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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 299 Print image (43K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 299 Print image (43K) |
| labor and management, and Barbara Fields sees their focus on family autonomy as that of "a subsistence-oriented peasantry."9 But in other ways, Maryland differed from most southern states. For one thing, it had never left the union. Despite attack by Confederate forces on several occasions, its pro-northern government remained in place. Second, between 1861 and 1867, white radicals enjoyed access to political power. Finally, by November 1, 1864, half of Maryland's black population had already been free for some time. Unlike most slaveholding states, Maryland had for years possessed a large free black population in both its rural and urban midst. Such experience offered a unique perspective on post emancipation race relations, one which revealed the crucial importance of pre-emancipation white attitudes toward free blacks. For among the many difficulties black Marylanders confronted was whites' long-accustomed familiarity with and professed contempt for a large and subservient free black population which, in effect, emancipation simply doubled in size. Indeed, for decades, the more than 83,000 free blacks in Maryland before November 1, 1864, had toiled as wage laborers, sharecroppers, and small landowners under agreements similar to those which came to shape post-emancipation |