Traveling across the country in a small van

In 1850, Maryland’s southern counties—Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Prince George’s, and Montgomery— were home to 50,000 whites, 9,500 free blacks, and over 48,000 slaves. In many ways, slave life remained unchanged between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

How much of the population were slaves in Maryland?

The Peopling of Maryland Colony – Within twenty years following the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, the Calvert family obtained a charter from King Charles I for land along the Chesapeake north of the Potomac River. The colony was named in honor of the king’s consort, Henrietta Maria. Maryland Colony. In the 1660s, less than 25% of Maryland’s bound laborers were enslaved Africans. By 1680 the number had increased to 33% and by the early 1700s, three quarters of laborers were enslaved Africans. About 300 arrived each year between 1695–1708.

During this time, at least half of Maryland’s enslaved population lived in Calvert, Charles, Prince George’s, and St. Mary’s counties. The others lived in Annapolis and Baltimore. From the beginning, the Maryland population was religiously, socially and racially diverse. Unlike the Virginians, the Maryland colonists brought Africans with them.

At least two men of African descent were aboard the Ark and the Dove, ships that brought Leonard Calvert, son of George Calvert, first Lord of Baltimore, up the Chesapeake Bay in 1634. One of these first African Marylanders was Mathias de Sousa. A passenger on the Ark, De Sousa was of African and Portuguese descent and, like the Calvert family, he was a Catholic.

As the colony’s charter did not expressly prohibit the establishment of non-Protestant churches, the Calverts encouraged fellow Catholics to settle there. Maryland’s first town, St. Mary’s, was established in 1634 near where the Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland never experienced protracted Indian warfare or a “starving time” like its neighbor Virginia.

Maryland was able to trade with Virginia for needed items and the Calvert family personally supported the settlers’ early financial needs. However, like Virginia, Maryland suffered from a labor shortage. In order to stimulate immigration, in 1640 Maryland adopted the head-right system that Virginia had instituted earlier.

While interested in establishing a refuge for Catholics, who were facing increasing persecution in Anglican England, the Calverts were also interested in creating profitable estates. To this end, they encouraged the importation of Africans and to avoid trouble with the British government, they encouraged Protestant immigration.

Indentured laborers, mostly white, dominated the Maryland workforce throughout the 17th century. As the laws infringing upon the rights and status of servitude for Africans grew more stringent in Virginia in the late 17th century, free Africans from Virginia, like Anthony and Mary Johnson and their family, migrated to Maryland.

Enslavement was not absent in 17th century Maryland but it was not the principal form of servitude until the early 18th century (Yentsch 1994). As the 17th century closed there were far fewer enslaved Africans in Maryland than in Virginia. In the four counties along the lower Western shore of Maryland, there were only 100 enslaved Africans in 1658, about 3% of the population.

By 1710, their numbers had increased to 3500 making up about 24% of the population, most were still “country-born,” that is born in Africa, and most were men. Between 1700 and 1780, new generations of African people born in the colony expanded the enslaved population (Menard 1975).

How many slaves were there in Maryland in 1860?

Status of slavery in 1860

Census Year	1790	1860
All States	694,207	3,950,546
Maryland	103,036	87,189

Was there slavery in Maryland?

Slavery did not end in Maryland until the adoption of a new State Constitution on November 1, 1864. However, new state law allowed former slaveholders to force African-Americans under age 21 into ‘apprenticeship’ if they had no other means of support.

What state was the last to free slaves?

NJ Department of State – Historical Commission – Juneteenth 2021 Image collage: Peter Lee who may have been illegally enslaved as a young man by the Stevens Family in Hoboken, NJ, and Lockey White’s 1860 census entry indicating that she was a “slave for life.”

By Noelle Lorraine Williams, Director, African American History Program The New Jersey Historical Commission

This year forty-seven states including New Jersey will observe Juneteenth (also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day) as a state holiday—a holiday that commemorates when enslaved Blacks in Galveston, Texas learned that they were, in fact, freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation two and half years earlier.

