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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 340 Print image (33K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 340 Print image (33K) |
| great deal of money and effort to punish those who interfered with their property, no matter how slight the purported infraction may have been. Even into the year 1865, two years after Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, many Eastern Shore slaveholders still retained their slaves, and took extra precautions to prevent their escape. Maryland was not covered by the Proclamation, since it was not a state in rebellion, and slaveholders had no compulsion to manumit their slaves, nor were they required to do so. For example, in late 1865, in Worcester County, the easternmost county in the state, 265 slaves were finally manumitted by their owners, which substantiates the fact that slaveowners were still adament about the retention of their slaves and the preservation of the institution of slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the "Middle Ground". If the descriptions presented above are characteristics of slavery that is temperate, or mild, then just how cruel and inhuman was slavery in the other states? [September 15, 1995] Endnotes |