opportunities  to live on an equal basis  with their white neighbors and  compelled  them  to  develop  their  own  separate, semiautonomous,  and perforce  second class  society.     It was,  to repeat, essentially a question of white racial attitudes.     Black Marylanders   could  assert  much,   but  their prospect  of translating such  assertion  into  meaningful  change  remained  defined  by  the extent  of whites'  support  for that change.
White Marylanders in the  1860s were  simply not prepared to contemplate—to   say  nothing   of approve-legislation   or  social programs  designed to  force the  issue  of racial  equality. Conservatives   opposed  anything  more  than  a  rudimentary acceptance   of emancipation.   Radicals   obviously  sought  more  but they too stopped well  short of what black people  fervently hoped for.     That  rural  planters  should  prove  recalcitrant  is  hardly surprising.     Their opinions were well  known and consistently articulated.    As for radicals, they did not regard black people as equal to whites, at least not yet, and believed firmly that any effort to legislate such equality was mistaken.    "We do not encourage any benevolence  toward  them,"   wrote  Baltimore  Criminal   Court  Judge and prominent radical Hugh Lennox Bond in April   1865,  "which does not tend to make the colored man feel his duty and capacity to