numerous exits
prior to the Civil War, with its special Articles of War, Confiscation Acts, congressional
legislation, presidential edicts, and the definitive constitutional amendment.”61 Wartime emancipation was the next strategy in the fight towards freedom where various edicts, documents, speeches, movements, and people fought towards the destruction of slavery to obtain the final victory of freedom in Maryland and the entire nation.
59 William Green, Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green, (Formerly a Slave), Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/greeenw.html, (Accessed August 18th, 2018). 60 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Lily and Wait, 1832),171, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.04902/?sp=175 (Accessed June 11th, 2018). 61 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 13. 30
TABLE 1.3 African American Slave and Free Black Population in Maryland, 1840-1860
Year Slaves Slaves as Free Free Blacks as Total Percentage of Blacks Percentage of Population Total Total Population Population 1840 89,495 19%* 62,078 13.2%* 469,232 1850 90,368 15.5%* 74,723 12.8%* 583,034 1860 87,189 12.7%* 83,942 12.2%* 687,049 Source: Data adapted from The Maryland State Archives: Legacy of Slavery in Maryland: An Archives of Maryland Electronic Publication, “Black Marylanders 1840, 1850, 1860: African American Population by County, Status & Gender,” http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/research/census1830.html (Accessed June 26th, 2018). *Calculations were done by hand by dividing the slave and free black populations numbers against the total population numbers for the State of Maryland.
By April 12, 1862, the Civil War had reached its first anniversary, a milestone no
one in the United States could have anticipated; with the increasing cost and casualties, it
was time for a definitive or more progressive approach. Less than three months later
President Abraham Lincoln issued a Second Confiscation Act that expanded the previous
act giving him the authority to seize enslaved men of the rebel states to aid in the Union war effort. “It is a thing of the past, hated of every patriot, and destined never to curse an honest people or blot the pages of history ayain. The act, confiscating the property and freeing the slaves of traitors, will not be repealed.”62 The Southern Aegis, of Harford
County Maryland, favored the confiscation act and observed that the institution of slavery
was an outdated practice that cursed the people of the nation and tainted its history. The
confiscation act was a step towards the gradual destruction of slavery. This act allowed
the enslaved men of the rebel south the opportunity to serve in the U.S. Army and Navy
62 The Southern Aegis, and Harford County Intelligencer, (Bel Air, Md), 13 Sept, 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88065733/1862-09-13/ed-1/seq-2/ (Accessed June 16th, 2018). 31
where many chose the military life over actual or de facto slavery.63 The enslaved men
traded their life as a slave for a military life under the control of the government. But it
gave these enlisted men the chance to have a louder voice in the fight towards freedom.
According to enlistment records, 954 of black soldiers from the loyal border states came
from Delaware, 8, 718 from Maryland, 8,344 from Missouri, and 23,703 from
Kentucky.64 Out of the four border states noted, Maryland contributed the second largest
number of black soldiers right behind Kentucky, thus proving its dedication in the fight
for freedom.
The Second Confiscation Act legally gave the enslaved the opportunity to fight
for the Union Army but many enslaved escaped from their masters to reach the Union
camps on their own. Each enslaved individual possessed his own reason were joining, but
the second confiscation only included enlisting the enslaved from the rebel states. One
African American Newspaper, Douglass’ Monthly, published on the enlistment of
colored soldiers, “…this is no time to fight with one hand, when both are needed; that this
is no time to fight only with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain
tied.”65 The victory was not going to be won through the strength of whites alone but through the combined efforts of both races (whites and blacks). In some of the infantry units, African America soldiers did not receive equal treatment as their white brothers in arms, but it did not deter black soldiers from fighting for freedom. Maryland farmers, slaveowners, and former Governor Thomas Hicks and Governor Augustus Williamson
63 Maryland Voices of the Civil War, edited by Charles W. Mitchell (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 358. 64 Berlin, et al, “Table 1. Black Soldiers in the Union Army and Black Male Populations of Military Age in 1860, by State,” Slaves No More, 203. 65 “FIGHTING REBELS WITH ONLY ONE HAND,” Douglass’ Monthly, (Rochester, New York), September 1861, African American Newspapers: The 19th Century, http://www.accessible.com.proxy- millersville.klnpa.org/accessible/print, (Accessed July 27th, 2018). 32
Bradford had anxieties and reservations over the enlistment of African Americans. But in
order to win the war, the Union needed men capable of bearing arms to fight for the
Union side regardless of color or whether enslaved or freed.66 The necessity for more troops was dire and a Union victory would be achieved with the enlistment and recruitment of colored soldiers, but the anxiety of recruitment and reservation of this
movement would still be present in Maryland.
