Slavery and Emancipation
Those who voted for Maryland to remain in the Union did not at first contemplate the emancipation of Maryland's many slaves, or indeed those of the Confederacy. In March 1862 the Maryland Assembly passed a series of resolutions, stating that:
- "This war is prosecuted by the Nation with but one object, that, namely, of a restoration of the Union just as it was when the rebellion broke out. The rebellious States are to be brought back to their places in the Union, without change or diminution of their constitutional rights".
Because Maryland had remained in the Union, the state was not included under the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that all slaves within the Confederacy would henceforth be free. Later, in 1864, a constitutional convention was held that culminated in the passage of a new state constitution (see below) on November 1 of that year. Article 24 of that document outlawed the practice of slavery. The right to vote was not extended to non-white males until the Maryland Constitution of 1867, which remains in effect today.
Read more about this topic: Maryland In The American Civil War
Famous quotes containing the words slavery and/or emancipation:
“Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so.”
—Mary E. Haggart, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)