something about it. Maryland's most prominent citizens were among the founders, including
Robert Goodloe Harper, John Eager Howard, Senator Samuel Smith, Francis Scott Key and
others. Founders from other states included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Justice Bushrod
Washington.108 The Society founded a colony in Africa, and in 1820 Daniel Coker, the principal
of the African Academy in Baltimore, sailed on the first expedition.109 The Maryland legislature
provided for annual appropriations of $1000 per year for the American Colonization Society
beginning in 1827 for colonizing residents of Maryland.110 In 1832 they sought federal support
for the effort by a resolution to instruct Maryland's congressional representatives to press for
federal aid and for an amendment to the Constitution if necessary.111

The twin developments of the Protection Society and the American Colonization Society
seemed to hold some promise for a revival of discussion of abolition. Support of abolition had
continued after 1800 in the form of individual decisions to manumit slaves, but there was no
strong organization in favor of abolition laws. In 1824, Benjamin Lundy came to Baltimore,
bringing with him his abolitionist paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Lundy
supported gradual abolition, and was able to find common ground with the colonizationists. He
also established a connection with the American Convention of Abolition Societies. In 1826,
Lundy, together with Raymond and John Needles formed the National Anti-Slavery Tract Society
in Baltimore. The tone of the publication became more strident with the addition in 1829 of
young William Lloyd Garrison to the staff of Lundy's paper. Indeed, in 1830 Garrison was tried
and convicted of libel for his editorial attack on a slave trader, leaving the state later that year for
eventual fame as an abolitionist writer in Boston.112

In 1831 an accomodation seemed to have been reached. Opponents of slavery were free
to urge individuals to manumit their slaves. Gradual abolition could be discussed, especially if
linked to grand projects for colonization. Nevertheless, slavery and the slave trade were
considered respectable options. The plantations on the eastern shore and in southern Maryland
remained firmly wedded to a slave system with few voices of dissent, but more liberal ideas
could be voiced in the city as long as their authors maintained a respectful tone. Both gradual
abolition and colonization were respectable fantasies in a world where the reality was a divided
society in which slavery was now firmly entrenched.

E.        Nat Turner's Rebellion and the Maryland Laws of 1832

The complacent status quo in Maryland was shattered in 1831 when Nat Turner led a
short lived rebellion in Southhampton County in Virginia. A number of whites, including
women and children, were slain before the revolt was ended. Shocked at this development, the
Maryland legislature made race relations its top priority in 1831-2. Theoretically, the slave revolt
could have suggested to Maryland legislators that public safety required the abolition of slavery
to eradicate the source of danger."3 The legislature, however, engaged in a very different
analysis of the situation. They considered the preservation of property to be a fundamental
principle of society, and slaves were property in their society. They drew two lessons from the
Southhampton uprising: that slaves and free blacks must be prevented from unsupervised

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