On June 21, 1862, The Cecil Whig (Elkton, Maryland), published a column titled
“Emancipation in Maryland: the True Question Involved in it," that explored the state's relationship with emancipation and slavery. The Cecil Whig stated,
It manifests that the mind of Maryland is becoming feverish and anxious about the question of slavery. It is presented to us in several ways by the insecurity of slave property wherever armies of large military forces from the Northern States are kept active or in camp in its neighborhood; by discussions in newspapers, in Congress, and in conversation; but perhaps chiefly, by the President's recommendation of emancipation, with the aid of the United States.67
The implementation of emancipation and in turn the question of slavery was presented to
the public in various ways, newspapers being the most influential informer. Newspapers
printed excerpts on both pro and antislavery stances or favored one argument to shape the
audience’s understanding of the events occurring in the state and nation. The “Negro
question,” as presented by The Cecil Whig was a much-debated topic in Maryland and the
United States. Many individuals expressed their views via newspapers or to the state
66 John W. Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 58, no.1 (1963): 23, http://mdhs.msa.maryland.gov/pages/Viewer.aspx?speccol=5881&Series=1&Item=229 (Accessed August 1st, 2018). 67 The Cecil Whig, (Elkton, Md.), 21 June 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016348/1862-06-21/ed-1/seg-1/, (Accessed May 1st, 2018). 33
legislator “…and, finally, that the time was rapidly arriving when the Negro question,
rather than the Slavery question, or emancipation, would become of immense importance
in its bearing on labor and taxation in Maryland.”68 The slavery question gradually turned
into a question of the status of the black population once emancipation was achieved in
the state and the rest of the nation. John L. Carey Esq. an editor of the Baltimore
American prophesied “…Maryland shall be called to legislate upon the subject of
Slavery, it will be not to regulate a living institution, but to bury a dead one.”69 Maryland
and the rest of the nation had to choose one side of the slavery question – the spread of
slavery or its destruction. The results of those choices would contribute greatly to the
twisted pathway towards emancipation in the border state.
The enlistment of formerly enslaved men would not be enough to achieve
freedom and end the Civil War. On September 23-24, 1862, the loyal Union border state
governors met in Altoona, Pennsylvania to discuss the war effort and to approve the draft
of the Emancipation Proclamation. Maryland Governor Augustus Williamson Bradford
was one of the thirteen governors invited via telegram by Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin
of Pennsylvania. A native-born Marylander who owned enslaved men and women,
Bradford was nonetheless, a strong advocate of the Union and its preservation. Even
though he was a slaveholder, his loyalty to the Union was undeniable through various
written documents and speeches. Because of Bradford’s dedication, the other loyal Union
border state governors decided he would be an adequate chairman to represent the Union
68 The Cecil Whig, 21 June 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016348/1862-06-21/ed-1/seg-1/, (Accessed May 1st, 2018). 69 “The Slavery Question in Maryland Effect of Abolition Agitation, January 31, 1861,” The New York Times Archives, https://www.nytimes.com/1861/01/31/archives/the-slavery-question-in-maryland-effect-of- the-abolition-agitation.html, (Accessed June 14th, 2018). 34
Governors. When discussing President Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary draft of the
Emancipation Proclamation, Bradford objected that: “[it] would amount to nothing
beyond the lines of our armies, further than it would be a handle to the rebels, and be
made a rallying cry against us.”70 In the eyes of Bradford, the proclamation would not
achieve its goal of subduing the Confederate states, but create friction among the states
and sustain the geopolitical dividing line over the question of slavery in the North and
South. Because of his personal feelings towards this piece of legislation, Bradford was
the only governor out of the thirteen others who did not give his signature of approval.
“Governor Bradford, of Maryland, alone did not sign it, expressing a fear that the
President’s proclamation might not prove as advantageous as the conference had hoped,
and regarding the matter as too doubtful to justify them as taking sides in its support.”71
Even though Bradford did not approve it, he wanted to speak directly to Lincoln to
express his decision in person.
