Slavery in Maryland briefly consideredCarey, John L.
History
Slavery in Maryland briefly considered
Carey, John L.
Slavery -- Maryland
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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