Lord Baltimore Fellow Virtual Lecture—Hampton: Resistance and Control on an Antebellum Maryland Plantation

Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland, provides a fascinating lens to understand the realities of enslavement within a border state. With the free state of Pennsylvania or the bustling city of Baltimore being a short distance away, Hampton enslavers employed various means of surveillance and control to reduce the likelihood of fleeing. At the same time, the enslaved claimed agency through resistance while trying to maintain their familial units. In this virtual lecture, Michael Guy, 2024–2025 Lord Baltimore Fellow, looks at the delicate push and pull that was commonplace in many antebellum plantations, with a particular eye to Maryland as a border state.

Image: Hampton House, drawing by Don Swann, ca. 1940. Maryland Center for History and Culture, H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Print Collection.