The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, became one of the most
important pieces of legislation to impact abolitionists, slaveholders, and enslaved men
and women. It decreed;
…by virtue of power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States [Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia], and parts of States are, henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.72
70 “The Convention of Governors,” The Sun (1837-1990), ProQuest Historical Newspapers. The Historical Baltimore Sun (1837-1986), http://ww2.harford.edu/CMS/Library/Articles.asp, (Accessed May 19th, 2018). 71 Civilian & Telegraph, (Cumberland, Md.), 02 Oct. 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016179/1862-10-02/ed- 1/seq-2/, (Accessed June 18th, 2018). 72 Abraham Lincoln, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” National Archives: Online Exhibit, lasted updated January 5, 2018, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation, (Accessed July 7th, 2018). 35
Maryland was one of several border states not affected by the Proclamation, which might
have been influenced by the state’s loyalty to the Union. The Proclamation affected the
southern states actively in rebellion against the Union by declaring all the slaveholder’s
enslaved would be freed. The slaveholders in Maryland benefitted greatly because it
proved a continued opportunity to enjoy the accustomed power masters had over the
enslaved. But some enslaved men and women sought their own emancipation with help
from free blacks who assisted them towards freedom. Fugitive slaves borrowed horses
and carts from their owners, paddled towards naval vessels patrolling the rivers, and
played Maryland against the neighboring state of Virginia as well as the District of
Columbia.73 Each state/district maintained a certain protocol for receiving runaway
slaves which created the fugitive slave problem. In the case of District of Columbia, it would be difficult to recapture the fugitives since the District achieved emancipation in early 1862. Exemption from the Proclamation only fueled the fire and gave enslaved men and women the courage to flee for their own freedom if the federal and state governments were unwilling to grant any form of emancipation. Many fugitive slaves successfully managed to slip across the Mason Dixon border into the safety of Pennsylvania or made their way down to the District of Columbia. While others decided to enlist in the military and fight for their own freedom and the freedom of those who were still trapped in bondage.
On September 28, 1863, Governor Bradford reassured in a letter to Lincoln, "If her [Maryland] property whether in slaves or anything else is really needed to put down
73 Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, 120. 36
the Rebellion, there is not a State in the Union that will yield it more cheerfully."74 In a
little over a year from the assembly in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Bradford had changed his
mind, but what caused this change? No doubt Bradford’s position on emancipation
changed because of Maryland’s exclusion from the Emancipation Proclamation and
warnings from Lincoln that slavery would not survive the war. It would be to the slaveholders’ pecuniary interest to end slavery while federal compensation was possible.75 Compensation for the enlistment of enslaved persons not exceeding $300 was
offered to willing loyal owners who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the government of
the United States before receiving the prescribed compensation. Once the enslaved had
enlisted in the army they would be declared forever free. With mass causalities, Lincoln
pleaded with the loyal union governors to encourage the enlistment of African American
men to fight for freedom. If emancipation was to ever be achieved the war between the
Union and the Confederacy needed to end, so the fight progressed on towards freedom.
The geopolitical divisions in Maryland worried plenty of emancipationists and
abolitionists and President Abraham Lincoln who was anguished over the state’s
progression towards emancipation. He maintained a correspondence with Congressman
John A. J. Creswell, who campaigned in the autumn of 1863 on the platform of how to
address slavery in Maryland. Creswell argued during his campaign, “Emancipation in
Maryland is already an accomplished fact and has come about as a necessary
consequence…of the Rebellion. It is all important now for the people, by an amendment
74 Augustus Williamson Bradford, “Augustus W. Bradford to Lincoln, Monday, September 28, 1863,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Series 1. General Correspondence, 1833-1916, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/malquery.html, (Accessed August 17th, 2018). 75 Harris, Lincoln and the Border States, 268. 37
to the Constitution, to provide the legal extinction of Slavery…”76 To Creswell slavery
would only be able to end in Maryland and the United States with the creation of a
legislative amendment to the Constitution. Unbeknownst to Creswell Maryland would be one the first states to pass this type of legislation. On March 7, 1864, Lincoln wrote to
Creswell expressing his anxiety and concern of emancipation in the border state. "I am very anxious for emancipation to be effected in Maryland in some substantial form."77
Lincoln’s anxiety stems from the slow progression of emancipation within the border
state and confusion within the state over which form Lincoln supports: gradual v.
immediate emancipation. Gradual emancipation was favorable to the slaveholders, but
disheartened abolitionists, emancipationists, free blacks, and the enslaved throughout the
nation and Maryland. With the differing views, Lincoln penned, “My wish is that all who
are for emancipation in any form, shall co-operate, all treating all respectfully, and all
adopting and acting upon the major opinion, when fairly ascertained.”78 Abolitionists
claim in the more immediate approach to emancipation that would free all the slaves and
end racial discrimination. While the more moderate anti-slavery advocates preferred a
gradual emancipation to restrict slavery and prevent its spread. The debate between
gradual v. immediate emancipation was greatly discussed among abolitionists and
moderate anti-slavery supporters, but Lincoln knew it was important to support emancipation regardless of how it unfolded.
