Slavery in Maryland lasted over 200 years, from its beginnings in 1642 when the first Africans were brought as slaves to St. Mary's City, to its end after the Civil War. While Maryland developed similarly to neighboring Virginia, slavery declined in Maryland as an institution earlier, and it had the largest free black population by 1860 of any state. The early settlements and population centers of the province tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland planters cultivated tobacco as the chief commodity crop, as the market for cash crops was strong in Europe. Tobacco was labor-intensive in both cultivation and processing, and planters struggled to manage workers as tobacco prices declined in the late 17th century, even as farms became larger and more efficient. At first, indentured servants from England supplied much of the necessary labor but, as England's economy improved, fewer came to the colonies. Maryland colonists turned to importing indentured and enslaved Africans to satisfy the labor demand.
By the 18th century, Maryland had developed into a plantation colony and slave society, requiring extensive numbers of field hands for the labor-intensive commodity crop of tobacco. In 1700, the province had a population of about 25,000, and by 1750 that number had grown more than five times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40 percent of Maryland's population was black enslaved people, with African Americans slaves concentrated in the Tidewater counties where tobacco was grown.John Mack Faragher, ed., The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America (New York: Facts on File, 1990), p. 257 Planters relied on the extensive system of rivers to transport their produce from inland plantations to the Atlantic coast for export. Baltimore was the second-most important port in the eighteenth-century South, after Charleston, South Carolina.
In the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, some slaveholders freed their slaves. In addition, numerous free families of color had started during the colonial era with mixed-race children born free as a result of unions between white women and African-descended men. Although the colonial and state legislatures passed restrictions against manumissions and free people of color, by the time of the Civil War, slightly more than 49% of the black people (including people of color) in Maryland were free and the total of slaves had steadily declined since 1810.
During the American Civil War, which was fought over the issue of slavery, Maryland remained in the Union, though a minority of its citizens – and virtually all of its slaveholders – were sympathetic toward the rebel Confederate States. As a Union border state, Maryland was not included in President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in states in rebellion to be free. The following year, Maryland held a constitutional convention. A new state constitution was passed on November 1, 1864, and Article 24 prohibited the practice of slavery. The right to vote was extended to non-white males in the Maryland Constitution of 1867, which remains in effect today. (The vote was extended to women of all races in 1920 by ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.)
Beginnings Tobacco
From the beginning, tobacco was the dominant cash crop in Maryland. Such was the importance of tobacco that, in the absence of sufficient silver coins, it served as the chief medium of exchange. John Ogilby wrote in his 1670 book America: Being an Accurate Description of the New World: "The general way of traffick and commerce there is chiefly by Barter, or exchange of one commodity for another".Andrews, p. 146
Since land was plentiful, and the demand for tobacco was growing, labor tended to be in short supply, especially at harvest time. The first Africans to be brought to English North America landed in Virginia in 1619, captured by the Dutch from a Portuguese slave ship. These individuals appear to have been treated as indentured servants. A significant number of Africans after them also gained freedom through fulfilling a work contract or for converting to Christianity.Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975), pp. 154–157.
Some successful free people of color, such as Anthony Johnson, prospered enough to acquire slaves or indentured servants. This evidence suggests that racial attitudes were much more flexible in the colonies in the 17th century before slavery was hardened as a racial caste.Morgan (1975), American Slavery, American Freedom, pp. 327–328.
