The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland

The stereotypical image of manumission involves a benign plantation owner freeing his slaves on his deathbed. But as Stephen Whitman demonstrates, the truth was far more complex, especially in the border states where manumission was much more common. Paradoxically, in the decades following the Revolution, slavery in Baltimore gained strength even as slaves were being freed in record numbers. The vigorous growth of the city required the exploitation of rural slaves with craft skills. To prevent them from escaping and to spur higher production, owners entered into arrangements with their slaves, promising eventual freedom in return for many years of hard work. This practice of term slavery created a labor force affordable to small craftsmen and manufacturers and directly contributed to the urban development of the country's third largest city. A significant book that illuminates an important subject with unprecedented depth. -- Eugene D. Genovese The Price of Freedom reveals how blacks played a critical role in freeing themselves from slavery, both by striking bargains with their owners and by assisting those still enslaved after their own manumission. Yet it was an imperfect victory. Freed blacks were virtually excluded from craft apprenticeships, and European immigrants supplanted them as a trained labor force in the 1830s. When former slaves began to be perceived as an economic threat, the racism implicit in slavery became explicit.