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Arrival of Freemen and Their Families in Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland Historical Society

White antislavery action began in Maryland in the revolutionary era, enjoyed a brief revival in the 1820s, and then reappeared during the Civil War. Black Marylanders acted against slavery most prominently in the years after 1825 as abolitionists operating primarily in northern states.

The Revolutionary Era
Quakers figured prominently among early opponents of slavery. By the 1770s, they defined slavery as a violence-filled activity that endangered slave owners’ souls. They began to manumit their slaves, generally after a term of further service, establishing a pattern for other manumitters. The Quaker-dominated "Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Poor Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage," active from the late 1780s till around 1800, aided slaves in petitioning courts for freedom. Petitioners sought to show descent from a free female ancestor: in Maryland's most celebrated case, Mary Butler was liberated in 1787 as a great-great granddaughter of "Irish Nell" Butler, who had come to Maryland in 1681 as a servant of Lord Baltimore.

Many Methodists also worked against slavery in the late 1700s. When Freeborn Garrettson converted to Methodism in 1775, he freed his slaves, responding to an inner voice that said, "it is not the will of the Lord that you should keep your fellow creatures in bondage." As a Methodist circuit rider, he would relate his antislavery epiphany to thousands. Woolman Hickson, William Colbert, and Ezekiel Cooper also preached against slavery. Cooper, under the pseudonym "A Freeman", argued in 1790 in The Maryland Gazette that Americans' claims to cherish liberty were inconsistent with the continuation of Negro slavery. A black Methodist, Daniel Coker, published “A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African Minister” in 1810. He used natural rights arguments bolstered by quotes from the Bible to refute proslavery claims of slavery’s divine sanction, black inferiority, and the supposed inevitability of race war should slaves be freed.

The Early 1800s
In the 1810s, white antislavery shifted its focus away from religious and libertarian arguments. Instead, influential men, such as Hezekiah Niles, Benjamin Lundy, and Daniel Raymond, crafted economic arguments for emancipation, often accompanied by proposals to “colonize” freed people by sending them to West Africa or elsewhere. Niles, a Baltimore-based newspaper editor, urged in 1819 freeing female slave children and raising them in northern white homes, where they would learn industry, sobriety, and thrift. Lundy, a Quaker abolitionist, published his own anti-slavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore from 1825 to 1830, calling for emancipation of slaves by self-purchase, and the support of black-sponsored schemes for colonization to Haiti. Lundy backed political economist Daniel Raymond’s antislavery candidacies for election to Maryland’s House of Delegates in 1825 and 1826. Raymond argued that freed blacks would produce and consume more than slaves would, and thus benefit Maryland’s economy.

Many whites, however, supported colonization as a way to strengthen slavery by deporting free blacks who supposedly “demoralized” slaves. Black antislavery activists responded by challenging the efforts of Maryland’s state-sponsored colonization society. They persuaded many black Marylanders to remain in the United States rather than be “driven, like cattle…to Liberia,” in the words of William Watkins. Born free in 1800 and educated by Daniel Coker, Watkins denounced colonization in pieces written for Lundy’s Genius under the pen name, “A Colored Baltimorean.” Watkins demanded immediate, not gradual abolition of slavery, and perhaps his greatest achievement was to convert Lundy’s assistant editor, the young William Lloyd Garrison, to the policy of immediatism. Watkins would contribute frequently to Garrison’s The Liberator in the 1830s. Along with Hezekiah Grice, a Baltimore ice dealer, Watkins helped found the American Society of Free Persons of Color in 1830, thus inaugurating the black national convention movement of the 1830s to 1850s.

Escape from Slavery and Slave Narratives
Enslaved Marylanders testified against slavery by trying to escape and gain freedom, thereby giving the lie to proslavery claims that slaves were content with their lot. A few escapees published autobiographical slave narratives that helped spread antislavery sentiment among white northerners. J.W.C. Pennington’s The Fugitive Blacksmith recounted his flight from slavery in Washington County in 1828. John Thompson’s 1838 narrative described how free black Marylanders helped him to reach freedom, as did Frederick Douglass’ 1845 classic, My Bondage and My Freedom. Douglass went on to become an abolitionist leader, as did ex-Maryland slave Henry Highland Garnet. The freeborn Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, niece of William Watkins, also spoke on the abolitionist lecture circuit in the 1850s and published antislavery poems such as “The Auction Block” and “Bury me in a Free Land”.

Antislavery also took the form of assisting would-be escapees. Harriet Tubman, from Dorchester County, made thirteen journeys to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and led nearly 80 slaves to freedom. Chronicles of the Underground Railroad credited shadowy figures such as “Gibbs,” a free black Baltimore painter, with assisting hundreds of people heading north. Women obtained or manufactured false “freedom papers” on the black market that helped fugitives “pass” as free. In Christiana, Pennsylvania in 1851, William Parker, a fugitive from Anne Arundel County, led resistance to slave catching that culminated in the death of a Maryland slaveholder determined to recapture his “property.” The ensuing trials heightened intersectional tension and contributed mightily to the growth of northern antislavery sentiment. Back in Maryland, free people of color used their independent black churches to coordinate successful opposition to an 1859 proposal to expel or re-enslave the state’s free blacks, presaging a rising antislavery tide in the state.

The Civil War Destruction of Slavery
Starting in 1861, slaves liberated themselves by the thousands by fleeing to Union troop camps to work and, by 1863, to enlist as soldiers. By 1864, white Marylanders had turned against slavery: defending the institution, while fighting against a southern slaveholder confederacy became increasingly unpopular. Politicians such as Henry Winter Davis and Hugh Lenox Bond urged that Maryland amend its constitution to end slavery, and a referendum approved its abolition in November of 1864.

—T. Stephen Whitman

Mount St. Mary’s University