A Dangerous Time in a Perilous Place
Uneasy Alliances in Civil War Era Southern Maryland
By the end of the Civil War, half-a-million formerly enslaved people had taken refuge behind Union lines in what became known as “contraband camps.” There, they forged a wary alliance with the Union Army that won the war, ended slavery, and remade citizenship for all Americans. Maryland experienced and took part in this process, but with significant variations.
Because Maryland retained both slavery and its place within the Union, wartime measures that attacked slavery in seceded states did not apply in Maryland, which meant that the Union Army and U.S. authorities had to contend with state law protecting slavery until an amendment to the state constitution abolished slavery there in November 1864. Further, local opinion in southern Maryland favored the Confederacy and opposed emancipation even after the passage of the state constitutional amendment. For these reasons, the biracial alliance between formerly enslaved people and Union authorities in southern Maryland, and throughout the state, was especially fraught with fear and violence.
From kidnapping, to intimidation, to property destruction, to murder - this talk will explore threats that this uneasy alliance faced in Southern Maryland, the strategies that Black Marylanders used to counter the threats, and the ways in which the story is and is not remembered today.
Join Georgetown Prof. Chandra Manning on January 22nd at 4:30pm at Daugherty-Palmer Commons on the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland to hear this compelling story.
Dr. Manning is a Georgetown University professor of U.S. History, especially the 19th century, including the Civil War, slavery and emancipation, Abraham Lincoln, citizenship, and the American Revolution. Her first book, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (Knopf, 2007) won the Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians, an Honorable Mention for the Lincoln Prize, and the Virginia Literary Awards for Nonfiction.
Historically Speaking is offered in partnership with the Center for the Study of Democracy 
at St. Mary's College of Maryland