CHALLENGING SLAVERY IN MARYLAND AND THE CHESAPEAKE: 1775–1870

Stephen Whitman, Mt. St. Mary’s U.: whitman@msmary.edu

QUESTIONS

What did African Americans do to challenge slavery and gain freedom?

How did black challenges to slavery change the history of Maryland, the Chesapeake, and the United States?

OUTLINE

I Seeking White Allies

     -- Legislated Emancipation
     -- Manumission and Self-Purchase
     -- Freedom Suits

II Leaving Home: Migration, Colonization and Flight

     -- Emancipation and Removal: Pennsylvania & Ohio
     -- Colonization: Liberia, Haiti, and Canada
     -- Runaways and the Underground Railroad

III Taking A Stand: Building Communities vs. Rebelling

     -- Free Black Communities and Black Churches
     -- Slave Rebels: Gabriel and Nat Turner
     -- The Creole Affair

IV Allying with Outsiders

     -- The American Revolution
     -- The War of 1812
     -- Black Abolitionists

V The Destruction of Slavery and Emancipation

     -- Secession: A Divided Region
     -- Black Soldiers and Sailors for the Union
     -- Emancipation in Maryland

Slavery in Maryland, Very Briefly Considered

African servitude began in Maryland with the birth of Lord Baltimore's colony in 1634: Father Andrew White brought with him a black "servant" who may have been a slave. Until the 1660s, the status of Africans was ambiguous; some men became free after a term of servitude, while others remained slaves for life. Slaves made up three per cent of the population in 1658.
In 1664, the colonial assembly established lifelong servitude as the norm for Africans and for future children of slave mothers. These laws passed after the arrival of slaveholding immigrants from Barbados, and may reflect their influence. Throughout most of the seventeenth century, Maryland imported few slaves, relying on white indentured servants to cultivate its staple crop of tobacco. But as fewer whites entered the colony after 1680, slave buying increased, especially after the abolition of the Royal African Company's monopoly on the trade in 1698. By 1710 slaves made up about twenty-five per cent of the colony's people.

Slave Demographics in Maryland

At first, slaves in Maryland failed to reproduce themselves, partly because of a high ratio of men to women, partly because of harsh work and exposure to unfamiliar diseases. By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, Maryland's slave population began to increase naturally, as sex ratios evened and acquired immunities to disease developed. By 1783, some one hundred thousand enslaved people made up one-third of its population, and were more numerous than in any other state except Virginia. The legislature could abolish the African slave trade in that year without fear of a shortage of black workers. Thereafter, Maryland became a slave-selling state. Tens of thousands of black people were marched to Kentucky. Thousands more were shipped from Baltimore and smaller ports, at first to South Carolina and Georgia, and by the 1810s and afterwards to Alabama and Louisiana. The domestic trade, combined with extensive manumissions after 1790, led to a slow decline in slaves' numbers, despite continued natural increase: In 1860, Maryland had eighty-seven slaves, about thirteen per cent of its people. Slaveholders then numbered about sixteen thousand, about one for every six white households.
Slaves were distributed unevenly across the state. The tobacco-growing counties along the lower Western Shore of the Chesapeake had black majorities; on the Eastern Shore, slaves made up a quarter to a third of the population; but in the counties bordering Pennsylvania, only ten to fifteen per cent of residents were slaves.

The Life and Work of Slaves in Maryland

Maryland's first African slaves chiefly grew tobacco, living in groups of eight to twenty in a "quarter", i.e., houses, outbuildings, livestock, and surrounding tobacco fields. By the 1750s, planters were using slaves to grow wheat, corn, and vegetables, and to tend livestock, especially on the Eastern Shore. Others toiled as craft workers and industrial laborers, ranging from carpentry or cooperage on plantations to ironmaking and shipbuilding. Overall, slaves' work intensified in the eighteenth century, with more "night work", such as corn milling and tobacco processing, especially for black women. Beginning in the 1780s, slaves took part in the dynamic expansion of Baltimore, which by 1810 was the third largest city in the nation. Thousands of African Americans worked as craftspeople, sailors, carters, day laborers, domestics, and washerwomen in Baltimore, often hired out by rural owners to city employers.
Despite the uprooting effect of the slave trade and in-state migrations, many African Americans developed and maintained strong families. In the religious sphere, Maryland's blacks embraced Methodism in great numbers from the late eighteenth century onwards, and helped found the African Methodist Episcopal church in Baltimore in the early nineteenth century. That city by 1860 became home to twenty-five thousand free blacks, the largest concentration of free people of color in the United States.

