Compensated Emancipation in Maryland during the Civil War

Historians have long marked President Abraham Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation as the harbinger of immediate, uncompensated emancipation in both the Confederacy and the Border States. However, as my new book, Counting the Cost of Freedom (UNC Press, 2025) argues, that outcome was far from certain in 1863. In fact, the Proclamation opened new opportunities for the Lincoln administration to manumit some enslaved men and pay their loyal enslavers in the border states. In the summer of 1863, the War Department used Black enlistment to secure freedom for enslaved recruits and entice individual enslavers in the border states to manumit them with the promise of up to $300 compensation. Although the United States probably paid only twenty-five claims in Maryland, the promise of compensation convinced enslavers there to support Black enlistment in 1863, leading to the state’s abolition of slavery in 1864. Maryland also emulated federal policy and, after the war paid 3,627 former enslavers $362,700, or over $8.5 million today.^[1]

 

General Orders 329

Even though many freedom seekers in the Confederacy joined the United States Colored Troops by summer of 1863, many questioned whether the United States could enlist enslaved men in border states. Slavery was still legal there, and the administration avoided alienating slaveholding loyalists, many of whom supported the United States on the condition that slavery remained intact in their states. In Maryland, which had a substantial free Black population, it was difficult to convince politicians to enlist free Black men, whom landowners and capitalists depended on for labor. On the other hand, non-slaveholding whites hoped Black enlistment would ease the federal draft quotas that often fell on them, betraying a willingness to sacrifice Black lives over white for a national cause.^[2]

Whether enslavers approved, enslaved men in Maryland enlisted in recruitment camps all over the state in the summer of 1863.^[3] After much negotiation, the War Department issued General Orders 329 to appease Maryland Unionists and lay out procedures for enlisting enslaved men and paying loyal enslavers. It created the Maryland Board of Claims to adjudicate claims from Maryland and Northampton and Accomack Counties on Virginia’s adjacent eastern shore.^[4] Unlike most other border states, Maryland’s governing politicians and Unconditional Unionists generally supported the initiative. As an Eastern Shore Provost Marshal told the Secretary of War, “Loyal slave owners are glad of a last chance to receive some compensation for a property rendered worthless by the Rebellion and the cause of emancipation receives a constant accession of supporters.” The promise of federal compensation for at least some enslaved men would strengthen the Unconditional Unionists and further the cause of emancipation in Maryland.^[5]

 

The Maryland Board of Claims

Almost as soon as it was established in late 1863, the Maryland Board of Claims ran into questions of eligibility, procedural delays, and loyalty politics. Originally, an enslaver had 10 days to make a claim by filing a deed of manumission or release of service for the soldier and proof of enlistment. But recruitment officers rarely provided the necessary documentation, and the War Department extended the submission deadline multiple times. Enslavers also had to take an oath of allegiance with affidavits from two loyalists.

 

Report for the Board for the week ending Saturday, April 9, 1864, which includes names of some of the paid claimants. Reports of the Board for the Assessment of Claims under General Orders 329, 1863, 1864-1865, Record Group 94, entry 181, National Archives & Record Administration.

 

As Marylanders worked out who “deserved” compensation, they began to perform a new politics of loyalty, one that required loyal enslavers to accept immediate emancipation if they wanted payment. Despite clear procedure, Marylanders and Virginians contested their neighbor’s claims. The three Unconditional Unionists who sat on the Board received several anonymous or confidential letters from self-styled Union men warning them that a neighbor who intended to make a claim had taken the loyalty oath but voted for secession. Some offered to verify loyal men if the Board sent them a list of county claimants—but only if their name was kept secret. Others cautioned of county-wide conspiracies of disloyal enslavers vouching for each other’s claims. One board member, Thomas Timmons, worried that even men he considered loyalists vouched for rebel claims. Ironically, the act of claiming compensation called into question an enslaver’s loyalties. Were they loyal, or did they just want payment for property in people?^[6]

The promises of compensation nevertheless built support for the Lincoln administration, Black enlistment, and emancipation writ large. After an initial wave of enlistments ended, Maryland passed a new law to stimulate more in early 1864. The General Assembly passed a bill on February 6 that paid both an enslaved man and his enslaver if he enlisted in the army. Enslaved men received $100, and enslavers $100. Shortly after, on February 24, 1864, Congress codified the compensation policies in General Orders 329 by passing section 24 of the 1864 Enrollment Act. Maryland enslavers could receive up to $400 for an enlisted man under state and federal law.^[7]

 

As this claims certificate suggests, the War Department-appointed Board heard claims for the state, too. Office of the U.S. Board of Claims certification for Charles Franklin of the 7th Regiment Colored Troop, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Resource ID 12227.

