was maryland a free state during the civil war
Maryland in the American Civil War During the American Civil War, Maryland, a slave state, was one of the border states, straddling the South and North. Because of its strategic location, bordering the national capital city of Washington D.C. with its District of Columbia since 1790, and the strong desire of the opposing factions within the state to sway public opinion towards their respective causes, Maryland would play an important role in the American Civil War (1861-1865). New sixteenth President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland, and his dismissal of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Ex parte Merryman" decision concerning John Merryman, a prominent Southern sympathizer from Baltimore County held in Fort McHenry, now nicknamed "Baltimore Bastille". The Chief Justice supported by the Court had held that the suspension was unconstitutional, would leave lasting civil and legal scars.[1] The court was led by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a Marylander from Frederick and sometimes in Baltimore and protege of seventh President Andrew Jackson who had appointed him two decades earlier.
Geography of Washington, D.C. Washington is surrounded by the states of Virginia (on its southwest side) and Maryland (on its southeast, northeast, and northwest sides); it interrupts those states' common border, which is the south shore of the Potomac River both upstream and downstream from the District. The portion of the Potomac River that passes Washington is virtually entirely within the District's border, as the District extends to the south bank. The city contains the historic "federal city", the territory of which was formerly part of those two adjacent states before they respectively ceded it for the national capital. The land ceded from Virginia was returned by Congress in 1847, so what remains of the modern District was all once part of Maryland.