Manumission and Black Freedom in Maryland

Between 1790 and 1860, Maryland's free black numbers increased from eight to eighty-three thousand. They comprised forty-nine per cent of all blacks in 1860, a much higher share than in any slave state except Delaware. Slaves gained freedom through manumission, a legal action whereby a master gave or sold freedom. Most manumissions granted in Maryland before 1790 came from Quakers or Methodists who saw slaveholding as evil. In 1789, the state assembly debated but rejected a bill to abolish slavery by gradually freeing slave children born after 1790. Still, private manumission became far more widespread in the 1790s, as slavery's profitability became less certain and also because of the risks of blacks running off to Pennsylvania, where slavery had been abolished in 1780. Masters increasingly allowed slaves to work their way out of slavery, by paying for liberation with money acquired from employers as incentive payments for extra labor. By 1830, a third of the state's African Americans had become free. Thereafter, rising slave prices coupled with white hostility toward free blacks slowed the pace of emancipation. In the 1830s, Maryland's whites urged colonizing free blacks to Liberia to prevent the erosion of slavery. But blacks strongly opposed colonization, and only a few thousand persons ever migrated to Liberia.

The Destruction of Slavery in Maryland

Overt rebellion against slavery was rare in colonial Maryland, but slaves seized opportunities to flee to freedom with British forces in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The British organized a regiment from such black fugitives in 1814, transplanting them to Trinidad and elsewhere after the war. In the antebellum era, some Maryland slaves escaped to northern states and became prominent abolitionists. Frederick Douglass, J.W.C. Pennington, and Henry Highland Garnet all began life in slavery in Maryland. Josiah Henson, the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom, had been a slave in Maryland, as had the heroic conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman.
The Civil War brought the institution of slavery tumbling down in Maryland. Thousands of slaves fled masters to find freedom working for and fighting as Union troops. In November of 1864, Maryland's voters narrowly approved a new constitution that ended slavery, just two hundred years after its statutory enactment by the colonial assembly.

Slaves and Free People of Color in Maryland, 1790–1860

Year	# Slaves	# Free Blacks	% Blacks Enslaved	# Whites	Total Population
1790	103,036	8,043	93	208,649	319,728
1800	105,635	19,587	85	216,326	341,548
1810	111,502	33,927	77	235,117	380,546
1820	107,327	39,730	73	260,223	407,280
1830	102,994	52,938	66	291,108	437,040
1840	89,737	62,078	59	318,204	470,019
1850	90,368	74,723	55	417,942	583,033
1860	87,189	83,942	51	515,918	687,049

Further Reading:

Please contact Stephen Whitman at whitman@msmary.edu to obtain a briefy annotated bibliography on slavery and emancipation in Maryland.

Sample Manumissions, texts transcribed and edited:

A Delayed Manumission, Combined with Sale of a Slave:

"Know all Men by these Presents that I, Nathaniel Potter of the City of Baltimore, for and in Consideration of the Sum of One hundred and Eighty Dollars current money to me in hand paid by Samuel Vincent of the same City the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge, Have bargained and sold and by these presents do bargain and sell unto the said Samuel Vincent, One Negro Man Slave named Isaac aged at Twenty Years: To have and to hold the same Negro Isaac unto him the said Samuel Vincent and his Assigns from the fifteenth Day of August past and during and until the full end and term of Eight Years from thence next ensuing and fully to be completed and ended, if the said Negro Isaac shall so long live. And I the said Nathaniel Potter for myself and my Heirs, Executors, and Administrators the said Negro Isaac for the said Term of Eight Years (if he shall so long live) unto the said Samuel Vincent and his Assigns against the claims of all persons whosoever shall and will warrant and defend by these presents. And further, I, the said Nathaniel Potter, Do declare that from and immediately after the expiration of the said term of eight years, the said Negro Isaac shall be and he is hereby at the expiration of the same term, Manumitted, set free, and discharged from Slavery and from all claims of servitude whatsoever. In witness whereof I herewith set my hand and Seal this twenty third Day of September in the year of Eighteen hundred and one."

