Convention, urged prohibition of slave importation into the United
States. In 1797, Charles Carroll of Carrollton introduced a bill into the
General Assembly for the gradual abolition of slavery. Neither measure
was successful, but neither needed to be in Maryland, for Maryland
people had already found the institution repugnant and were them-
selves free. In 1790, for instance, only one Maryland Negro in 14 was
free. By 1860, half the Negroes in the State were free men and women,
because they had been liberated by their former masters. And in 1831,
moreover, the State did take cognizance of the matter. It set out to right
the wrong. From that year on, until the war started, it appropriated ten
thousand dollars annually to aid a colonization society to return free
Negroes to Africa and see that they were properly settled. Thus our
State established a successful colony in Liberia, where, today, a county
is still called by our name—Maryland. Finally, Maryland abolished
slavery in November, 1864—ahead of the federal government, which
did not take the action until the following year. Certainly it was not
the institution of slavery that brought our State into the Civil War,
since we were already ridding ourselves of it in a planned manner that
provided care for the liberated people.

How long ago it was, my friends! What progress all the citizens of our
State have made in this century that lies between! Let us, as we'll as we
can, commemorate the acts of grace which somehow came out of the
cruel war, and see in them lessons that outshine any and all battles. For
that reason, let us all take pride in the act of supreme humanity which
brings us together here today—the care of the citizens of this community
for human dignity, extended to otherwise forgotten dead. Extended
without personal reason, without the ties of relationship or affection
that motivate such care normally. Extended simply because human
beings should respect one another. Here the people felt that rule and
acted accordingly. What they did should never be forgotten. I am
proud to be a part of this significant ceremony, and I know that I shall
always remember it.

Yes, a century has passed. It was a hundred years ago, as you are all
aware, that our Maryland poet, James Ryder Randall, wrote the verses
that are now our State song. Wrote what many young men were saying,
both North and South, in that moment of wild excitement, wrote the
feverish emotions of the times. Being a poet, he put them into song.
Thus he commemorated four years in which our State, for reasons
beyond its control, was involved in a conflict that was contrary to its
long tradition of tolerance. What would he write if he were here today?
I have allowed myself to think that, without the spur of the bewildering

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