Hands Off Slavery in The Border States

[Laurie Verge]

I'm not sure that the average student of Civil War history really contemplates how important those four border states were to Mr. Lincoln, especially Maryland which surrounded the nation's capital on three sides. The fourth side (Virginia) had already left the Union. There is a good book by John and Charles Lockwood entitled The Siege of Washington that talks about the tense few weeks after the war began when Washington City was cut off from the outside and surrounded by potential enemy territory.

At the beginning of the war, Lincoln promised Marylanders that they could keep their slaves, hinted at compensation for emancipation later, that they would not have to fight against their Southern brethren, etc. Then came raids on family farms, the First and Second Confiscation Acts, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam with enforcement the following January, the draft in Maryland which nullified the promise of not fighting against the South, allowing non-citizen soldiers to vote in Maryland elections in 1864, etc. Many Marylanders from Baltimore south and on the Eastern Shore had serious issues.

In hindsight, we might understand the political and military necessities for such actions and Mr. Lincoln's overriding determination to preserve the Union. To those who lived during that era, however, it meant something totally different. Another time for me to preach my adage of putting yourself back in the period of history under discussion. Think like your ancestors.