A Manumission by Self-Purchase:

"...I, Salathiel Divers of Baltimore County...for divers good causes and considerations me thereunto moving as also in further consideration of two hundred Dollars current money to me in hand paid, have released from Slavery, liberated, manumitted and set free...my negro many named Peter Conway being of the age of Thirty eight years and able to work and gain sufficient livelyhood and maintenance...", dated November 18, 1815.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Race, Slavery, and Emancipation in North America and in Maryland

This is a brief bibliography of a large literature. The first section lists some notable writers in the broad field of slavery and emancipation in North America, principally from articles in major journals in the past ten years or so. The second section focuses on African Americans in Maryland. Some authors and titles appear in both sections. The third section lists a few excellent websites. Naturally, many more than appear here exist.

If you would like to read more on a topic not covered here, please contact me at whitman@pa.net, and I'll do my best to suggest additional articles or books.

(A) OVERVIEWS OF SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION IN NORTH AMERICA

Overview texts: Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard U. Press, 2003.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin, Black Odyssey: The African-American Ordeal in Slavery, Vintage Books, 2nd ed., 1990.

Topical Articles:

Authors appear alphabetically, with each article's topic numbered in parenthesis.

Topics:

1. European and African Origins of American Slavery
2. The Slave Trade and Plantation Societies in the Americas
3. Racism and Slavery
4. The World of the Slaveowners
5. The World of the Slaves
6. African Americans & the Democratic Revolutions (1765 - 1822)
7. Anti-Slavery & Pro-Slavery Thought
8. Urban and Industrial Slavery
9. The Politics of Slavery in the United States (1783 - 1860)
10. Civil War and Emancipation (1860 - 1877)
11. Free People of Color (1600-1865)

Articles:

(3) Berlin, Ira, "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland America", William and Mary Quarterly (WMQ), v. 53, 1996, p. 251-288.

(8) Bezis-Selfa, John, "A Tale of Two Ironworks: Slavery, Free Labor, Work, and Resistance in the Early Republic", WMQ, v. 56, 1999, p. 677-699.
(1) Blackburn, Robin, "The Old World Background to European Colonial Slavery", WMQ, v. 54, 1997, p. 65-102.

Braund, Kathryn Holland, "The Creek Indians, Blacks, and Slavery", Journal of Southern History,(JSH), v. 57, 1991, p. 601-636.

(3) Chaplin, Joyce E., "Slavery and the Principle of Humanity: A Modern Idea in the Early Lower South", Journal of Social History, 1991, p. 299-315.

(8) Dew, Charles, "Disciplining Slave Ironworkers in the Antebellum South: Coercion, Conciliation, and Accommodation", American Historical Review (AHR), v. 79, 1974, p. 393-418.

(6) Egerton, Douglas R., "Black Independence Struggles and the Tale of Two Revolutions: A Review Essay", JSH, v. 64, 1998, p. 96-116.

(2) Eltis, David, "The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment", WMQ, v. 58, 2001, (tables and maps).

(1) Eltis, David, "Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery in the Americas: An Interpretation", AHR, v. 98, 1993, p. 1399-1423.

(3) Evans, William McKee, "From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The Strange Odyssey of the 'Sons of Ham'", AHR, v. 85, 1980, p. 15-43.

(4-5) Faust, Drew Gilpin, "Trying to Do a Man's Business: Slavery, Violence, and Gender in the American Civil War", Gender and History, v. 4, 1992, p. 197-214.

(3) Fredrickson, George M., Racism: A Short History, Princeton U. Press, 2002, p. 1-95.

(6) Freehling, William W., "The Founding Fathers, Conditional Antislavery, and the Nonradicalism of the American Revolution", in The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War, Oxford U. Press, 1994, p. 12-33.

(10) Freehling, William W., The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, Oxford U. Press, 2001, p. 85-199.

(4-5) Gomez, Michael, "Muslims in Early America", JSH, v. 60, 1994, p. 672-710.

(4-5) Greenberg, Kenneth S., "The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South", AHR, v. 95, 1990, p. 57-74.

