Join Peerless Rockville as we mark Maryland Emancipation Day and Veterans Day with psychiatrist and author Dr. Stephen A. Goldman. In this presentation, he will discuss the 1864 Maryland Constitutional Election that emancipated enslaved Marylanders, the only state in the Union to end slavery through the state consititution. The soldiers' vote in Maryland would greatly determine the state’s future, and their overwhelming support for slavery’s abolition exemplified how the war radicalized so many white servicemen throughout the Union.
Of all the states involved in the Civil War, Maryland epitomized its harsh “brother against brother” reality, and the complicated prewar circumstances of slavery and freedom. While a border slave state, Maryland remained in the Union, and contributed 63,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines to its war effort, including ten thousand African Americans.
By 1864, the state had reached a crossroads that the entire nation was confronting – a Civil War that had turned savage, whether Abraham Lincoln would be re-elected, and what would be the fate of four million human beings held in bondage. On November 1, 1864, the Maryland electorate voted to end slavery in the state.