Southern States own declarations of secession make it clear, they were fighting to keep slavery in force.
Yeah, right.
That, Tom is the first flag. Like I said, my ancestors didn't fight in the legislature.
In fact, until the legislature of the state had been reorganized during the occupation, it did not get to vote on a bill of secession.
Every man in the Confederate Armies and the Confederate Navy had their own reasons for going to war. Most because they were being invaded. My kin left Maryland to fight for the South, because Maryland had been invaded by the armies of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, with the blessing of the selfsame Federal Government which was supposed to prevent such things, which had suspended
Habeas Corpus and later established (Federal) Martial Law over the state.
While the vote on secession failed, having been held in heavily union sympathetic Fredrick, MD instead of the capital of Annapolis (far more southern sympathy), it came mere days after the VA House of Burgess voted to secede. It is unlikely that that news had reached the legislature when the vote was held.
BTW, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves (about half of the black population in MD, the other half were free).
From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland_in_the_American_Civil_WarThose who voted for Maryland to remain in the Union did not at first contemplate the emancipation of Maryland's many slaves, or indeed those of the Confederacy. In March 1862 the Maryland Assembly passed a series of resolutions, stating that:
This war is prosecuted by the Nation with but one object, that, namely, of a restoration of the Union just as it was when the rebellion broke out. The rebellious States are to be brought back to their places in the Union, without change or diminution of their constitutional rights.[68]
In other words, as far as Marylanders were concerned, the war was being fought over Union, not over slavery. And, because Maryland had remained in the Union, the state was not included under the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that all slaves within the Confederacy (but not those in border states like Maryland) would henceforth be free. It was not until 1864 that a constitutional convention was held which would address the issue of slavery in Maryland.
