BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE IN MARYLAND :

The institution of slavery in Maryland lasted around 200 years and initially it developed it along very similar lines to neighboring Virginia. The early settlement 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 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. The first known Africans were bought to Maryland in 1642, when 13 slaves arrived at St Marys city the first English settlement in the province.

Maryland developed into a plantation colony by the 18th century, in 1700 there about 25,000 people and by 1750 that had grown more than five times to 130,000. by 1755 about 40% of Maryland population was Black, Maryland planters 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 eighteen century south after Charleston South Carolina. Maryland remained in the Union during the American Civil War and so the state was not included under the January 1st 1863 Emancipation Proclamation which declared slaves in Southern Confederate states Free. Slavery survived in Maryland until the following year.