(4-5) Hughes, Sarah S., "Slaves for Hire: The Allocation of Black Labor in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, 1782 to 1810", WMQ, v. 35, 1978, p. 261-286.

(9) Huston, James L., "Property Rights in Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War", JSH, v. 65, 1999, p. 249-286.

(11) Johnson, Michael P. and Roark, James L., "Strategies of Survival: Free Negro Families and the Problem of Slavery', in In Joy and in Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900, Carol Bleser, ed., Oxford U. Press, 1991, p. 88-102.

(3) Johnson, Walter, "The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s", Journal of American History, (JAH) v. 87, 2000, p. 13-38.

(3) Jordan, Winthrop D., "American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies", in How Did American Slavery Begin?, ed. Edward Countryman, Bedford-St. Martin's Press, 1999, p. 101-118.

(9) McCurry, Stephanie, "The Two Faces of Republicanism: Gender and Proslavery Politics in Antebellum South Carolina", JAH, v. 78, 1992, p. 1245-1264.

(2) Morgan, Edmund S., "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox", in How Did American Slavery Begin?, ed. Edward Countryman, Bedford-St. Martin's Press, 1999, p. 119-144.

(4-5) Morris, Christopher, "The Articulation of Two Worlds: The Master-Slave Relationship Reconsidered", JAH, v. 85, 1998, p. 982-1007.

(4-5) Morris, Thomas D. "The Sources of Southern Slave Law", in Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860, U. North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 38-57.

(9) Oakes, James, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990, p. xii-xxi, 3-79.

(9) Parish, Peter, "The Edges of Slavery in the Old South: Or, do Exceptions Prove Rules?", Slavery and Abolition, v. 4, 1983, p. 106-125.

(10) Penningroth, Dylan, "Slavery, Freedom,and Social Claims to Property among African Americans in Liberty County, Georgia, 1850-1880", JAH, v. 84, p. 405-435.

(10) Scott, Rebecca J., "Defining the Boundaries of Freedom in the World of Cane: Cuba, Brazil, and Louisiana after Emancipation", AHR, v. 99, 1994, 70-102.
(6) Sidbury, James, "Saint Domingue in Virginia: Ideology, Local Meanings, and Resistance to Slavery, 1790-1800.", JSH, v. 63, 1997, p. 531-552.

(4-5) Smith, Mark M., "Remembering Mary: Shaping Revolt: Reconsidering the Stono Rebellion", JSH, v. 68, 2001, p. 513-534.

(4-5) Stevenson, Brenda, "Distress and Discord in Virginia Slave Families, 1830-1860", in In Joy and in Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900, Carol Bleser, ed., Oxford U. Press, 1991, p. 103-124.

(7) Tadman, Michael, "The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and natural Increase in the Americas", American Historical Review (AHR), v. 105, 2000, p. 1534-1575.

(11) White, Shane, "'It Was a Proud Day': African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, 1741-1834", (JAH), v. 81, 1994, p. 13-50.

(8) Whitman, T. Stephen, "Industrial Slavery at the Margin: The Maryland Chemical Works", Journal of Southern History (JSH), v. 59, 1993, p. 31-62.

(10) Whitman, T. Stephen, "Diverse Good Causes: Manumission and the Transformation of Urban Slavery", Social Science History, v. 19, 1995, p. 333-370.

(3) Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, "Modernizing Southern Slavery: The Proslavery Argument Revisited", JSH, v. 51, 1985, p. 27-45.

(4-5) Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, "The Mask of Obedience: Male Slave Psychology in the Old South", AHR, v. 93, 1988, p. 1228-1252.

(B) AFRICAN AMERICANS IN MARYLAND 1634-1870.

This list is arranged topically with brief comments at the top of each section.

(1) Slavery in Maryland and the Chesapeake

Barbara Jeanne Fields is the standard overview work. I've included works on Delaware for comparative purposes, as well as overviews of the colonial era. Philip Morgan is excellent on early African American culture. Edmund Morgan's books is a classic on why Chesapeake planters decided to become slaveholders.