• The date was June 19, 1865.
• Juneteenth then is a holiday of celebration and a mournful remembrance of deep injustice and loss.
• It reveals the injustice of slavery and the legal repression of African American freedom, extending beyond the nineteenth century.
• But we must remember that there were still enslaved Black men and women in New Jersey even after Juneteenth.

Imagine, New Jersey’s death grip on slavery meant that until December 1865, six months after enslaved men, women, and children in Texas found out they were cheated of their freedom, approximately 16 African Americans were still technically enslaved in New Jersey.

1. But Why and How? While there were many Black, mixed-race, and white people in New Jersey who fought against slavery, most legislators refused to condemn the institution.
2. Profits from slaveholding organizations had built and maintained the state’s major cities and regional centers like Newark and those in Bergen County.

Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not free enslaved African Americans in the Northern States; it freed only those in the mostly southern “rebellious states.” Two years later, New Jersey bitterly refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, the United States Constitutional Amendment that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude across the country.

1. Slavery’s final legal death in New Jersey occurred on January 23, 1866, when in his first official act as governor, Marcus L.
2. Ward of Newark signed a state Constitutional Amendment that brought about an absolute end to slavery in the state.
3. In other words, the institution of slavery in New Jersey survived for months following the declaration of freedom in Texas.

To understand this historical development, one needs to take a step back to 1804 when New Jersey passed its Gradual Abolition of Slavery law—an act that delayed the end of slavery in the state for decades. It allowed for the children of enslaved Blacks born after July 4, 1804 to be free, only after they attained the age of 21 years for women and 25 for men.

Their family and everyone else near and dear to them, however, remained enslaved until they died or attained freedom by running away or waiting to be freed. In a period when the average life expectancy was 40 years old, the 1804 law essentially took more than half of these people’s lives to satisfy the economic and political demands of New Jersey enslavers.

In essence, Juneteenth, not only marks the day African Americans in Texas realized that they had been robbed of two years of their freedom, following the Emancipation Proclamation. It also commemorates all of our ancestors here in New Jersey who were the last Blacks in the North to be ensnared in that bloody institution.

Which state had the largest percentage of slaves?

Slavery in the South – Throughout colonial and antebellum history, U.S. slaves lived primarily in the South. Slaves comprised less than a tenth of the total Southern population in 1680 but grew to a third by 1790. At that date, 293,000 slaves lived in Virginia alone, making up 42 percent of all slaves in the U.S.

Year	White	Free Nonwhite	Slave
1790	1,240,454	32,523	654,121
1800	1,691,892	61,575	851,532
1810	2,118,144	97,284	1,103,700
1820	2,867,454	130,487	1,509,904
1830	3,614,600	175,074	1,983,860
1840	4,601,873	207,214	2,481,390
1850	6,184,477	235,821	3,200,364
1860	8,036,700	253,082	3,950,511

Source: Historical Statistics of the U.S. (1970).

When did Maryland get rid of slavery?

The state abolished slavery in 1864, enslaved Africans and African Americans were im- portant in shaping Maryland’s history. The com- modities they produced provided the foundation for Maryland’s economy and formed its society.

What happened to the slaves in Maryland?

The not-quite-Free State: Maryland dragged its feet on emancipation during Civil War Twenty-eight Fugitives Escaping from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. (Library of Congress/Library of Congress) Maryland calls itself the Free State, but it was in no hurry to give up slavery during the Civil War. Elsewhere in the country, antislavery measures progressed rapidly.

Congress freed the slaves in the District in 1862, compensating their owners. The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in the states that had seceded, went into effect on Jan.1, 1863. But Maryland didn’t act until 1864, when it held a referendum — and even then, the outcome wasn’t at all certain.

The vote tipped in favor of abolition only after the absentee ballots of soldiers fighting for the North were counted. The final tally was 30,174 in favor of freeing the slaves to 29,799 against. On Nov.1, 1864, Maryland’s slaves were declared free, only a few months before Congress would approve the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

• Many blacks in Maryland had taken matters into their own hands by that time, either escaping to the District or enlisting in the Union army, where they served as free men.
• Well known in the modern era for being a politically progressive state, especially on matters of civil and individual rights, Maryland came to that tradition slowly and with substantial reluctance.

