Slavery in Maryland briefly considered

by John L. Carey

VII. Emancipation in Maryland: its difficulties.

If we are driven to the conclusion that Slavery in Maryland must terminate, under the operation of tendencies now at work, it becomes a matter of great importance to know something about the manner in which so extensive a change is to be accomplished. Undoubtedly it will not do to remain entirely passive on this subject. I am persuaded that the general sentiment in Maryland is fixed in the conviction that Slavery, here at least, is an evil, and that in some way or other it must be removed.

There are two main difficulties which here present themselves.

In the first place the negroes amongst us, whether emancipated or enslaved, must remain a distinct class, a servile class, separated from the whites by differences of color, race and civilization.

In considering Slavery where such bars of separation between the classes are not found, one may very well imagine how the system may be changed without confusion or disorder; how the enslaved class, gradually admitted to the privileges of freedom, may, after a while, become incorporated with the general body of society; how, thus, all distinctions may be finally destroyed, and how the power, resources, and energy of the State may be vastly increased by the addition of so much active material to her industrial and moral forces. In Rome the sons of freedmen were citizens. Europe could alter her system of Slavery which existed in the middle ages, and which still exists in Poland, Hungary and Russia; she could admit her serfs to some of the rights of citizens, though still withholding many of those rights; she could do this without danger, because serfs and lords were of one complexion, and of one race. The descendant of a peasant might himself in time become a lord.

But when a servile population, emancipated, stands marked by its peculiarities of race and color, so that it can not be drawn into the social and political sphere, its position inevitably becomes hostile. In the midst of the community, but not of it; the old bond of connection ruptured, with no basis whatever upon which a new one can be established—what but feelings of suspicion, of distrust, of aversion and repugnance can prevail between the two classes so far removed and so entirely dissimilar.

Nor can any thing be done by the superior class to elevate the condition of the other; because that would be to strengthen an adverse power. All efforts to improve an humble population must have reference to their ultimate admission to a participation in social and political rights. Of course this could not be contemplated for a moment in any community where the number of the black population might be at all considerable. And this brings me, without dwelling farther on this point, to the second difficulty which has to be considered by us in Maryland, in view of future emancipation.

When it was determined to abolish Slavery in Pennsylvania, the thing could be done easily enough, because of the small number of slaves in that commonwealth, in comparison with the bulk of the population. The slaves were a mere handful. They could be set free in the midst of the general community without the danger of their forming a large class remaining distinct from the rest of the population, to infect society by their idleness, or to excite commotion by the rivalry of their labor with that of the whites. It made no great difference in the social condition of Pennsylvania, whether the negroes within her borders were individually slaves or not. Their numbers were too small to affect the general current of things one way or another.

But in Maryland the case is otherwise. It would be a serious business to set free as large a slave population as we have, and leave them floating among us with a careless disregard of the future. The black population of Maryland is about one third of the whole population. In 1840 it amounted to 151,556; the white population numbered 316,011. In an aggregate population, then, of 467,567 the blacks number 151,556. Of these the slaves are about ninety thousand; the free blacks, about sixty thousand.

The question, it may be said, relates not to the aggregate number of the black population, but only to the slave portion. Sixty thousand and more are free already; emancipation would affect only the ninety thousand.