Breen, T.H. and Innes, Stephen, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676, (New York, 1980)

Calderhead, William, "The Role of the Professional Slave Trader in a Slave Economy: Austin Woolfolk, a Case Study", Civil War History, 23, (1977), 195-211

Deal, J. Douglas, Race and Class in Colonial Virginia: Indians, Africans, and Englishmen on the Eastern Shore of Virginia during the Seventeenth Century, (New York, 1993)

Essah, Patience, A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638-1865, (Charlottesville: U. Press of Virginia, 1996)

Fields, Barbara Jeanne, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century, (Yale U. Press, 1985)

Kulikoff, Allan, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680 - 1800, (Chapel Hill, NC: U. North Carolina Press, 1986):

Lancaster, R. Kent, "Chattel Slavery at Hampton/Northampton, Baltimore County", Maryland Historical Magazine, 95, (2000), 409-28

Morgan, Edmund, American Slavery, American Freedom, (Chapel Hill, NC: U. North Carolina Press, 1975)

Morgan, Philip D., Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry, (Chapel Hill: U. North Carolina Press, 1998)

Walsh, Lorena, "Slave Life, Slave Society, and Tobacco Production in the Tidewater Chesapeake, 1620-1820", in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas, (Charlottesville: U. Press of Virginia, 1993)

Williams, William H., Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639-1865, (Wilmington, DE, 1996)

(2) Slavery and the American Revolution

Davis is our best intellectual historian of slavery. Frey recounts the significance of what slaves did during the American Revolution. Hoffman has interesting things to say about the interface between slave resistance and the conduct of the Revolution in Maryland.

Calderhead, William, "Slavery in Maryland in the Age of the Revolution, 1775-1790", Maryland Historical Magazine, 98, 2003, 303-324.

Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, (Cornell U. Press, 1975)

Frey, Sylvia, Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age, (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1991)

Hall, Robert L., "Slave Resistance in Baltimore City and County, 1747-1790", Maryland Historical Magazine, 84, 1989

Hoffman, Ronald, A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)

(3) Free People of Color

Berlin and Horton provide excellent national level overviews of free people of color. Graham has a series of mini-biographies of prominent African Americans, notably William Watkins. Phillips looks at free black community, and Whitman at the workings of manumission, the means by which that community came into being.

Berlin, Ira, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South, (New York, 1974)

Gardner, Bettye, "Free Blacks in Baltimore, 1800-1860", Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, 1974,

Graham, Leroy, Baltimore, Nineteenth-Century Black Capitol, Lanham, MD, 1982.

Horton, James Oliver and Lois E., In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1997)

Kimmel, Ross, "Free Blacks in Seventeenth Century Maryland", Maryland Historical Magazine, 71, 1976, 19-25.

Phillips, Christopher, Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790-1860, (Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1997)

Towers, Frank, "Job Busting at Baltimore Shipyards: Racial Violence in the Civil War-Era South", Journal of Southern History, 66, 2000, 221-256

Whitman, T. Stephen, The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland, (Lexington, KY: U. Press of Kentucky, 1997); paperback edition, Routledge Press, London and New York, 1999)

Wright, Richard, The Free Negro in Maryland, (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1921)

(4) Anti-Slavery and Pro-Slavery Thought

Carroll, Kenneth, "An Eighteenth Century episcopalian
Attack on Quaker and Methodist Manumission of Slaves", Maryland Historical Magazine, 80, 1985, 139-150

-----, "Maryland Quakers and Slavery", Quaker History, 72, 1983

-----, "Religious Influences on the Manumission of Slaves in Caroline, Dorchester, and Talbot Counties", Maryland Historical Magazine, 56, 1961, 176-95.

Condon, Sean, "The Slaveowner's Family and Manumission in the Post Revolutionary Chesapeake: Evidence from Anne Arundel County Wills, 1790 to 1820", paper presented at From Slavery to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, conference held at Charleston, SC, October 4-7, 2000.