Indeed, as the Civil War loomed, much of Maryland remained firmly pro-slavery. Even such a Maryland luminary as Montgomery Blair, President Abraham Lincoln’s postmaster general, was more concerned about punishing secessionists and preserving the Union than advancing freedom for African Americans. An illustration of a farmer being caught in the act of trying to return freed slaves to the South, with caption ‘The maddest man in all Maryland’, during the US civil war, circa 1865. (Kean Collection/Getty Images) “We are menaced by the ambition of the ultra-Abolitionists, which is equally despotic in its tendencies and which, if successful could not fail to be alike fatal to Republican institutions,” Blair a gathering of the Unionist movement in Rockville on Oct.3, 1863, even as antislavery forces appeared to be gaining support in the state and the nation.

Blair, a confidant of Lincoln but a scion of a slaveholding family and a bitter foe of staunch abolitionists, was in many ways emblematic of Maryland’s landed aristocracy. “Much of the South’s wealth and economic powers stemmed from the institution of slavery, and that included border states such as Maryland,” said, research director for the history of slavery in Maryland in the Maryland State Archives.

Even the governor, Thomas H. Hicks of the Know Nothing Party, was a slaveholder. But like many in the border state, he also personified the conflict that stretched across Maryland, where some would fight for the North and others for the South. Hicks was a staunch supporter of the Union and would press hard for Maryland to remain part of that fragile coalition.

1. To keep the Union intact, Lincoln would step gingerly when it came to Maryland and its slaveholders.
2. Political expediency in pursuit of the high moral ground would be his method, allowing a slow march towards abolition.
3. If Hicks and then his more liberal successor, Augustus Bradford, would ensure that Maryland stayed in the Union, Lincoln, temporarily at least, would look the other way on the question of slavery.

“It was very much a divided state,” said University of Maryland historian Ira Berlin, a well-known scholar who specializes in the study of slavery. In some cases, families themselves were divided, with sons fighting on both sides. There were many signs of the fragility of the state’s pro-Union position in the years leading up to the Civil War, especially evident in an urban-rural divide.

1. The focus of the war moves west Baltimore was growing into a center of trade and industry.
2. It was populated by a mostly free work force with one of the largest urban populations of free blacks in the United States, larger than in Philadelphia or New York, Berlin said.
3. And it was the political epicenter of the Maryland abolition movement, with a leading newspaper, the Baltimore American, instrumental in the push to end slavery.

“With Free States on both sides of her, who would care to own negroes here? And what possible advantage would we have over those obnoxious to the terms of the President’s manifesto in other states? As the matter stands even at present, negro property here has become so uncertain in the tenure that in many portions of our commonwealth, they are as good as free already,” the on Sept.24, 1862.

But outside the city, in the vast agricultural areas of Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore, slavery was a way of life, much as it was in the rest of the white South, where tobacco was giving way to labor-intensive crops such as cotton, rice and sugar. “Southern Maryland was certainly a southern state; it is agriculture, plantations, . .

in some ways it is not much different from Mississippi, both in size and in their lucrative nature,” Berlin said. Slaveholders’ determination to maintain their human property was a crucial element in the white southern culture, he said. Other large swaths of Maryland, from Prince George’s to Montgomery County, north to Frederick and west, were also pro-slavery, although Frederick itself was a divided community.

• Lincoln, aware of the divisions and the pressure on Maryland politicians from secessionists and slaveholders, knew that keeping Maryland and the other border states — Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri — in the Union meant he would need to essentially ignore their slave holdings.
• When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan.1, 1863, he limited it to states that had seceded.

“He freed the slaves over which he had no control at that point,” said Haley of the Maryland State Archives. “That is the reality of the Emancipation Proclamation.” Meanwhile, an aggressive Col. William Birney, son of Kentucky antislavery politician James G.

Birney, was busy, spiriting them away from their Maryland owners, liberating them from jails and from slave pens where they were being held before sales. One account said that black slaves in a Frederick jail threw a rock with a note to an imprisoned recruiter to let him know they wanted to join the Union forces.

