Maryland Voices of the Civil War

Front Cover
Charles W. Mitchell
JHU Press, 2007 - History - 548 pages

Winner, 2007-2008 Founders Award. The Museum of the Confederacy

Winner of the Founders Award from the American Civil War Museum
The most contentious event in our nation’s history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms—Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or “states' rights.” But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens.

No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland—where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers—many previously unpublished—to portray the passions of a wide variety of people—merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, slave owners, civic leaders, and children—caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell tells the compelling story of how Maryland African Americans escaped from slavery and fought for the Union and their freedom alongside white soldiers and he reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland’s Southern sympathies—while genuine—never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland.

Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.

From inside the book

Contents

INDECISION
9
Fall 1860Winter 1861
15
April 1861
48
May 1861
92
Summer 1861
124
OCCUPATION
149
Recruits
203
Arrests
229
Prison
264
Rebels
297
LIBERATION
357
Black Troops
400
Freedom?
434
Murder
458
Copyright

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