76 John M. Osborne and Christine Bombaro, Forgotten Abolitionist: John A. J. Creswell (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: House Divided Project at Dickinson College, 2015), 32, https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/585258 (Accessed June 23rd, 2018). 77 Abraham Lincoln, “Abraham Lincoln to John A. J. Creswell, Monday, March 7th, 1864,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal3134200/, (Accessed June 16th, 2018). 78 Lincoln, “Abraham Lincoln to John A. J. Creswell, Monday, March 7th, 1864,”. 38
Ten days later, March 17, 1864, Lincoln wrote to Creswell and expressed in a few
words: “It needs not to be a secret, that I wish success to emancipation in Maryland. It
would aid much to end the rebellion.”79 The tone of the second letter reflected the emotions of hope expressed in the previous letter that successful emancipation in the loyal border state would help end the Civil War. Slavery and emancipation in Lincoln’s
eyes were “a matter of national consequence, in which every national man, may rightfully
feel a deep interest.”80 It was a matter in which everyone in the nation should be
rightfully invested. Emancipation exceeded well beyond achieving manumission of the
enslaved or colonization to dissolve the old-fashioned institution of slavery. The
constitutional convention was over a month away (April 27) and the fate of emancipation
would rest exclusively in the hands of the Maryland voters. The Civilian & Telegraph
(Cumberland, Maryland): “If the people now do their duty, Maryland may stand in a few
months as one of the Free States of the Union…We call on you to see it that such
Emancipation shall be the result of the Convention.”81 The numerous enslaved escaping
to Union forces and the federal policies promoting antislavery supporters, gave Maryland
the momentum to call a constitutional convention to end slavery.82 The future of enslaved
men and women rested in the hands of the abolitionists and free black population in the
state to secure emancipation.
79 Abraham Lincoln, “Abraham Lincoln to John A. J. Creswell, Thursday, March 17th, 1864,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal3163100/, (Accessed June 16th, 2018). 80 Lincoln, “Abraham Lincoln to John A. J. Creswell, Thursday, March 17th, 1864,”. 81 Civilian & Telegraph, (Cumberland, Md.), 17 Mar. 1864, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016179/1864-03-17/ed- 1/seq-2/, (Accessed June 27th, 2018). 82 Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit to End Slavery, 1850-1864, 366. 39
On October 12-13, a statewide referendum was issued to vote on a new state
constitution regarding the elimination of slavery. This was a pivotal moment for
Maryland on the grounds of slavery and it echoed the sentiments Congressman Creswell
had argued for during his 1863 campaign. The 1864 Constitutional Convention was the
product of the growing Unionist stronghold in the state to outlaw slavery and reduce the
influence of Southern/Confederacy sympathizers. Once the votes were counted, those
against the new constitution to abolish slavery was 1,995 votes ahead of those in favor.
But when the soldiers' votes were calculated into the total it tipped the scales by 375
votes in favor of the new constitution.83 On October 30, 1864, Chairman Thomas
Webster wrote to Lincoln about the results: “on Tuesday November 1st…the grand
victory achieved in Maryland – of Right over Wrong – whereby 100,000 Christian slaves
are made unconditionally free…to glorify Emancipation in Maryland.”84 Without the soldier's vote, Maryland would not have won the victory of abolishing slavery. A victory which might have taken a few months or even years longer had the vote not been in favor of creating a new state constitution to end slavery. This was a monumental step for
Maryland, but the question remained: What would happen once the enslaved men and women were set free?
83 “Vote on the Constitution, October 12-13, 1864,” Maryland State Archives: Study of the Legacy of Slavery Exhibits Online, (July 18, 2005), http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc5600/sc5604/2004/november/html/appendix.html, (Accessed June 27th, 2018). 84 Thomas Webster, “Thomas Webster to Abraham Lincoln, October 30th, 1864,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem.alhtml/malhome.html, (Accessed June 27th, 2018). 40
Figure 4. Arrival of freedmen and their families at Baltimore, Maryland – an every day scene. Located at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington D. C., https://www.loc.gov/item/2001697357/ Many slaves who had been freed by the new Maryland State Constitution poured into Baltimore to secure housing and hunt for job opportunities, while others left the state or enlisted in the Union army. Union General Lew Wallace described a scene in the city:
“Directly that constitutional freedom in Maryland was proclaimed, the newly liberated, shaken off by many of their masters, and not knowing where to go or what else to do, toiled up in bewildered hundreds to Baltimore – men, women, and children.”85 Hundreds of free blacks traveled into Baltimore with all of their possessions on wagons, horses, and donkeys in hopes of seeking a new life in the city (see figure 4). The free blacks would have to rediscover themselves outside of bondage that consisted of appropriating housing and work. Society was still unstable and slightly hostile having not fully accepted the new-found freedom granted to African Americans in Maryland. With the influx of freed
85 Maryland Voices of the Civil War, edited by Charles W. Mitchell, 397. 41 slaves moving into the city Gen. Wallace had to find other means to provide housing for the freed families. The overcapacity demand for housing caused him to seize the
Maryland Club House and placed it under surveillance were "four or five hundred negro women and refugees, with their children, were in the enjoyment of its luxurious shelter…"86 For Wallace and other emancipation/abolitionist supporters, the freedmen needed guidance and care. Because the freed families were no longer under the supervision of their masters, Wallace, and others presumed, they would need aid in knowing what do next. There were some citizens who did not agree with Gen. Wallace’s decision to seize the Maryland Club House (a large drinking house) and they devised another way of forcing slaves back into bondage.