Birney’s zealous approach worried the Lincoln administration, which was getting complaints from slaveholders. Birney was unmoved, and his recruiters pressed on, usually neglecting to ask potential black recruits whether they were free. They simply signed them up.

1. Blair, like many from slaveholding families in Maryland, would bow to the inevitability of emancipation.
2. In the Washington Star, Blair said the issue of slavery could no longer be avoided.
3. The question is upon us, and all that we can do is to say on which side we shall range ourselves.
4. To be debating whether it is better or worse for us to have it, is like debating whether the ruin that is falling is needed.

“I know indeed that too many of our friends are so afraid of the Slavery question, or rather are so terrified at the Secession howl of “Abolitionists,” that they persuade themselves that they can dodge the issue, . . but the war now drenching the land in blood, which is due to this timidity, should at least teach us that to cower before traitors and to adopt their slang, is alike inconsistent with patriotism and self-respect.” Many Maryland slaves already had absconded.

1. John Boston, a slave from Owensville, was among many in the vanguard of the exodus, joining up with a regiment from New York billeted in Virginia.
2. In January 1862, he to his wife, whom he had left behind: “My Dear Wife it is with grate joy I take this time to let you know Whare i am now in Safety in the 14th Regiment of Brooklyn,

this Day i can Adress you thank god as a free man I had a little truble in giting away But as the lord led the Children of Isrel to the land of Canon So he led me to a land Whare fredom Will rain in spite Of earth and hell Dear you must make your Self content i am free from al the Slavers Lash,

• I am With a very nice man and have All that hart Can Wish But My Dear I Cant express my grate desire that i Have to See you i trust the time Will Come When We Shal meet again And if We dont met on earth We Will Meet in heven Whare Jesas ranes,
• But most of Maryland’s 87,000 slaves would wait.
• Once the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, they puzzled over their own status.

In a letter to Lincoln 18 months after the Emancipation Proclamation, Annie Davis of Belair in Harford County asked in August 1864 if the slaves were free. Her owner had said she could not leave and visit her family. In elegant script, Davis : “Dear Mr.

President, It is my desire to be free to go see my people on the Eastern Shore. My mistress won’t let me. Will you please let me know if we are free. . .” At the time, the answer was still no. But the next month, delegates to a Maryland constitutional convention approved a new constitution that abolished slavery, after arguing for days over whether the Bible endorsed or reviled slavery.

The, a Methodist minister from Caroline County, was among those pushing for abolition. “Is it true that because a human being is born in Africa, and with a black skin, a man born in Europe or America, and with a fair skin, has the right to enslave him — to deprive him of his God-like and God-given liberty?, . .

• Sir, he that claims that slavery is not a violation of natural right, must answer these questions affirmatively,” Todd argued. Isaac D.
• Jones of Somerset County, a bastion of slaveholders, said he recognized that the majority of the delegates would vote to abolish slavery.
• So he tried a different argument, urging his fellow delegates to move slowly to emancipate slaves for the good of the slaves themselves.

“Winter will be approaching,” he said. “If those slaves now comfortably housed, clothed and fed themselves, . . I suggest to those who are unacquainted with the condition of this unfortunate class of people what will be approaching winter with the present high prices of food, the present high prices of clothing? Where will they find a home?” The delegates eventually approved abolition and put the new constitution to a referendum by popular vote, where the pro-slavery forces were ahead — until the absentee ballots of Union soldiers were counted.

1. For Maryland, it was the culmination of a move toward greater liberties that Lincoln had been nudging along, mostly behind the scenes.
2. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, he says to leaders of border states such as Maryland, ‘Look, guys, it is over.
3. I will support compensated emancipation.
4. You can get paid off,’ ” said Berlin.

“Of course, they ignore him, tell him ‘no deal, forget about it.’ They blow him off,” Berlin said. But Lincoln, ever patient, stood firm. “Eventually, he says, ‘This train is leaving the station whether you guys are on it or not.’ ” Yet even after Maryland’s emancipation on Nov.1, 1864, former slaves faced problems.