Finnie, Gordon, "The Anti-Slavery Movement in the Upper South Before 1840", Journal of Southern History, 35, 1969, 322-325

Papenfuse, Eric, "From Redcompense to Revolution: Mahoney v. Ashton and the Transfiguration of Maryland Culture, 1791-1802", Slavery and Abolition, 15, 1994

Soderlund, Jean, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit, (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1985)

(5) African Americans and the War of 1812

Cassell, Frank A., "Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay Area and the War of 1812", Journal of Negro History, v. 57, 1972, p. 144-155

George, Christopher, "Mirage of Freedom: African Americans in the War of 1812", Maryland Historical Magazine, v. 91, 1996, p. 426-450

Weiss, John McNish, "The Corps of Colonial Marines 1814-16: A Summary", Immigrants and Minorities, v. 15, 1996, p. 80-90

(6) Colonization and its Opponents

Dillon, Merton, Benjamin Lundy and the Struggle for Negro Freedom, (Urbana, IL: U. of Illinois Press, 1966)

Harrold, Stanley, Abolitionists and the South: 1831-1861, (Lexington, KY: U. Press of Kentucky, 1995)

Miller, Floyd, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863, (Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1975)
Moses, Wilson J., The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1988)

Papenfuse, Eric, The Evils of Necessity: Robert Goodloe Harper and the Moral Dilemma of Slavery, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997)

(7) African American Religion

This section combines scholarly analyses of African American religion with spiritual autobiographies of black preachers and evangelists. Most of the nineteenth-century material can be found at the University of North Carolina's "Documenting the American South" website: try "docsouth" as a search term.

Andrews, Dee E., The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture, (Princeton, 2000)

Andrews, William L., ed., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century, (Bloomington, IN: U. of Indiana Press, 1986)

Boles, John, "Tension in a Slave Society: The Trial of Reverend Jacob Gruber", Southern Studies, 18, 1979, 179-197

Coker, Daniel, "A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African Minister", in Dorothy Porter, ed., Negro Protest Pamphlets, (New York: Arno, 1969)

Davis, Noah, "A Narrative of the Life of Rev. Noah Davis, a colored man" (Baltimore, 1859)

Elaw, Zilpha, "Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, ministerial travels and labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw...", (London, 1846)

Frey, Sylvia, and Wood, Betty, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830, (Chapel Hill, NC: U. North Carolina Press, 1998)

Gravely, Will B., "Rise of African Churches in America (1786-1822)", Journal of Religious Thought, v. 14, 1984

Lee, Jarena, Religious Experiences and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, (Philadelphia, 1849)

Libby, Jean, ed., From Slavery to Salvation: The Autobiography of Rev. Thomas W. Henry of the A.M.E. Church, (Jackson, MS: U. Press of Mississippi, 1994)

Payne, Daniel A., A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, (Nashville, TN, 1891)
(8) African American Abolitionists

Many prominent African American abolitionists began life in slavery in Maryland. Here are a few of their life stories. Most of the nineteenth-century works are available on the web at the University of North Carolina's "Documenting the American South" site. Try "docsouth" as a search term.

Boyd, Melba Joyce, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper 1825-1911, (Detroit: Wayne St. U. Press, 1994)

Douglass, Frederick, My Bondage and My Freedom, (Boston, 1845)

Gardner, Bettye, "William Watkins: Antebellum Black Teacher and Anti-slavery Writer", Negro History Bulletin, 39, 1976, 623-625

-----, "Opposition to Emigration: A Selected Letter of William Watkins (The Colored Baltimorean)", Journal of Negro History, 67, 1982, 155-158

Hutchinson, Earl Ofari, "Let Your Motto be Resistance": The Life and Thought of Henry Highland Garnet, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972);

McFeely, William, Frederick Douglass, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991)

Thomas, Herman E., James W.C. Pennington: African American Churchman and Abolitionist, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995)

Yacovone, Donald, "The Transformation of the Black Temperance Movement, 1827-1854: An Interpretation", Journal of the Early Republic, 8, 1988, 281-297

(9) Flight from Slavery and Kidnapping

Most of the narratives listed here can also be found at UNC's "Documenting the American South" (search term:docsouth) website. William Parker's account of the Christiana troubles is a riveting one. William Kashatus's catalog of the Chester County Historical Society's recent show on the UGRR in Pennsylvania is excellent history with fascinating images. Franklin and Schweninger's prize-winning book is an overview of slave flight throughout American history; it has many Maryland examples, but is not much concerned with the UGRR.