 

Raised and renewed, the promise of compensation also helped shift the outlook for emancipation in the state. Whether intentionally or not, the Board influenced the upcoming election for delegates to a state constitutional convention where, Marylanders knew, emancipation was on the table. On March 31, A. Randall, possibly Alexander Randall, a former Whig and Unionist who had served as a representative to Congress in the early 1840s, wrote to the President of the Board. He said, “our candidates for the Convention in [Anne Arundel] were particularly anxious to have some [claims] decided soon as it would operate to our great advantage. If this could be done justly towards the rights of other claims we would be much gratified.” I don’t know the Board’s response, but the War Department issued orders to pay claims on April 19, 1864, and the Board began the process of paying some claims in Baltimore, Frederick, Talbot, Dorchester, Worcester Counties. In early April through early May, the War Department paid twenty-five claims to fourteen claimants, who received $6,900 altogether. Some received money for multiple soldiers, whether enslaved or bound laborers.^[8]

At first glance, the claimants don’t appear to have anything in common, except that their claims were some of the first reviewed and awarded by the Board.^[9] Levin E. Straughn, a Board member, received one payment, suggesting that politics and patronage played a role. After the initial twenty-five, the War Department delayed payments even as the Board continued hearing claims. When Dr. Samuel Harrison, an Unconditional Unionist enslaver from Talbot County, sought an explanation later that spring, the Board’s clerk told him that they received so many claims so quickly “that as soon as the Board commenced awarding, it seemed necessary to pass some claims for each county. This course was more important, from the fact that your best Union men has said that the Government did not mean to pay.” The Board reassured Harrison that “they also thought it would serve the good purpose of convincing the people, that loyal men had nothing to fear.”^[10]

 

What was Paid?

As it turned out, Harrison was right to fear. The Board continued to hear claims through 1864 and 1865, but after more delays and funding reallocations, the War Department dissolved it on November 30, 1865, with no additional records of payments. Unpaid awards totaled $235,383. According to one War Department report it had the money to pay Maryland claimants and more. However, the order to pause payments still stood, and the Bureau did not appear to collect or review claims after 1865.^[11]

As Counting the Cost of Freedom shows, the War Department heard more claims from other border states in 1867-1868, but Congress reneged on the promised compensation when it passed section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, when it was ratified in 1868, prevented all claims for compensation to enslavers. During debates on the amendment, some Republican congressmen challenged, “Let our political opponents call the dead to life . . . . We will then pay for their slaves.” I’ve found no additional records of US payments after 1864, but the War Department reported that it nevertheless spent $39,685.36—or $13,273,335.59 in 2025 dollars for salaries and office expenses from 1864-1867 to hear enslavers’ claims.^[12]

 

Robert Riley, a veteran of the 7^th USCT from Queen Anne’s County, who enlisted in 1863 and was manumitted by his enslaver, Valentine B. Clements, in 1864. He received his bounty from Maryland in 1867; Clements received state compensation in 1865. Carolyn C. Williams Collection of Robert Riley Papers, Photographs of Robert Riley [MSA SC 3836], Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD.

 

Maryland continued to pay state claims until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, including those of formerly enslaved soldiers, 3,409 of whom received $317,450 by 1869.^[13] Though they weren’t fully realized, promises to pay enslavers smoothed the way for emancipation in Maryland and contributed to former enslavers’ sense of alienation from the Republican or Unionist parties after the war. As Samuel Harrison later wrote, “Many thought, and still think, as I do myself, that faith was not kept by the Government with the loyal slave holders.”[14] The United States paid soldiers’ bounties, but not enslavers’ claims, reflecting wartime Republicans’ growing belief that loyal enslavers must willingly relinquish their property rights in people to truly be loyal to the Union.

 

[1] Eric Foner, Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010); James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012); Paul Finkelman, “Lincoln and the Preconditions for Emancipation: The Moral Grandeur of a Bill of Lading,” in Lincoln’s Proclamation: Race, Place, and the Paradoxes of Emancipation, William A. Blair and Karen Fisher Younger, eds., (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 13-44; Blair and Younger, Lincoln’s Proclamation, 1–11; Paul Finkelman, “Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Limits of Constitutional Change,” Supreme Court Review (2008): 349-87; Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997), 105–21; “Purchasing Power Today of a US Dollar Transaction in the Past,” MeasuringWorth, 2025. <www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/>. This is a rough estimated compared to the value in 1868, even though Maryland paid out enslavers until 1869.