Owners evicted slaves from their modest homes, or refused to pay wages and apprenticed their children into long-term contracts. Some even tried to go after former slaves who, they said, owed them money. In an incident recounted in “,” a multi-volume series that Berlin co-wrote, a sheriff arrested a freed slave in Washington in March 1866 — almost two years after Maryland emancipated its slaves — and took him to Maryland.

There he was accused of using his former master’s horse and cart while attempting to escape with his family in 1863. For many Maryland slaves, freedom, while formally granted, remained elusive. Berlin said the end of slavery in Maryland was clearly a big step in the continuing struggle of blacks to achieve a better life.

Who escaped slavery in Maryland?

Escape of 28 enslaved people from Maryland (1857) Twenty-eight enslaved men, women and children escaping from the Eastern Shore of Maryland A group of 28 enslaved people from Maryland escaped their slaveholders on October 24, 1857. They were a group of two dozen enslaved men, women, and children who fled from,

• Four men joined their group to travel north along the,
• In a remarkable escape the rainy night of October 24, 1857 when two dozen people escaped from their enslavers, Willis Brannock, Jane Cator, Rueben E.
• Phillips, Richard Keene, Samuel Pattison, and Rev. Levi D. Travers.
• Nearly all of Pattison’s bondspeople had run away.

The event is notable because of the size of the group of people, who traveled with infants and other children, through days of heavy rains. Aaron and Daffney Comish ran away with six of their children, one of which was a two-week-old baby. Daffney and six of their children were owned by Jane Cator and Rueben E.

Phillips, Jane’s step-father. Two of their children who were teenagers unable to be included in the escape because they had been hired out away from the rest of the family. Aaron was owned by Rev. Levi D. Travers. There were two families who ran away from Samuel Pattison. Susan Viney and her four children, Lloyd, Frank, Albert(a), and nine-month-old J.W.

were held by Pattison. Viney’s husband Joe, who was hired out to work in Dorchester County by a Virginia planter, ran away with his family, which also included his three older sons, Henry, Joe, and Tom. Leah and Kit Anthony ran away with their young children Adam, Mary, and one-year-old Murray.

Alice Hill and her son Henry, both of whom were free, ran away with their husband and father, Joseph Hill. Joseph’s 25-year-old sister Sarah Jane, who was hired out to another plantation also escaped. Joseph and Sarah Jane were also owned by Pattison. Over the first three days it rained heavily and their group grew to 28 people when Marshall Dutton, George and Solomon Light, and Silas Long joined them.

They prepared for run-ins with slave capturers by carrying pistols, knives, and other weapons. It was a group of 28, including seventeen children and two infants, who met up with and his associates who took them north to in the Wilmington area. Wilmington was generally a dangerous place because slave catchers looked for runaways there, but it was even more so when news circulated about this large group that was heading north, so they avoided going into the center of Wilmington.

Samuel Pattison was also catching up with them. In an effort to outrun any slave catchers, Brinkley drove his carriage too fast and it broke down and the horse was injured. The group, especially the children, were exhausted, cold, hungry and ill. Some of the people were barefoot. Word got to by the 31st that most the group was in Centreville, which he relayed to,

There was a 14-year-old-boy who became separated from the rest of the group. Irishmen attacked eighteen of the runaways and a black conductor named Jackson with clubs. One of the runaways shot or stabbed one of the Irishmen. The fugitives split into smaller groups and went to a number of places outside of Philadelphia.

What did Maryland slaves eat?

What did Maryland slaves eat? – Almost everything was grown in hills, and sweet potatoes –often white or yellow–were a key starch in the diet of enslaved Marylanders after corn.

Which state did not have any slaves?

Early history – Slavery was legal and practiced in each of the Thirteen Colonies, Organized political and social movements to end slavery began in the mid- 18th century, The desire for freedom from Britain, expressed in the American Revolutionary War, caused many black Americans to join the revolution in hopes they would be freed also.

1. Others joined the British Army, encouraged by British promises of freedom in exchange for military service.
2. After the British lost the war, thousands were taken to Nova Scotia,
3. In the 1770s, blacks throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom.
4. At the Constitutional Convention many slavery issues were debated and for a time slavery was a major obstacle to passage of the new constitution.

