BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY: SLAVERY IN MISSOURI :

Slavery in Missouri began in 1720 when a man named Philippe Francis Renault brought 500 Negro Slaves from Santa Domingo too work on the lead mines in the River Des Peres area located in the present day St Louis and Jefferson counties. The institution only became prominent in the area following two major events, the Louisiana Purchase 1803 and the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney 1793. This lead to a mass movement of Slave Owning proprietors to the area, then known as Upper Louisiana. How ever the spread of major cotton growth was limited to the more southerly area near the boarder with present day Arkansas.Instead slavery in the other area of Missouri was concentrated into other major crops, such as tobacco,hemp, grain and livestock.

A number of slaves were hired out as stevedores or deck hands for the ferries of the Mississippi River. Majority of the slaver owners in Missouri came from worn-out  agricultural lands of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virgina/West Virginia. By 1860 only 36 counties in Missouri had 1000 or more slaves. Of which top male slaves fetched a price of $1300 and top female slaves fetched around $1000. The value of all slaves in Missouri was estimated by the state Auditors 1860 report at around US 44,181,912  ( $1,142,838,790 as of 2013 ) 

BLACK SOCIAL HITORY : SLAVERY IN MARYLAND :

The institutions of Slavery in Maryland  lasted around two hundred years and initially it developed along very similar lines to neighboring Virginia. The early settlements and population centers of the province tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay as in Virginia. Maryland economy quickly became centered around the farming of tobacco for sale in Europe. The need for cheap labor to help with the growth of tobacco and later with the mixed farming economy that developed when tobacco prices collapsed led to a rapid expansion of indentured servitude and later forcible immigration and enslavement of Africans.

Maryland developed into a plantation colony by the 18th century, in 1700 about 40% of Maryland population was Black. Maryland planters also made extensive use of indentured servants and penal labor. An extensive system of rivers facilitated the movement of produce from inland plantations to the Atlantic Coast for export. Baltimore was the second most important port in the 18th century south after Charleston South Carolina. Maryland remained in the   union during the American Civil War and was no included in the Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery. Maryland State Constitution was changed in 1867.