Maryland might have been a border state, bordering on Virginia, as a matter of fact, but that didn’t mean one of its representatives in the Yankee Congress couldn’t be a Blacker Republican that President Lincoln.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch march 12, 1864:
Henry winter Davis on slavery in Maryland.
Davis, of Maryland, is considered the leading opponent to Lincoln in the Yankee Congress, and recently succeeded in carrying the Maryland election against Old Abe. His opposition is not based upon the fact that Lincoln goes too far on the slavery question, but because he does not go far enough. In a debate in Congress on the 2d inst, on the bill establishing a Bureau for Freedmen’s Affairs, we find the following:
Mr. Davis.(Md.,) in reply to Mr. Brooks, (N. Y.,) defended the validity and moral force of the late congressional and other elections in Maryland. The defeated partisans only complain in that State of the result, the Union majority being thirteen or fourteen thousand. He denied that slavery was dead. and expressed the opinion that if it should be exterminated it would again become our masters. The Convention in Maryland which recently declared for immediate emancipation gave a significant admonition worthy of the State and the people. In speaking of the sinister influence and controlling element near the President in the great cause of emancipation in Maryland, we are, Mr. Davis said, under small obligation to the President for what the latter had done in that State. The people thought it wise, while expressing their approbation of the President, to pass the resolution to which he had referred for the President’s serious consideration.
He wished to show that their devotion was not personal, but on principle — for the cause, and not for the man — and that they will support the man so long only as he supports the cause. If the opposition elect their President, slavery was as much alive as when the first gun blazed on Sumter. If we, he remarked, lose the next election slavery is as powerful as it every was. We must either go backward or go forward Slavery is not dead by the President’s proclamation. What lawyer attributes to it the least legal effect? It is now executed by the bayonet, to the attend of the duration of the war, under the law of 1862. Re-establish the old Government, and slavery will resume its ancient away. In order to the readmission of States there should be a resolute declaration, as a condition precedent, that slavery shall be prohibited, and the Constitution should guarantee the fact, and the Government should be kept under the control of those whose views, and purposes afford the assurance that the law will be executed.
In the course of his remarks, Mr. Davis referred to the exposition of the views of President Lincoln, as given by Postmaster General Blair, who he said was near the person of the President, and whose comments had never been disavowed, and for which reason they were entitled to grave and respectful consideration. These comments were in the form of attacks on radical abolitionists, and also on the necessity of the emancipation policy under the proclamation of the President. It was said by the Postmaster General that the radical abolitionists wanted to change the Constitution and elevate the negro to the equality of the white, but that the two races could not five together on terms of equality and peace, and therefore it became necessary to prevent the massacre of the negro that he be exported and colonized. Why Mr. Davis asked, must the negro be colonized if he is to be free Where in history would gentlemen find facts on which to base such conclusions?
Mr. Davis then proceeded to show the injustice and impolicy of such colonization, characterizing it as instance and unchristian philanthropy. If you mean to source the removal of the negroes, then say so. If you don’t mean to coerce them, they will remain. You cannot offer them as good hames abroad as you can at home, among the scene of their childhood. If God made there unequal, or if God stamped inferiority upon them, you cannot turn a hair white or black or add an inch to their statutes. He appealed to gentlemen not to seek to add inherent difficulties to the problem, and proceeded to speak of the progress of emanelpation in Maryland. He was a Marylander, not a Northern Abolitionist. His father was a slaveholder, and he himself had been a slaveholder.
In this connection he referred to the convention in Maryland, in 1859, called for the purpose of removing the free blacks, and mentioned the name of ex-Senator Pearce as making a report that the committee could not recommend the expulsion of such persons from the State and deprive them of the right of freedom which they had acquired or inherited.