As a compromise the institution of slavery was acknowledged although never mentioned directly in the constitution. An example is the Fugitive Slave Clause, By 1789, five of the Northern states had policies that started to gradually abolish slavery: Pennsylvania (1780), New Hampshire and Massachusetts (1783), Connecticut and Rhode Island (1784).

• Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent.
• When it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791, it was the first state to join that had no slavery.
• By 1804 all of the northern states had abolished slavery or had plans in place to gradually reduce it.
• There were 11 free states and 11 slave states.

Later came the civil war. In the South, Kentucky was created as a slave state from a part of Virginia (1792). Tennessee was created a slave state out of a part of North Carolina (1796). By 1803, after Ohio had been admitted to the United States, there were nine free states and eight slave states.

What states did not allow slaves?

Early history – During the American Revolution (1775-1783) some of the 13 British colonies seeking independence to become states began to abolish slavery. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1789, left the matter in the hands of each state. In the early years of the new United States, a north/south divide became evident Slavery was established as a legal institution in each of the Thirteen Colonies, starting from 1619 onwards with the arrival of “twenty and odd” enslaved Africans in Virginia,

Although indigenous peoples were also sold into slavery, the vast majority of the enslaved population consisted of Africans brought to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade, Due to a lower prevalence of tropical diseases and better treatment, the enslaved population in the colonies had a higher life expectancy than in the West Indies and South America, leading to a rapid increase in population in the decades prior to the American Revolution,

Organized political and social movements to end slavery began in the mid-18th century. The sentiments of the American Revolution and the promise of equality evoked by the Declaration of Independence stood in contrast to the status of most Blacks, either free or enslaved, in the colonies.

1. Despite this, thousands of Black Americans fought for the Patriot cause for a combination of reasons.
2. Thousands also joined the British, encouraged by offers of freedom such as the Philipsburg Proclamation,
3. In the 1770s, enslaved Black people throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom.

Five of the Northern self-declared states adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery : Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. The Republic of Vermont had limited slavery in 1777, while it was still independent before it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791.

These state jurisdictions thus enacted the first abolition laws in the Atlantic World, By 1804 (including New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804)), all of the Northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually abolish it, although there were still hundreds of ex-slaves working without pay as indentured servants in Northern states as late as the 1840 census (see Slavery in the United States#Abolitionism in the North ).

In the South, Kentucky was created a slave state from Virginia (1792), and Tennessee was created a slave state from North Carolina (1796). By 1804, before the creation of new states from the federal western territories, the number of slave and free states was 8 each.

By the time of Missouri Compromise of 1820, the dividing line between the slave and free states was called the Mason-Dixon line (between Maryland and Pennsylvania), with its westward extension being the Ohio River, The 1787 Constitutional Convention debated slavery, and for a time slavery was a major impediment to passage of the new constitution,

As a compromise, slavery was acknowledged but never mentioned explicitly in the Constitution. The Fugitive Slave Clause, Article IV, section 2, clause 3, for example, refers to a “Person held to Service or Labour.” In addition, Article 1, section 9, clause 1 of the Constitution prohibited Congress from abolishing the importation of slaves, but in a compromise, the prohibition could be lifted by Congress in twenty years, and slaves were referred to as “Persons.” The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves passed easily in 1807, effective in 1808. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, trading the admission of Missouri (a slave state) for Maine (a free state), drew a line extending west from Missouri’s southern border, which was intended to divide any new territory into slave (south of the line) and free (north of the line).

In the late 1850s an unsuccessful campaign was launched by several southern states to resume the international slave trade, to restock their slave populations, but this met with strong opposition. However, there was large natural increase in the slave population throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, while some illegal smuggling of African slaves continued via Spanish Cuba,

One of the other compromises of the Constitution was the creation of the three-fifths clause by which slave states acquired increased representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College equivalent to 60 percent of their disenfranchised slave populations.

What state did not have slaves?