Emancipation in the state did not settle well with the slaveholders who had just lost their slaves because of the new state constitution - many of the malcontents sought to resurrect the master-slave relationship through apprenticeship. Several historians noted following the new Maryland State Constitution, many slaveholders reverted to force to sustain the power in which they were accustomed to wielding over the blacks.87 Some slaveholders tried to reestablish their power by petitioning the courts that the judge binds the captured children of newly freed people into an apprenticeship. The slaveholder claimed the children's parents were incapable of taking care of them, so it would be in the children's best interests to become apprentices. Thomas B. Thomas, a lighthouse keeper in Sandy Point, cited an incident on November 6, 1864: "Sam Richardson has taken to annapolis four Children of one of his Slaves apon the face of the Mothers
86 Maryland Voice of the Civil War, edited by Charles W. Mitchell, 397. 87 Berlin, Fields, Miller, Reidy, and Rowland, Slaves No More, 174. 42
Objections…”88 Richardson’s experience at the lighthouse was a prime example of a
slaveholder attempts to sustain power over the freedmen of Maryland by forcing their
children into apprenticeships. Many parents went to court to plead to not be separated
from their child/children and “One mother who protested received for her effort a blow in
the face administered by a constable…”89 Even though the enslaved population in the state was granted freedom through the state constitution, slaveholders sought to re- establish parts of the old society into the new.
On December 6, 1864, President Lincoln delivered his annual message to
Congress with a renewed confidence in his plans for emancipation and reconstruction due to the progress took by each individual state to end slavery. His message addressed the progress of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. When discussing
Maryland, he evaluated: “…Maryland presents the example of complete success.
Maryland is secure to Liberty and Union for all the future. The genius of rebellion will no more claim Maryland. Like another foul spirit, being driven out, it may seek to tear her, but it will woo her no more.”90 The state accomplished a great victory of abolishing
slavery through the determination of abolitionists, emancipationists, free blacks, and the
enslaved. The eventual destruction of slavery in Maryland was achieved not only by the
efforts of emancipation but also through the former strategies of manumission and
colonization. Lieutenant Governor Christopher C. Cox echoed the state’s success during
his speech delivered to the Senate on January 11, 1865: “Other States have gradually
88 “Slavery in the Union,” Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (Edison, New Jersey: The Blue & Gray Press, 1997), 371. 89 Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, 139. 90 Abraham Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress, December 6th, 1864,” Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and Civil War: Selected Speeches, edited by Michael P. Johnson (Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001), 308. 43
emancipated their slaves…but Maryland has accomplished the whole work at once. She
has struck down, with one blow, the collossal evil in her midst, and advanced,
untrammeled, upon the open path to honor and success.”91 Now that the loyal border state
had stepped away from the old tradition the time had come to find its footing and create a
new society without slavery.
The Freedmen’s Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands),
a section under the War Department was created on March 3, 1865, to establish a new
mechanism to aid the free African American population in gradual admission into
society. The main task of the Bureau was “the supervision and management of all
abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from
rebel states…”92 Provisions, food, clothing, temporary and immediate shelters, and up to
forty acres of abandoned land were given to the refugees and freedmen to maintain for
three years with rent payments to acclimate themselves into society. In Maryland, Gen.
Lew Wallace took additional measures to commandeer housing for the freedmen and
refugees and prevent the misuse of the apprentice laws. “In case the parents of
apprentices are not able to support them…he [Gen. Wallace] will send them to Baltimore,
to the care of Lieut. Colonel W.E.W. Ross… in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau…[who
would] endeavor to keep families to-gether…”93 Family reunification was extremely
important to the African American population, as evidenced by the testimony of the
parents who went to court pleading not to take their children. While Ross did as much as
91 Christopher C. Cox, “Address of Hon. Christopher C. Cox, lieutenant governor, delivered in the Senate chamber, Annapolis, January 10, 1866,” (Annapolis: Haverstick & Longneckers, Printers, 1866), Ya Pamphlet Collection, https://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbcb.96475/?sp=4 (Accessed July 3rd, 2018). 92 “Law Creating the Freedmen’s Bureau,” Freedmen & Southern Society Project, University of Maryland History Department, maintained by Steven F. Miller, last revised December 10th, 2017, http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/fbact.htm, (Accessed July 4th, 2018). 93 Maryland Voices of the Civil War, edited by Charles W. Mitchell, 447. 44
he could to ensure family cohesion, one Bureau official at Annapolis noted there were
about 2,000 complaints made by the parents of apprentice children from 1866-1867.94
The Bureau had the daunting task of keeping families together, finding work for former
slaves, and blending African Americans into society. But there was still more to be done
to award blacks the rights and privileges they deserved.
