The Internal Market for Enslaved Labor — Splitting Families
Jeanette E. Sherbondy • August 31, 2021
Duke felt “everyone, especially his wife and children … was rich in slaves and they were eating him into the poorhouse. He had the proof in his ledgers. Months of a year the slaves lived all but idle on the Retreat. At that time the lands were in small grains, in strawberries and tomatoes, crops that grew with little need for human assistance. The Duke hired out as many slaves as he could to Baltimore but never got the return he thought he was due; he sold a few from time to time but couldn’t keep up with the population. He knew the whole thing was over anyway … Emancipation was on the way … he recognized that these souls were about to pick up and leave anyway. … One way or another, the Duke figured, his slaves would be gone and he’d be left with nothing for his efforts. So in 1857 he made a deal with a man from Virginia, and one morning in July a hot morning in July, that man was tying up a streaked and deck-rotted schooner at the steamer dock and off-loading a tangle of chains and leg-irons.” (pp. 20-22)
He sold his excess enslaved laborers, not wanting to fight the changing times, but only to cut his losses.
“The slaves were huddled together under the hot sun and in the yellow clay dust of the soil, maybe about forty of them, old and infirm, drooling and uncomprehending, naked babies in the arms of their whimpering mothers, young husbands and fathers who had done exactly what they had been told to do all their lives, teenage boys already burnished by hard labor, and — the most prized by the man from Virginia — the teenage girls, healthy girls … they were all being sold south.”(pp. 23-24)
For the enslaved laborers who were bought, for the enslaved house workers not being sold, and for the free Blacks this cruel sale broke up families and their network of friends and neighbors of a lifetime. Kidnapping was also another frequent danger to African Americans. Lucy Maddox published the true story of two sisters from Cecil County: The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping (2016). The girls were free and working in Pennsylvania, a free state, but they were ambushed and carried off to Baltimore for sale in the Deep South.
Manumission did not always mean freedom for other reasons as well. Delayed manumission was the most common practice. An enslaver got his compensation by not letting a manumitted enslaved person leave for years. Another way enslavers controlled manumitted enslaved people was to free one generation but claim as theirs the children and grandchildren. Each one had to work 25 years before gaining freedom. In Maryland the free Blacks could not claim their unborn children would be free. And the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 considered enslaved people to be forever enslaved, even if they escaped to a free state. The Quakers and the Methodists actively helped enslaved people under fierce opposition from the Episcopalians and the Jesuits.
The enslaved population on the Eastern Shore was decimated by traders who bought and sold African American children and young adults between the ages of 14 and 30 as “hands.” Thousands of enslaved people were sold south. The youth of reproducing years were skimmed off for sale. In Kent County an enslaved person had a 10% chance of being sold off in any one year and a cumulative risk of 50% over the three decades from 1820s-1850s. Many more enslaved persons were sold than those who escaped north.
As a result, Kent County-born Henry Highland Garnet gave a famous speech in 1843, “An Address to the Slaves,” urging enslaved people to get away however they could, to use violence when necessary. At that time Frederick Douglass disagreed with his call for violence, but later saw that it was useless to think a peaceful solution was possible.
Garnet cried: “Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than you have been — you cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die free-men than live to be slaves.”
In addition to the above mentioned historical novels, I have drawn on the research of Edward E. Baptist who published The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014) as well as the research on the Eastern Shore by Jennifer Hull Dorsey, published as Hirelings: African American Workers and Free Labor in Early Maryland (2011). Information on Henry Highland Garnet is available in George Shivers’s article “Henry Highland Garnet: Minister, Abolitionist and Fighter for Justice” in the Key to Old Kent: A Journal of the Historical Society of Kent County, vol. 9, number 1 (2015). The text of Garnet’s speech can be found on the internet.