^[2] Ira Berlin, Joseph Reidy, and Leslie Rowland, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. The Black Military Experience, II (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 183 [hereafter cited as TBME]; Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 71, 123-7; John Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine 58, no. 1 (1963): 20–29; J. Holt to Stanton, August 20, 1863, Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series 3, vol. 3, 694–96 [hereafter cited as OR].

^[3] TBME, 184, 213-15, 221-22; Ana Rosado, “The Ties That Bind Us to Earth: Neighborhoods and Interpersonal Relationships of Black Southern Marylanders, 1850-1910,” Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2021, 87-90, 96-98; Mrs. Benjamin Harris diary, February 27-March 8, 1864, MS 1585, Maryland Center for History & Culture [hereafter cited as MCHC]; Dr. Samuel A. Harrison diary, September 22, 1863.

^[4] General Orders 329 extended to most slave states that remained in the Union, and where there was military need for soldiers. There were two exceptions: the orders excluded Kentucky, a slaveholding Border State, but included Northampton and Accomack Counties on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, which had seceded. They were the only eligible Virginia counties because Lincoln exempted them from the Emancipation Proclamation as part of the Restored Government of Virginia, which had been admitted into the Union in 1863 alongside West Virginia. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton likely excluded Kentucky because of the state’s vociferous resistance to Black enlistment, and, he wrote, it was not close to combat. Black men were needed in Kentucky to build roads, not fight.

The Maryland Board received a few other claims from enslavers outside of Maryland but entertained few. One Missouri enslaver applied to the Board for compensation for a man who enlisted in Maryland. After a year, the War Department approved his case. It also received claims from Philadelphia and Washington, DC, but the Board refused to award enslavers in free states for soldiers, even if they were enslaved in Maryland, and to compensate DC enslavers who had previously been offered compensation under the DC Emancipation Act.

         TBME 185, 188; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 860-861; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” 536; OR, series 3, vol. 3, 887; OR, series 3, vol 3,  925; Report by Edwin M. Stanton, October 1, 1863, OR, series III, vol. III, 855-856; C. Whitelock to Timmons, January 13, 1864; Foster to Streeter, January 26, 1864; Foster to Timmons, January 31, 1865, Maryland Slave Claims Commission Correspondence, RG 94, entry 176, National Archives & Records Administration [hereafter cited as UD 176.]; Rockwell to Timmons, March 16, 1865; Rockwell to Timmons, March 28, 1865; Calvert to Timmons, August 1865, UD 176. Enslavers in Delaware also attempted to claim men who enlisted in Pennsylvania. The War Department did not allow compensation for men enlisted in a free state. Foster to Gum, November 28, 1864, February 23, 1865, Letters Sent by the Disbursing Officer, 1864-1867, RG 94, entry 178, National Archives & Records Administration [hereafter cited as UD 178]; Kurtz, “Emancipation in the Federal City,” Civil War History 24.3 (September 1978), 250-267.

^[5] Baltimore American, August 15, 1863; Charles Wangandt, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), 123-125; Circular No. 1, War Department Adjutant General’s Office, Bureau for Organization of Colored Troops, Washington, DC, October —, 1863, OR series III, vol. III, 938; TBME, 210-215; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 855-856 [hereafter cited as OR]; Rosado, 82-83; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland”; TBME, chapter 4.

^[6] Amanda Laury Kleintop, Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight over Compensated Emancipation after the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 49-51; Rachael Nicholas, “To Ransom a Borderland

Slavery, Emancipation, and Jubal Early’s 1864 Maryland Campaign,” (91^st Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, St. Petersburg, FL, October 15, 2025); William A. Blair, With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014); TBME 185, 188; OR, Series III, Vol. 3, 860-861; Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Maryland,” 536; OR, series 3, vol. 3, 887; OR, series 3, vol 3,  925; Alfred Mace to Sebastian F. Streeter, December 19, 1863; Colonel J. P. Creager, Monrovia, to Sebastian F. Streeter, December 24, 1863; John R. Quinan, et al, to Streeter, February 23, 1864; Dr. S. R. Bird to Streeter, February 11, February 15, 1864; Loyalist, February 15, 1864; Tyler to Streeter, March 4, 1864; William Daniel to Board, May 20, 1864; Watson to Streeter, March 10, 1864; Timmons, March 10, 1864; R. H. Jackson to Board, April 6, 1864; John E. Smith to Board, May 19, 1864; Robert H. Ellegood to Board, May 4, 1864; Penn to Streeter, July 4, 1864; Powell to Streeter, July 4, 1864; Samuel A. Harrison to Streeter, January 1864; John D. Rew, March 7 and 8, 1864; Timmons, February 24, 1864; Brohawn to Sears, November 7, 1864, UD 176; Streeter to Samuel A. Harrison, January 22, 1864, Box 1, Folder 6, Harrison-Denny-Tilghman Papers, MS 3264, MCHC.

