With Valor and Honor’ Commemorates Talbot’s Black Civil War Troops by Eric Mills
Maryland has long been touted as “America in Miniature,” and while that venerable tourism-boosting label refers to geographical diversity, the Maryland-as-microcosm description perfectly encapsulates the Old Line State during the Civil War. Perched on the faultline of a nation ripped in two, Maryland was home to North America’s largest free Black population, but it also was home to a vociferous secessionist element and had a slaveholding governor (pro-Union but pro-slavery Thomas Holliday Hicks of Dorchester County) at the war’s outset.
Maryland’s schizophrenic duality manifested on the local level as well. In Easton, rival pro-Union and pro-secessionist newspapers put their opposing spins on every development from the front. Cousins from Trappe fought against each other at Culp’s Hill during the Battle of Gettysburg. Few, if any, other chapters in Talbot County’s history are as rich with such fascinating complexities….