05/29/2026
Sharing excerpts from an article by Jeanette E. Sherbondy: “From the Eastern Shore Grain Boom to Manumission of Enslaved Workers”
During our walks on the Underground Railroad, Manumission is one of many topics discussed. Book a walk - harriettubmanmuseumcenter.org
In the last half of the 18th century, the shift to corn and wheat farming produced a grain boom that enriched the Eastern Shore slaveholders and radically changed the role of enslaved labor. Wheat farmers needed many men only at the wheat harvest; otherwise there was an excess of enslaved workers. A baby boom happened at the same time that doubled the enslaved population between 1755 and 1782. Slaveholders, however, wanted fewer enslaved workers. Their solutions were to sell them or hire them out for profit or free them, but selling them was their preference.
Other opportunities to use enslaved labor opened up in a variety of industries. Small landholders and tenants could now buy workers, something they never dreamed they could. A growing Baltimore had many mechanics and artisans who needed laborers, as did merchants. Baltimore business drew the extra enslaved workers away from the Eastern Shore as purchased or hired labor. Enslaved workers from the Eastern Shore ended up in the rest of Maryland. The Baltimore population of enslaved workers increased 70%!
In 1781 the idea of free Blacks, free African Americans, was not frightening to Whites because there had been no incidents even though over a thousand enslaved people were freed during the 1770s. The Maryland Quakers came out against slavery, and then the Methodist Conference in 1780 declared that slavery was “contrary to laws of God, man, and nature, and hurtful to society.” (Dorsey p. 28) The Maryland legislature ended the ban on manumission by last will and testament, and there was an astonishing rate of manumission between 1790 and 1830 on the Eastern Shore. In 1790 there were 3,907 free Blacks and 37,591 enslaved people, but 30 years later there were 15,700 free Blacks on the Eastern Shore, and 31% of all African Americans were free. The Eastern Shore had a larger free population than the rest of Maryland.