Hover over Click on a tile for details. The United States as we know it is the ‘land of the free.’ With so many freedoms, it’s hard to believe that there was a time in history when a group of people did not have any freedom. These people could not own land, they could not vote, and they worked for no pay and were frequently mistreated.

1. These people – slaves – did not enjoy the freedom and the opportunities of the United States until after the American Civil War.
2. In America’s early history, all of the British colonies initially allowed slavery.
3. When the original Thirteen Colonies of the United States were established, each permitted slavery.

It wasn’t until the mid-18th century when political and social movements were created to speak out against slavery. During the American Revolution, thousands of Black Americans fought. Many fought against the British in hopes that they would be freed. Others fought with the British army after being offered freedom in exchange for serving in the military.

• It was during the late 18th century that Black Americans began petitioning legislatures to abolish slavery.
• Five northern states agreed to gradually abolish slavery, with Pennsylvania being the first state to approve, followed by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island,
• By the early 1800s, the northern states had all abolished slavery completely, or they were in the process of gradually eradicating it.

By the early 1800s, there was an equal number of slave and free states, These states were divided by what became known as the Mason-Dixon line. In 1808, international slave importing was banned, but domestic trade will still legal. As the United States continued to grow, so did the number of slave states.

Arkansas Missouri Mississippi Louisiana Alabama Kentucky Tennessee Virginia Maryland Delaware North Carolina South Carolina Florida at the time was still a territory, and slavery was allowed.

About ten years later, the number of slave states rose to 15, outnumbering the 14 free states. The newly added slave states were:

Florida Texas

In the late 1850s, the free states finally began to outnumber the 15 slave states. This continued through the early 1860s, when the number of free states rose to 19, while there were still just 15 slave states. At the beginning of the Civil War, there were 34 total states in the U.S.

What percentage of Maryland is African American?

Table

Population
Black or African American alone, percent(a)	 31.4%
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a)	 0.7%
Asian alone, percent(a)	 6.9%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent(a)	 0.1%

How much of Maryland is black?

Maryland Demographics Black or African American: 29.86% Asian: 6.37% Other race: 4.73%

What was the population of slaves?

March 18, 1861 – Mitchell, Map of the United States and territories, 1861 Enlarge Hergesheimer, Map showing distribution of the slave population of the southern U.S., 1860 Enlarge According to the 1860 census tables found on S. Augustus, Mitchell’s 1861 Map of the United States the population of the United States was 31,429,891 million, an increase of 8,239, 016 as recorded in the 1850 census.

Of those 31 million, as also reported on the tables accompanying the map, 3,952, 838 were slaves. The map also provides statistics on the free and slave populations in each state as recorded in the 1850 and 1860 census. Also published in 1861, Edwin Hergesheimer’s landmark map entitled Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States also provides statistics on the slavery in the southern portion of the country.

The differences between the two maps, both published in 1861 and both based on 1860 census data, are the methods in which the data is portrayed. Hergesheimer’s map breaks down the data into the percentage of slaves per county as opposed to the total county population.

What is the percentage of slavery?

We think of slavery as a practice of the past, an image from Roman colonies or 18th-century American plantations, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.

This is not some softened, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. These 30 million people are living as forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages and, in all ways that matter, as pieces of property, chattel in the servitude of absolute ownership. Walk Free investigated 162 countries and found slaves in every single one.

But the practice is far worse in some countries than others. The country where you are most likely to be enslaved is Mauritania. Although this vast West African nation has tried three times to outlaw slavery within its borders, it remains so common that it is nearly normal,

The report estimates that four percent of Mauritania is enslaved – one out of every 25 people. (The aid group SOS Slavery, using a broader definition of slavery, estimated several years ago that as many as 20 percent of Mauritanians might be enslaved.) The map at the top of this page shows almost every country in the world colored according to the share of its population that is enslaved.

The rate of slavery is also alarmingly high in Haiti, in Pakistan and in India, the world’s second-most populous country. In all three, more than 1 percent of the population is estimated to live in slavery. A few trends are immediately clear from the map up top.

• First, rich, developed countries tend to have by far the lowest rates of slavery.
• The report says that effective government policies, rule of law, political stability and development levels all make slavery less likely.
• The vulnerable are less vulnerable, those who would exploit them face higher penalties and greater risk of getting caught.

