Topic: Uneasy Alliances in Civil War Era So. MD
Join Georgetown University Professor Chandra Manning at 4:30pm January 22 at St. Mary’s College of Maryland for her discussion “A Dangerous Time in a Perilous Place. Uneasy Alliances in Civil War Era Southern Maryland.”
The Historically Speaking event will be held in the Daugherty-Palmer Commons on campus.
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 US 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.
Dr. Manning is a Georgetown professor of US 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
The St. Mary’s County Historical Society is the repository of a unique collection of Maryland memorabilia and museum pieces displayed on the first floor of Tudor Hall and in the Old Jail Museum at 41625 Courthouse Drive in Leonardtown. The 18th-century Tudor Hall also serves as headquarters of the society and houses the Historical Society’s Research Center.
To learn more about the St. Mary’s Historical Society, visit its Leader member page.