Once enslaved men and women in Maryland were declared free through certain
state legislation, the question facing the rest of the nation was how to achieve freedom to
the remaining enslaved? Prior to the end of the war, on January 31, 1865, the first of three
Reconstruction Amendments passed the Maryland legislation. Four days later, a man by
the name of Baldwin from the U.S. Military War Department sent a telegram from
Washington D. C. that declared, “The amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery
passed Maryland Senate by Eleven to ten.”95 Maryland was the fourth state and one of
the first border states, along with West Virginia, to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. A
few months later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union General
Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia ended the Civil War. When the
Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, the question of status among the enslaved men and
women who were freed remained. But the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed on April 9,
1866, sought to clarify their status. This act "[established] the principle of birthright
citizenship and extending to black Americans many of the rights previously enjoyed
94 W. A. Low, “Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights in Maryland,” The Journal of Negro History 37, no. 3, (July 1952): 234, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2715492, (Accessed July 5th, 2018). 95 “Baldwin to Thomas T. Eckert, Friday, February 03, 1865,” (Telegram reporting the ratification of 13th Amendment by Maryland Senate), The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.4043500/?sp=1 (Accessed July 4th, 2018). 45
exclusively by whites.”96 It also stated that anyone who denied or interfered with the
rights granted to the former slaves would be charged with a misdemeanor and face a
possible fine of $1,000 or a yearlong imprisonment. Following the nationwide
emancipation, African Americans found a burning hunger for learning how to read and
write and to choose where they labored and what type of work or craft they would
perform.97 During this period of reconstruction, many African Americans participated in creating opportunities that had once been denied to them, such as reading and writing.
With regard to children’s apprenticeship, by “…the autumn of 1867, the U.S.
District Court in Baltimore ruled that Maryland laws were unconstitutional, though almost another year would pass before most apprenticed black children were released.”98
When black children in the state were being released from their apprenticeship the
Fourteenth Amendment was proposed to address the aspects of citizenship developed by
the Civil Rights Act of 1866 as well as to guarantee “equal protection of the laws”. The
Fifteenth Amendment concluded the Reconstruction legislation added to the Constitution
“…to raise the black man to a full political level with the white man.”99 The Fifteenth
Amendment granted black men the right of suffrage, but there was a considerable amount
of pushback from those still clinging to the old society. “Many millions of our people
[whites] assume, without thinking, that negro suffrage was forced upon the South by the
96 Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), 224. 97 African American Odyssey: Reconstruction and Its Aftermath (Part 2), Library of Congress, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5b.html, (Accessed August 26th, 2018). 98 Maryland Voices of the Civil War, edited by Charles W. Mitchell, 360. 99 The Aegis & Intelligencer, (Bel Air, Md.), 14 Jan. 1870, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016107/1870-01-14/ed- 1/seq-2/, (Accessed July 5th, 2018). 46
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments as an act of hostility and in a spirit of revenge.”100
To many Southerners, the amendments were seen as an act of revenge by declaring the
enslaved free and giving them certain rights and there were many who found ways of
denying free blacks those rights. The amendments and the Freedmen's Bureau did
provide African Americans with more opportunities, but there were still Southern
sympathizers who refused which continued a racial struggle in Maryland and the rest of
the nation. Historian W. A. Low stated: “the way was now open for the attainment of
rights, privileges, and responsibilities that go along with the acquisition of freedom.”101
After so many years in bondage, slavery had been destroyed and the long arc of
emancipation reached a closing point in Maryland and the rest of the United States as it
embraced a new society of freedom.
100 Negro Suffrage: Should the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment Be Repealed?, Edward DeVeaux Morrell and Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection (Library of Congress), (Washington, D.C.: [s.n.], 1904), https://www.loc.gov/item/91898529/, (Accessed August 21st, 2018), 8. 101 W. A. Low, “The Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights in Maryland,” The Journal of Negro History 37, no. 3, (July 1952): 247, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2715492, (Accessed July 5th, 2018). 47
Conclusion Maryland exhibited a long divaricate pursuit towards freedom spanning two
centuries. A pursuit that was not achieved by one selected group of activists or legislative
officials, but through the actions and movements of multiple individuals whose narratives
contribute to the struggle for freedom. As a loyal Union border state, wedged between a
Confederate and Union state, Maryland’s unique geographic position factored immensely
into the discussion of slavery. The achievement of freedom occurred in three distinct
strategies of abolitionists movement/manumission, colonization, and emancipation, that overlapped at various points in Maryland’s long arc to emancipation. Taking various steps towards emancipation, Maryland seemed to be moving at the pace of a diamondback terrapin to eliminate slavery.102 The slaveholders hesitated and fought
against the advances of abolitionists, free blacks, and the enslaved to secure
compensation as slavery reached its demise. As the Easton (Maryland) Gazette stated,
“Slavery is doomed, the question is how it should be eliminated.”103 Slavery’s
elimination was achieved through these three strategies in Maryland and the rest of the
nation to build a new society created on the principles of freedom.
