In the fall of 1864, Maryland became the first Border State to abolish slavery with the adoption of a new state constitution. In order to best understand the evolution of this event, the purpose of this study was to examine the civil-military relations of Maryland during the Civil War and how these relations affected the institution of slavery in the state. Therefore, the main argument is that the conflict between military and civil authorities in Maryland during the war revealed two points: first, that the federal government maintained a faithful vigilance over the state during the war and second, that the federal government exploited a fading slavery system to not only eliminate any possibility of Maryland entering the Confederacy, but also destroy any degree of Border State neutrality. / by Brian Thomas Dunne. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 1843, an African-American woman known as Kitty Payne and her three children arrived in Adams County, Pennsylvania, newly manumitted by their mistress, Mary Maddox of Virginia. Two years later, in July of 1845, a gang of men burst into the Paynes’ home and kidnapped the family, dragging them back south to slavery. The story of Kitty Payne and her children echoed and replayed itself thousands of times in the years before the end of the Civil War. Between 1620 and 1860, a race-based system of slavery developed in America. Not all persons of African descent came to America as slaves, however, and slaves sometimes obtained freedom through manumission or escape. This created opportunities for corrupt individuals to kidnap free black Americans and sell them as slaves, regardless of their previous status. The abduction of free blacks into slavery is an extremely significant and far-reaching part of the antebellum African-American experience that many historians have previously overlooked.

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