Long Road to Emancipation

Long Road to Emancipation. Frederick County Courthouse. , Passionate speeches filled the air at Courthouse Square on September 24, 1864. On that date a throng of Frederick residents listened to Montgomery Blair, Abraham Lincoln's first postmaster general, and other speakers encouraging Marylanders to vote in favor of outlawing slavery in the state during an upcoming statewide referendum. , City of Frederick voters listened. They went to the polls on October 12-13 and supported the new Maryland constitution by a vote of 735 to 441. The statewide abolition referendum passed, and enslavement ended in Maryland on November 1, 1864. , That vote was critical, for though Lincoln had introduced the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, the document only freed enslaved people living within Confederate-held territory. Maryland remained in the Union, and therefore enslaved people in the state remained in bondage. , Though the vote held here in 1864 brought about the end of slavery in Maryland, the fight for equality and citizenship for 3,000 newly freed people in Frederick County was far from finished. , Squarely in the Action , In May 1861, the wooden courthouse that stood at this location burned down following a political rally. While the existing brick courthouse was being constructed, Confederate soldiers occupied its unfinished basement as a guardhouse during their September 1862 occupation of Frederick. In October, President Lincoln passed by the square on his way to visit a Union general recuperating on neighboring Record Street (site A above) from a wound at the September 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam., (captions) , Frederick County Courthouse square in the 1880s Courtesy Heritage Frederick, Frederick County, Md., Theophilus A. Thompson was among those emancipated by the new 1864 Maryland Constitution. The Frederick County native became the first nationally recognized Black chess player. Courtesy Harvard University, (Map Inset) , You are Here , City Hall Site of Frederick County Courthouse in 1864. , A Ramsey House President Lincoln visited here in October 1862, visiting U.S. General George Hartsuff who was recuperating from wounds suffered at Antietam. , B All Saints Episcopal Church Used as a U.S. Army hospital from September 1862 to January 1863 , C Evangelical Reformed Church Used as a U.S. Army hospital from September 1862 to January 1863 , D Trinity Chapel Founding..location of the Frederick Ladies Union Relief Association during the Civil War , E Kemp Hall , F Old City Hall (Brewer's Alley)