Bridner, Elwood L., Jr., "The Fugitive Slaves of Maryland", Maryland Historical Magazine, 66, 1970, 33-50

Clinton, Catherine, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004)

Craft, William and Ellen, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, (1860, reprint, New York, 1969)

Franklin, John Hope, and Schweninger, Loren, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, (Oxford U. Press, 1999).

Gara, Larry, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad, (Lexington, KY: U. Press of Kentucky, 1996, reprint edition, originally published 1961)

Green, William, Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green (a Former Slave), (Springfield, MA: 1853)

Harrold, Stanley, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865, (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State U. Press, 2003)

Henson, Josiah, Truth Stranger than Fiction: Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1858)

Hopkins, Leroy T., "Black Eldorado on the Susquehanna: The Emergence of Black Columbia, 1726-1861", Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, v. 89, 1985, 110-131

Kashatus, William C., Just Over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad, (West Chester, PA: Chester County Historical Society, 2002)

Larson, Kate Clifford, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004)

Lovejoy, Joseph L., ed., Memoir of Charles T. Torrey, (1848, reprint, New York, Negro Universities Press, 1969);

Miller, M. Sammy, "Patty Cannon: Murderer and Kidnapper of Free Blacks: A Review of the Evidence", Maryland Historical Magazine, 72, 1977, 419-423

Otter, William, History of My Own Times, Richard B. Stott, ed., (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1995). An artisan who worked at times as a slavecatcher. Based in Emmitsburg in the 1820s.

Parker, William, "The Freedman's Story. In Two Parts", The Atlantic Monthly, xvii, 1866, 152-166 and 276-295

Pennington, James W. C., "The Fugitive Blacksmith", in William L. Katz, ed., Five Slave Narratives, (New York: Arno Press, 1969)

Slaughter, Thomas P., Bloody Dawn: the Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North, (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1991)

Smallwood, Thomas, A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, (Toronto, 1851).

Still, William, The Underground Railroad, originally published, 1872, Ayer Company, Salem, NH, reprint 1992

Thompson, John, The Life of John Thompson. A Fugitive Slave: Containing his History of 25 Years in Bondage and his Providential Escape, (Worcester, MA), 1856

Switala, William J., Underground Railroad in Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia, (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004)

Thompson, Priscilla, "Harriet Tubman, Thomas Garrett, and the Underground Railroad", Delaware History, 22, 1986, 1-21

Watkins, James, Narrative of the Life of James Watkins, (Birmingham, England, 1854)

Williams, James, Life and Adventures of James Williams, a Fugitive Slave, with a Full Description of the Underground Railroad, (San Francisco, 1873)

Wilson, Carol, Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780-1865, (Lexington, KY: U. Press of Kentucky, 1994)

(10) African Americans and Civil War Emancipation

Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series I, Volume I, The Destruction of Slavery, (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1985). See also subsequent volumes.

Fuke, Richard,. Imperfect Equality: African Americans and the Confines of White Racial Attitudes in Postemancipation Maryland, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999)

Jordan, Ervin L., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, (Charlottesville, VA, 1995)

Wagandt, Charles Lewis, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1964)

Africans in America -- www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home

Narratives, maps and images of the history of slavery and liberation.

Documenting the American South -- docsouth.unc.edu --

Hundreds of autobiographies of slaves who ran away to become free. Searchable by name and state, and the narratives can be downloaded without charge.

Maryland State Archives -- www.mdarchives.state.md.us

Look especially at Beneath the Underground Railroad, as part of a larger series of pages on African Americans in Maryland.

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History &
Culture -- www.africanamericanculture.org

Opened June 25, 2005, at 830 E. Pratt St. in Baltimore. Promises an extensive web links bibliography for African American materials.

Maryland Historical Society -- www.mdhs.org

Contact the education department to obtain "Out of Slavery", a 300 page collection of documents and instructional materials designed for teachers' use.

Afropop Worldwide -- www.afropop.org

A comprehensive site on African and world music, offering information about the spread of African musics, as well as opportunities to shop, etc.

Race and Slavery Petitions Project -- http://library.uncg.edu/slavery__petitions

Contains thousands of petitions to legislatures and county courts throughout the South having to do with slavery, from 1777 to 1867.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute -- www.gilderlehrman.org

Has teaching modules on race and slavery, and sponsors seminars for teachers and students in the summer.