slaves in Maryland, not just as a percentage of the population, but in absolute numbers.60 The
laws forbidding the importation of slaves confined population growth to natural increase, but the
birth rate was significantly higher than mortality rates. Thus the decline in the slave population
of the state requires further explanation.

Although cotton cultivation in the lower south helped create a strong demand for slaves,
the sale of slaves from Maryland to the states of the lower south is only a partial explanation for
the decline of slavery.61 The slave trading business was a profitable one for a number of
Baltimore businessmen, most prominently the Woolfolk clan.62 Masters sold slaves south as
punishment for conduct with which the master felt unable to deal. Plantation owners who
borrowed heavily sometimes had to sell slaves to escape from debt, and executors of estates not
infrequently sold slaves to satisfy creditors. Nevertheless, masters were reluctant to sell their
slaves - it was, in effect, a confession of failure. A number of cases in the Court of Appeals
provided examples of the view of most slaveowners on sale south. The plaintiffs in Adams v.
Anderson63 and Price v. Read64 recovered damages when the purchasers of slaves from them
breached agreements to keep the slaves in the neighborhood. In Evans v. Iglehart. the decedent
left a life estate in his personal property to his wife. The executor sought to sell the slaves and
invest the profits to pay the widow the annual income. The Court rejected the attempt as contrary
to the will of the testator.

A considerable portion of our personalty consists of slaves, born in
our families, humanely treated, faithfully serving us, and warmly
attached to their masters and their connexions. To part with such
property, even when under the influence of pressing necessity, is a
severe trial to the feelings of the master. But voluntarily, and
uninfluenced by any such necessity, to subject them by will to sale
under the hammer, perhaps in foreign bondage, whilst his farms, to
which they belonged, were distributed amongst his connexions and
relatives, is conduct, the idea of which rarely if ever entered into
the imagination of a Maryland land-holder.65

More often, when economic conditions were bad, the master would take his slaves with
him and leave the state for better opportunities elsewhere.66

Escape was another factor in the decline of slavery. Maryland was a border state and
it was therefore less difficult for a slave to reach northern states. Some of the most famous of all
fugitive slaves came from Maryland, including Frederick Douglas,67 Harriet Tubman68 and Josiah
Henson (whose autobiography was the impetus for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin)69 Nevertheless, escape was still difficult. Slavery was concentrated on the eastern shore
and in southern Maryland and slaves on the comparatively isolated plantations had little specific
knowledge of the route to freedom. Any black person outside the confines of the neighborhood
where he or she was known would be suspected of being a runaway slave and could be seized for
reward money.70 Within the state, the old laws on runaway servants and slaves were constantly

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