“The history of emancipation in Maryland,’ one abolitionist observed, ‘has proved
that manumission begets manumission, that they increase even in a geometrical
proportion.”104 Manumission was the first of the three-strategy process in the long arc to emancipation in Maryland through a two-ratio process of immediate or delayed grants of freedom to the enslaved. Slaveholders had various reasons for manumitting an enslaved
102 Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, 206. 103 Harris, Lincoln and the Border States, 268. 104 Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 30-31. 48
person whether it was economic, political, or religious ideologies. Economically the
decline in tobacco-caused many farmers in the rural areas of Maryland to consider
producing cereal grains that required less slave labor or rent out their enslaved to the
plantation owners to receive a profit. Some masters granted manumission based on
egalitarian principles of equality and universal liberty created by the founding fathers - principles that were denied to the enslaved due to the superiority exhibited by the slaveowners.105 From a religious viewpoint, keeping another human in bondage was a
strike against God according to certain religious groups - Quakers, Baptists, and
Methodist - in the state. Manumission aided the way towards freedom, but it placed the
power in the hands of the slaveowners and many enslaved petitioned for freedom suits to
take matters into their own hands.
While some slaveowners manumitted the enslaved there were others who sought
ways of placing restrictions on grants of freedom. In 1809, one of the most notable pieces
of legislation implemented by the religious Quaker group in Maryland was on the
manumission status of unborn children of enslaved women.106 The 1809 manumission
law and restrictions created a gray area on the age limit of manumission which gave
slaveowners control to dictate and negotiate the terms of freedom with the enslaved.
Manumission laws favored slaveowners who sought to gain the most by granting delayed
freedom as opposed to immediate. By the time the slave master granted manumission the
enslaved would have reached the cap off age of forty-five, thus keeping the enslaved in
105 Patrick Rael, Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2015), 68. 106 Jessica Millwood, ‘That All Her Increase Shall Be Free’: Enslaved Women’s Bodies and Maryland 1809 Law of Manumission,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 3 (July 2012): 364, EBSCOhost (Accessed August 8th, 2018). 49
service. Ira Berlin noted, the slave supporters found different mechanisms that would
restrict the growing free black population through the grants of manumission.107 This
explains why so many enslaved sought their own freedom through the petition of
freedom suits or by fleeing on the Underground Railroad to the Northern States.
Manumission legislation made it difficult to grant freedom to the enslaved, but attention
gradually turned to the increasing free black population when abolitionists and
slaveowners alike turned their efforts towards colonization.
The concept of colonization was not a new idea. It dated back to Thomas
Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, which Maryland legislators drew upon to
control the free black population that was increasing due to manumission. The aim of
colonization was to deal with the growing free black population without dealing with it
directly. It promised uncertainty and freedom in a land that had once been called the enslaved African ancestral home. “Blacks questioned the need to leave a tolerable life in their native country for the uncertainty of Liberia…Therefore, they preferred to wait for the enjoyment of their rights.”108 If permission was given to the free black, then
provisions and supplies would be given to start colonizing a new life in Liberia far away
from the reaches of the institution of slavery and obligations to a master. The growing
slave insurrections gave rise to the idea of colonization and allowed the free black
population an opportunity to create a new life without slavery. Colonization was
favorable among the slaveholding class in Maryland in light of the Nat Turner Rebellion
in 1832, giving way to the creation of the Maryland State Colonization Society as a sister
107 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 99. 108 Guy, Maryland’s Persistent Pursuit, 264. 50
branch to the American Colonization Society.109 For a time, the idea of colonization
proved to be a favorable plan towards addressing the new negro problem. However, the
pushback within the free black population did not look upon it so favorably.
