Existing comment:
Changing Landscapes and Lifestyles:
"I think we agreed that the time for a gentleman to farm in Maryland has gone by and that the only thing to be done was to sell or be at the merce of Pennsylvania or Maryland Yankees who are worse than the New England tribe."
-- Charles Ridgely to Thomas Buckler, 1866
The post Civil War years brought profound changes to the Hampton. Some changers were economical and technological. The abolition of slavery in Maryland necessitated a transition to paid labor or sharecropping. Innovations in agricultural technology such as horse-drawn mowers, reapers and steam-powered equipment meant that fewer people were needed to farm a given area. Other changes were social. While slavery was abolished, racial attitudes lingered, resulting in tension between whites and blacks. Poor working-class whites saw newly-freed African-Americans as competitors for jobs. Many former slave owners resented blacks' newly-freed status. For African-Americans, the initial euphoria of emancipation was tempered by limited opportunities and occasional violence.
For African-Americans, opportunities for a better life came slowly. Even twenty years after the Civil War, many remained as tenants or labored on their former owner's farms. In 1880, only one-third of black children age 6-15 years old attended school in Maryland.
Low wages made it difficult to purchase one's own farm. Wages averaged 50 cents a day for farm laborers from the 1860s into the Twentieth Century. During the early 1900s, a number of large landowners sold portions of their estates to newly-arrived immigrants who came with cash to buy land.
A Report on the Select Committee in Maryland in 1888 stated: "The tendency, therefore, is to break up large tracts and to dispose of these.. to thrifty immigrants, who will be enabled to work them properly."
While African-Americans could vote and own land, the threat of violence was always present. One example, in 1885, involved Howard Cooper. Cooper was a resident of East Towson, a local community believed to be settled by former slaves from Hampton. Allegedly accused of raping a white woman, he was lynched by a mob on the jailhouse lawn days before his trial. |