The dissertation examines the gradual process by which Maryland emerged from slavery, through a long apprenticeship in a dual system, to free labor. This process extended over decades, getting its start with a spurt of manumissions after the Revolution. As a result of it, Maryland occupied a position unique among North American slave societies: its free black people, by the eve of the Civil War, were nearly as numerous as the slaves.

The study begins by exploring some of the social implications of the coexistence of these two contradictory forms of society. It considers the role of Baltimore in the light of the debate over slavery in cities, concluding that Baltimore owed its vitality chiefly to its integration into free society.

The problem of the supply and discipline of labor is examined, as the most critical and characteristic form in which the contradiction underlying the dual system became socially manifest. The author shows how and why efforts to solve this problem within the context of slavery failed.

Finally, detailed attention is given to economic and social factors affecting the adjustment of freedmen in particular, and Maryland society in general, to post-Civil War conditions. The bleak situation of black and white working people during the final decades of the 19th century is documented, and placed in the context of the changes which, under the influence of the world-wide consolidation of industrial capitalism, were coming about in Maryland agriculture and industry. The author argues that it is these factors, and not racism and the subjective blunders of the Freedmen's Bureau, Congress, the military, and others involved in the process of Reconstruction, which provide the proper basis for an understanding of the results of emancipation.

Sources used include the manuscript and published census; diaries, journals, letters, and other manuscript collections; travellers' accounts; court and penitentiary records; newspapers; and official federal, state, and local documents of all kinds.