The success of colonization depended on abolitionists, slaveowners,
colonizationists, and portions of the free black population who supported and advocated
for its continuation. Slaveowners believed the free black population endangered
American society and the solution to ease white anxiety was to continue the
encouragement of manumission and provide free blacks with the refuge from
oppression.110 Colonization was designed to be the wall that protected the free blacks
against oppression delivered by slaveholders who believed free blacks would be a
detriment to American society. On the surface, colonizing Liberia provided an interesting
prospect to portions of the free black communities in Maryland and throughout the
United States. Reading between the lines of the evidence raises the question of its true
intentions and there were some free blacks, farmers, and fishermen who opposed the
genuine purpose of colonization. Farmers and fishermen opposed the colonization society
because it lowered the number of laboring men able to cultivate the land. Traveling agent
John H. Kennard explained that those who emigrated to Liberia were traitors for not
fighting for their rights while some of their brethren remained in bondage.111
Colonization proved to be unfruitful with the decreased number of free blacks leaving the
109 T. Stephen Whitman, Challenging Slavery in the Chesapeake: Black and White Resistance to Human Bondage, 1775-1865 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2007), 127. 110 Ripley, ed. Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation, 2. 111 Maryland State Archives, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/casestudies/mscs_overview.pdf#search=John%20H.%20Kennard (Accessed August 8th, 2018), 3-4. 51
United States and it fell to the wayside leaving the door open to the approach of gradual emancipation.
The strategies towards freedom started with the abolitionists, manumission, and colonization movements that dealt with the question of slavery, but as time progressed it
became a Negro question. Maryland and the rest of the nation debated greatly on the
topic of slavery which was presented in several ways through newspaper articles,
Congress, everyday conversations, and by President Abraham Lincoln’s recommendation
of emancipation.112 Various legislations, state governmental meetings, and the persistent
pursuit of abolitionists, free blacks, and the enslaved allowed for the gradual destruction
of slavery. The implementation of the Second Confiscation Act gave African Americans
an opportunity to join in the Civil War fight towards their freedom, but it did not make
them equal to whites. Other loyal Union border states alongside Maryland contributed
thousands of African American men that aided in a Union victory. The Emancipation
Proclamation, January of 1863, was one of the defining pieces of legislation that
excluded Maryland but gave impetus to the movement to end slavery in the state on its
own terms.113 The Proclamation freed the slaves of the rebellious states and the end of the
Civil War stopped the bloodshed, but the question remained as to the future of the enslaved and free black population in Maryland as Reconstruction began.
Maryland took a bold step toward emancipation through the creation of a New
State Constitution in the Fall of 1864. It was described as a grand victory of right over
wrong where all the enslaved in the state were officially declared free. A long and
112 The Cecil Whig, (Elkton, Md.), 21 June 1862, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016348/1862-06-21/ed-1/seg-1/, (Accessed August 8th, 2018). 113 Harris, Lincoln and the Border States, 268. 52
grueling process that led Maryland towards emancipation and many other states such as
New York congratulated the state on its achievement of reaching a new era in history.114
In December of 1864, during President Abraham Lincoln's annual message to Congress, he spoke so highly of Maryland's success in destroying the bondage of slavery towards a new society built on the grounds of freedom. Following emancipation, many free blacks questioned their status in society and actively sought out a future for themselves. The creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Baltimore City aided to control the ensuing chaos as hundreds of recently freed black families traveled to the cities to find work and housing. As historian W. A. Low phrased it, the time had come for the rights, privileges, and responsibilities to be given with the achievement of freedom.115 The three
Reconstruction Amendments awarded those rights and privileges to African Americans to
maintain the achieved freedom not only in Maryland but the rest of the nation.
Evidence of abolitionist movements/manumission, colonization, and
emancipation results in the long arc towards freedom in Maryland and the rest of the
nation. The struggles of these three strategies suggest a complex history of emancipation
in Maryland and the other loyal Union border states. Once we understand the
individualized state struggle of Maryland in the long arc of emancipation, it will be
possible to understand the historiographical complexity of freedom in a larger
framework. The lengthy process towards emancipation was not achieved by one singular
moment or movement or even by one man or individual group but secured through the
voices and actions of multiple groups of people and narratives.116 Even though evaluating
114 Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Edited by Charles W. Mitchell, 396. 115 W. A. Low, “The Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights in Maryland,” The Journal of Negro History 37, no. 3, (July 1952): 247, JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2715492, (Accessed July 5th, 2018). 116 Berlin, The Long Emancipation, 8. 53
the long arc towards freedom in three strategies heightens our understanding of the
position the loyal border states experienced, it still leaves room for a more expanded
interpretation. For example, there were areas in Virginia that showed support for the
Union even though the state was declared part of the Confederacy. As Frederick
Douglass stated, “Then freedom was the dream, the hope and the prayer of the coloured
people – now it is a glorious fact accomplished.”117
117 “Key Items Tell Maryland Emancipation Story: Documents from Frederick Douglass, Slaveowners Describe Divisive Nature of Slavery in Maryland Historical Society Collection,” Maryland Historical Society, (2018), https://www.mdhs.org/pressrelease/key-items-tell-maryland-emancipation-story, (Accessed September 14th, 2018). 54
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