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In the beginning...
When the first Maryland settlers arrived from England in 1634 on The Ark and The Dove, they found rich, fertile ground waiting to be cleared of trees and undergrowth. After securing shelter and food crops, they quickly turned to cultivating what would become Maryland's "money plant" -- tobacco.
Cultivation of tobacco, however, takes many months of intense labor. These early Maryland planters relied on indentured servants and slaves to till the soil, plant to crop, maintain it, harvest it, hang it to cure, and ultimately ship it to market. Soon, the colony of Maryland was a plantation economy based largely on slave labor. By 1664, Maryland had passed a law legalizing slavery. This slave-based economy would continue in the state until 1864.
The Antebellum Era...
In the early 1800s, Maryland and the nation watched as federal officials dealt with the creation of new states and their admission to the Union as free states or slave states in order to maintain balance in Congressional representation. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the Fugitive Slave Law all tried to appease both sides as the as the lands acquired by the Louisiana Purchase became states -- and all failed. By 1860, the State of Maryland and the nation braced for a civil war. It was during this turbulent period that John H. Surratt moved his wife and three children (and their slaves) to a new home and farm in what would become known as Surrattsville.
And the War Came...
With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States, states with economies based on slave labor began seceding from the Union. Lincoln was a Republican, a new party that stood strongly against the institution of slavery and which found little support in Maryland. The state wanted to maintain slavery, but still remain in the Union. This placed the state in crisis mode. Surrounding the federal capital on three sides, would Maryland be held in the Union by force? The feelings against Lincoln are so strong that the first scheme to assassinate him was foiled as the president-elect came through Baltimore and route to Washington City for his inauguration.
After a special meeting of the state legislature failed to call for an act of secession, Maryland officially remained a part of the United States. To ensure the state's loyalty, federal troops quickly occupied major portions of Maryland. In spite of occupation, many Confederate sympathizers from Maryland crossed into Virginia to join the southern forces. Others set up lines of communication between North and South with small ships and even rowboats running the federal blockades. Secret dispatches, letters, drugs and medicines, and percussion caps were carried south by agents -- all this while facing arrest as traitors and having their lands seized. This support for the Confederacy was especially strong with the Surratts and their Southern Maryland neighbors. The Surratt Tavern became a safe house on the Confederate underground that flourished in the lower counties of Maryland. |