Jeanette E. Sherbondy is a retired anthropology professor from Washington College and has lived here since 1986. In retirement she has been active with the Kent County Historical Society and Sumner Hall, one of the organizers of Legacy Day, and helped get highway /historical markers recognizing Henry Highland Garnet. She published an article on her ethnohistorical research of the free Black village, Morgnec.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
The 447th legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly adjourned on April 8. This End of Session Report highlights the work Shore Progress has done to fight for working families and bring real results home to the Shore. Over the 90-day session, lawmakers debated 1,901 bills and passed 878 into law. Shore Progress and members supported legislation that delivers for the Eastern Shore, protecting our environment, expanding access to housing and healthcare, strengthening workers’ rights, and more. Shore Progress Supported Legislation By The Numbers: Over 60 pieces of our backed legislation were passed. Another 15 passed in one Chamber but not the other. Legislation details are below, past the budget section. The 2026 Maryland State Budget How We Got Here: Maryland’s budget problems didn’t start overnight. They began under Governor Larry Hogan. Governor Hogan expanded the state budget yearly but blocked the legislature from moving money around or making common-sense changes. Instead of fixing the structural issues, Hogan used federal covid relief funds to hide the cracks and drained our state’s savings from $5.5 billion to $2.3 billion to boost his image before leaving office. How Trump/Musk Made It Worse: Maryland is facing a new fiscal crisis driven by the Trump–Musk administration, whose trade wars, tariff policies, and deep federal cuts have hit us harder than most, costing the state over 30,000 jobs, shuttering offices, and erasing promised investments. A University of Maryland study estimates Trump’s tariffs alone could cost us $2 billion, and those federal cuts have already added $300 million to our budget deficit. Covid aid gave us a short-term boost and even created a fake surplus under Hogan, but that money is gone, while housing, healthcare, and college prices keep rising. The Trump–Musk White House is only making things worse by slashing funding, gutting services, and eliminating research that Marylanders rely on. How The State Budget Fixes These Issues: This year, Maryland faced a $3 billion budget gap, and the General Assembly fixed it with a smart mix of cuts and fair new revenue, while protecting working families, schools, and health care. The 2025 Budget cuts $1.9 billion ($400 million less than last year) without gutting services people rely on. The General Assembly raised $1.2 billion in fair new revenue, mostly from the wealthiest Marylanders. The Budget ended with a $350 million surplus, plus $2.4 billion saved in the Rainy Day Fund (more than 9% of general fund revenue), which came in $7 million above what the Spending Affordability Committee called for. The budget protects funding for our schools, health care, transit, and public workers. The budget delivers real wins: $800 million more annually for transit and infrastructure, plus $500 million for long-term transportation needs. It invests $9.7 billion in public schools and boosts local education aid by $572.5 million, a 7% increase. If current revenue trends hold, no new taxes will be needed next session. Even better, 94% of Marylanders will see a tax cut or no change, while only the wealthiest 5% will finally pay their fair share. The tax system is smarter now. We’re: Taxing IT and data services like Texas and D.C. do; Raising taxes on cannabis and sports betting, not groceries or medicine; and Letting counties adjust income taxes. The budget also restores critical funding: $122 million for teacher planning $15 million for cancer research $11 million for crime victims $7 million for local business zones, and Continued support for public TV, the arts, and BCCC The budget invests in People with disabilities, with $181 million in services Growing private-sector jobs with $139 million in funding, including $27.5 million for quantum tech, $16 million for the Sunny Day Fund, and $10 million for infrastructure loans. Health care is protected for 1.5 million Marylanders, with $15.6 billion for Medicaid and higher provider pay. Public safety is getting a boost too, with $60 million for victim services, $5.5 million for juvenile services, and $5 million for parole and probation staffing. This budget also tackles climate change with $100 million for clean energy and solar projects, and $200 million in potential ratepayer relief. Public workers get a well-deserved raise, with $200 million in salary increases, including a 1% COLA and ~2.5% raises for union workers. The ultra-wealthy will finally chip in to pay for it: People earning over $750,000 will pay more, Millionaires will pay 6.5%, and Capital gains over $350,000 get a 2% surcharge. Deductions are capped for high earners, but working families can still deduct student loans, medical debt, and donations. This budget is bold, fair, and built to last. That’s why Shore Progress proudly supports it. Click on the arrows below for details in each section.
