which met defeat by a vote of 15-39.37

Unlike Pennsylvania where blacks constituted only two per cent of the population, slavery
retained its economic viability in Maryland where slaves constituted nearly a third of the
population. Although grain had become the principle export crop, tobacco either as the basic
crop or part of mixed agriculture retained a hold and planters in the southern Maryland sought to
preserve their labor system. Even the mild strictures of a gradual abolition were protested as a
deprivation of the sacred right of property. Importation barriers prevented the property
relationship from being formed and avoided the problem, but abolition threatened existing rights.

Although antislavery forces were unable to obtain abolition, they were able to reduce the
stringency of manumission laws.   Responding to the petitions of the Society for the Abolition of
Slavery, a committee was appointed in 1789 to consider the abolition of restrictions on
manumission by will imposed in 1752. William Pinkney, speaking for the committee, said that it
should be the wish of every free community to abolish civil slavery, and no opportunity should
be neglected for reaching that end by silent and gradual steps, with the slaveowner's consent. A
bill to that end failed in 1789, but passed the next session of the legislature.38 Such manumission
assuaged the slave owner's conscience while not depriving him of the benefit of service during
his lifetime. Testamentary manumission became increasingly popular, expecially among the
Methodists.39

C.        Judicial Responses to Anti-slavery Sentiment

The Courts responded to anti-slavery sentiment during this period by decisions making it
easier for mulattoes to claim freedom. The Maryland Court of Appeals did not question the
validity of the institution, but several evidentiary rulings made it easier to demonstrate free status.
In Eleanor Toogood v. Doctor Upton Scott, the defendant produced a 1734 judgment against the
petitioner's mother which held that she was a slave. Both the lower court and the Court of
Appeals held that the judgment was not binding on the status of the daughter because she was not
party to it. Further, the court found that the petitioner was free on the grounds that her mother
was bom free and had been free during the life of her slave husband.40

Similarly, although the descendants of Irish Nell lost their claim for freedom in Butler v.
Boardman. their children were successful in their own petition in Mary Butler v. Adam Craig. 2
Har. & McH 214 (1791). Again the court held that adjudications of slavery of the ancestor
through whom petitioners' claimed did not foreclose petitioners. The court noted that a white
women and her descendants could be enslaved only if she married a slave between 1664 and
1681. No marriage records from that period survived. Although the court indicated a
willingness to hear evidence that the marriage had occurred, it refused to accept the judgment in
Boardman as such evidence. With no other testimony as to Irish Nell's marriage, the court held
her descendants entitled to their freedom.41

In Mahonev v. Ashton. 4 Har. & McH 63 (1797), the petitioner referred to a half-dozen

42