^[7] An Act to aid and encourage enlistments into the Maryland regiments in service of the United States, February 6, 1864.

^[8] A. Randall to Streeter, March 31, 1864, UD 176. For similar reports, also see: A. J. Willis, June 13, 1864, Box 2, entry 177, National Archives & Record Administration [hereafter cited as UD 177]; Foster to Capt. Le Grant Benedict, April 19, 1864, UD 177; Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1864, House Exec. Doc. No. 83, 38^th Cong., 2d sess. (1865), 27–28; Letter of the Secretary of War, communicating in compliance with a resolution of the Senate of the 8th instant, information in regard to the appointment of commissioners under the 24th section of the act of February 24, 1864, entitled “An act to amend an act entitled ‘An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes,’ approved March 3, 1863, and the awards made by the said commissioners, and why payments on awards have been suspended. S. Exec. Doc. No. 39-9 (1866); Reports of the Board for the Assessment of Claims under General Orders 329, 1863, 1864-1865, RG 94, entry 181, National Archives & Record Administration [NARA].

^[9] Henry Kimberly to Foster, April 7, 1864; A. P. Kessler to Foster, April 6 and 8, 1864; Benedict to Streeter, April 9, 20, and 25, 1864; A. P. Kessler to Board, May 2, 1864; Streeter to Foster, April 21, 1864, UD 176; Streeter to L. G. Benedict, April 21, 22, and 26, May 11, 1864; L. E. Straughn to L. G. Bendict, April 30, 1864, Box 2, UD 177; William Daniel to Captain Le Grand Benedict, April 25, 1864, Box 2, UD 177; Vouchers for Disbursements to Members of Slave Claims Commissions, 1864–1866, RG 94, UD 349, Vol. 41-43, NARA; Register of Vouchers and Disbursements, 1863-1864, RG 94, UD 387, Vol. 8.

^[10] Sears to Harrison, May 19, 1864, Harrison-Denny-Tilghman Papers, Box 1, folder 6, MCHC.

^[11] Report to War Department as Disbursing Officer of the Bureau for Colored Troops for year ending October 10, 1865, UD 178; Rockwell to Col C. W. Foster, October 10, 1866, UD 178; S. Exec. Doc. No. 39-9 (1866).

^[12] Kleintop, Counting the Cost of Freedom, chapter 4; An Act suspending the Payment of Moneys from the Treasury as Compensation to Persons claiming the Service or Labor of colored Volunteers or drafted men, and for other Purposes, Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., Sess. 2, Ch. 8, 1867, 376-377; Joint Resolution suspending all Proceedings in Relation to Payment for Slaves drafted or received as Volunteers in the military Service of the United States, Statutes at Large, Joint Resolution 31, 40th Cong., sess. 1, March 30, 1867, 29; Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 1st sess., 193, 196, 250, 460; Annual Report of the Adjutant General’s Office, Bureau for Colored Troops, October 20, 1867, F. W. Taggard, 1st Lieutenant US Army in charge of Bureau of Colored Troops, Colored Troops Division, Annual Reports of the Adjutant General Relating to the Colored Troops Division, 1865-65, 1867, RG 94, UD 388, NARA; “Purchasing Power Today of a US Dollar Transaction in the Past,” MeasuringWorth, 2025. <www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/>. The comparative dollar value is lower ($811,923.76) if we consider this money spent on a purchase instead of compensation for labor.

^[13] Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1864 (Annapolis: Richard P. Payly, Printer, 1865), xii-xv, 19; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1865 (Annapolis: Richard P. Payly, Printer, 1866), vi-ix, 16; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1866 (Annapolis: Thomas J. Wilson, Printer, 1867), vii-xi, 21; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1867, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton, Printer, 1867), vii-xiv, 18; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1868, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton, Printer, 1869), x-xvii, 40-43; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Treasury Department, for the Fiscal Year Ended Sept. 30, 1869, to the General Assembly of Maryland (Annapolis: George Colton & Son, Printer, 1869), 9-10, 41-43.

[14] Political Annals of Talbot County, Vol. 8, page 5, Harrison Collection, Box 1, MS 432, MCHC.