Import of enslaved Africans
The first documented Africans were brought to Maryland in 1642, as 13 slaves at St. Mary's City, the first English settlement in the Province.Chapelle, Suzanne Ellery Greene, p. 24, Maryland: A History of Its People Retrieved August 10, 2010 Earlier, in 1638, the Maryland General Assembly had considered, but not enacted, two bills referring to slaves and proposing excepting them from rights shared by Christian freemen and indentured servants: An Act for the Liberties of the People and An Act Limiting the Times of Servants. The legal status of Africans initially remained undefined; since they were not English subjects, they were considered foreigners. Colonial courts tended to rule that any person who accepted Christian baptism should be freed. In order to protect the property rights of slaveholders, the colony passed laws to clarify the legal position. In 1692 the Maryland Assembly passed a law explicitly forbidding "miscegenation"—marriage between different races. It never controlled the abuse by white men of enslaved African women.Ferguson, p. 135
State establishes perpetual slavery In 1664, under the governorship of Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, the Assembly ruled that all enslaved people should be held in slavery for life, and that children of enslaved mothers should also be held in slavery for life. The 1664 Act read as follows:
Be it enacted by the Right Honorable, the Lord Proprietary, by the advice and consent of the Upper and Lower House of this present General Assembly, that all negroes or other slaves already within the Province, and all negroes and other slaves to be hereafter imported into the Province shall serve durante vita. And all children born of any negro or other slave shall be slaves as their fathers were for the term of their lives.Andrews, p. 192Charles Calvert at http://mdroots.thinkport.org Retrieved Jan 24 2010
In this way the institution of slavery in Maryland was made self-perpetuating, as the slaves had good enough health to reproduce. The numbers of slaves in Maryland was increased even more by continued imports up until 1808. By making slave status dependent on the mother, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, Maryland, like Virginia, abandoned the common law approach of England, in which the social status of children of English subjects depended on their father. In the colonies, children would take the status of their mothers and thus be born into slavery if their mothers were enslaved, regardless if their fathers were white and Christian, as many were.
The wording of the 1664 Act suggests that Africans may not have been the only slaves in Maryland. Although there is no direct evidence of the enslavement of Native Americans, the reference to "negroes and other slaves" may imply that, as in Massachusetts, Virginia and the Carolinas, the colonists may have enslaved local Indians.Andrews, p. 191 Alternatively, the wording in the Act may have been intended to apply to slaves of African origin but of mixed-race ancestry. The early years included slaves who were African Creoles, descendants of African women and Portuguese men who worked at the slave ports. In addition, mixed-race children were born to slave women and white fathers. Numerous free families of color were formed during the colonial years by formal and informal unions between free white women and African-descended men, whether free, indentured or enslaved. Although born free to white women, the mixed-race children were considered illegitimate and were apprenticed for lengthy periods into adulthood.
In an unusual case, Nell Butler was an Irish-born indentured servant of Lord Calvert. After she married an enslaved African, her indenture was converted to slavery for life under the 1664 Act.
Further legislation would follow, entrenching and deepening the institution of slavery. Following the lead of Virginia, in 1671 the Assembly passed an Act stating expressly that baptism of a slave would not lead to freedom. Prior to this some slaves had sued for freedom based on having been baptized. The Act was apparently intended to save the souls of the enslaved; the legislature did not want to discourage slaveholders from baptizing his human property for fear of losing it. In practice, such laws permitted both Christianity and slavery to develop hand in hand.
At this early stage in Maryland history, slaves were not especially numerous in the Province, being greatly outnumbered by indentured servants from England. The full effect of such harsh slave laws did not become evident until after large-scale importation of Africans began in earnest in the 1690s. During the second half of the 17th century, the British economy gradually improved and the supply of British indentured servants declined, as poor Britons had better economic opportunities at home. At the same time, Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 led planters to worry about the prospective dangers of creating a large class of restless, landless, and relatively poor white men (most of them former indentured servants). Wealthy Virginia and Maryland planters began to buy slaves in preference to indentured servants during the 1660s and 1670s, and poorer planters followed suit by c.1700. Enslaved Africans cost more than servants, so initially only the wealthy could invest in slavery. By the end of the seventeenth century, planters shifted away from indentured servants, and in favor of the importation and enslavement of African people.
Eighteenth century
During the eighteenth century the number of enslaved Africans imported into Maryland greatly increased, as the labor-intensive tobacco economy became dominant, and the colony developed into a slave society. In 1700 there were about 25,000 people in Maryland and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. A great proportion of the population was enslaved. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black and these persons were overwhelmingly enslaved. The southern plantation counties had majority-slave populations by the end of the century.
In 1753 the Maryland assembly took further harsh steps to institutionalize slavery, passing a law that prohibited any slaveholder from independently manumitting his slaves. A slaveholder seeking manumission had to gain legislative approval for each act, meaning that few did so.
At this stage there were few voices of dissent among whites in Maryland. Although only the wealthy could afford slaves, poor whites who did not own slaves may have aspired to own them someday. The identity of many whites in Maryland, and the South in general, was tied up in the idea of white supremacy. As the French political philosopher Montesquieu noted in 1748: "It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians."
Revolutionary War