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.
States' rights The balance of federal powers and those powers held by the states as defined in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution was first addressed in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The Court's decision by Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After McCulloch, the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of Congress' constitutional powers, and whether the states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government, even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the states.[3][4]