Abstract

Across the Great Divide

The article focuses on the book "Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century," by Barabara Jeanne Fields. Field's book is a case study in the fate of moderation in the nation's bloodiest conflict. The "middle ground" in her title comes from Maryland's geographical and political position: the middle ground, she writes, is a "misty and elusive terrain that occupies, a place of honor in the geography of Americans' political ideology." To be moderate is to be reasonable. Maryland's moderation as a slave state was evident in the large number of a-slaves there who had been freed by their masters. On the eve of the Civil War, it had the largest free black population in the South. In Alabama and Georgia in 1850, 99 percent of blacks were slaves; in Maryland, only 55 percent were. Mississippi had roughly 900 free blacks in 1850; Maryland had 75,000.