A war, natural disaster or state collapse is less likely to force helpless children or adults into bondage. Another crucial factor in preventing slavery is discrimination. When society treats women, ethnic groups or religious minorities as less valuable or less worthy of protection, they are more likely to become slaves.

• Then there are the worst-affected regions.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is a swath of red, with many countries having roughly 0.7 percent of the population enslaved – or one in every 140 people.
• The legacies of the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism are still playing out in the region; ethnic divisions and systems of economic exploitation engineered there during the colonial era are still, to some extent, in place.

Slavery is also driven by extreme poverty, high levels of corruption and toleration of child “marriages” of young girls to adult men who pay their parents a “dowry.” Two other bright red regions are Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Both are blighted particularly by sex trafficking, a practice that bears little resemblance to popular Western conceptions of prostitution.

Women and men are coerced into participating, often starting at a very young age, and are completely reliant on their traffickers for not just their daily survival but basic life choices; they have no say in where they go or what they do and are physically prevented from leaving. International sex traffickers have long targeted these two regions, whose women and men are prized for their skin tones and appearance by Western patrons.

Here, to give you a different perspective of slavery’s scope, is a map of the world showing the number of slaves living in each country: Yes, this map can be a little misleading. The United States, per capita, has a very low rate of slavery: just 0.02 percent, or one in every 5,000 people.

• But that adds up to a lot: an estimated 60,000 slaves, right here in America.
• If your goal is to have as few slaves as possible – Walk Free says it is working to eradicate the practice in one generation’s time – then this map is very important, because it shows you which countries have the most slaves and thus which governments can do the most to reduce the global number of slaves.

In that sense, the United States could stand to do a lot. You don’t have to go far to see slavery in America. Here in Washington, D.C., you can sometimes spot them on certain streets, late at night. Not all sex workers or “prostitutes” are slaves, of course; plenty have chosen the work voluntarily and can leave it freely.

1. But, as the 2007 documentary ” Very Young Girls ” demonstrated, many are coerced into participating at a young age and gradually shifted into a life that very much resembles slavery.
2. A less visible but still prevalent form of slavery in America involves illegal migrant laborers who are lured with the promise of work and then manipulated into forced servitude, living without wages or freedom of movement, under constant threat of being turned over to the police should they let up in their work.

Walk Free cites “a highly developed criminal economy that preys on economic migrants, trafficking and enslaving them.” That economy stretches from the migrants’ home countries right to the United States. The country that is most marked by slavery, though, is clearly India.

1. There are an estimated 14 million slaves in India – it would be as if the entire population of Pennsylvania were forced into slavery.
2. The country suffers deeply from all major forms of slavery, according to the report.
3. Forced labor is common, due in part to a system of hereditary debt bondage; many Indian children are born “owing” sums they could never possibly pay to masters who control them as chattel their entire lives.

Others fall into forced labor when they move to a different region looking for work, and turn to an unlicensed “broker” who promises work but delivers them into servitude. The country’s caste system and widespread discrimination abet social norms that make it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem.

Women and girls from underprivileged classes are particularly vulnerable to sexual slavery, whether under the guise of “child marriages” or not, although men and boys often fall victim as well. One of the world’s most vulnerable populations for enslavement is Haitian children. Haiti has the world’s second-highest rate of slavery – 2.1 percent, or about one in every 48 people, many of them underage.

There’s even a word for it: “restaveks,” from the colonial French for “reste avec” or “stay with.” Traditionally, the word refers to a poor family sending their child to live with and work for a wealthier family. Often it is innocuous. But it can also encompass parents who feel they have no choice, typically because they have no income other than what they derive from selling their children into forced labor conditions that strongly resemble slavery.

1. About one in 10 Haitian children are believed to participate.
2. Those who run away, according to the report, are often “trafficked into forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation.” What’s perhaps most amazing about the prevalence of slavery around the world is how similar it can look across very different societies.

The risk factors might change from one place to another, the causes varying widely, but the lives of the enslaved rarely do.