Maryland Emancipation Day

     "Mr. President, it is my desire to be free," Ms. Annie Davis wrote to Lincoln on August 25th, 1864.

     Although it had been more than a year and a half since President Lincoln's Empancipation Proclamation, the answer to Davis's question was "No." The executive order that more than 3 million enslaved Americans would be freed didn't apply to any border states where slavery was still legal, and even to some areas of the south like New Orleans, the to-be state of West Virginia, and the area around Newport News, Virginia. Davis lived in Bel Air, Maryland, and that physical location meant that in August of 1864, she was not free. She would have to wait until November 1st, 1864 for the decree from the Maryland General Assembly and a new state constitution. 

Belair Aug 25th 1864
Mr President
It is my Desire to be free, to go to see my people on the eastern shore my mistress wont let me you will please let me know if we are free and what i can do. I write to you for advice please send me word this week or as soon as possible and oblidge.
Annie Davis
Belair Harford County, MD.
Belair Harford

     Today, Maryland is thought of as the Mid-Atlantic, with barely any relationship to the south. But the fact is that the state is south of the Mason-Dixon line, and before Washington, D.C. brought transplants from all over the United States, I've seen references to suburbs like Kensington and Silver Spring as being "sleepy southern towns." More importantly in the context of today, Maryland Emancipation Day, this was a slave-holding state, a fact that many people seem to forget when talking about Frederick Douglass, a fierce abolitionist who was enslaved and worked in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore City, or Harriet Tubman, a heroic Underground Railroad worker born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. During the Civil War, the state also had
many southern sympathizers, including the man who shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth (like Annie Davis, a resident of Bel Air, Maryland). 

     "Slave Statistics," a record of the enslaved people in Maryland and their owners at the time of emancipation exists for some counties in Maryland, but not for Harford. I haven't been able to find anything else about Annie Davis in a brief search. I want to thank Mr. C.R. Gibbs and the Reginald F. Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture for the Maryland Emancipation Day Lecture, where Mr. Gibbs shared this powerful letter.