The Maryland constitution of 1864

In the United States 1860s, constitutions were battlegrounds. Maryland's 1864 charter was forged between Union loyalty, contested rights, and the urgent question of freedom. Law becomes history in action. In The Maryland Constitution of 1864, political scientist William Starr Myers offers a rigorous constitutional history study of a state remaking itself during the Maryland Civil War era. With clear-eyed state constitution analysis, he tracks the Maryland constitutional convention and the legal arguments that shaped its clauses, setting the document within American legal history and the wider pressures of civil war state politics. Myers writes with the discipline of a law school reference and the narrative bite of lived conflict, making the issues legible without sanding down their stakes. Central throughout is abolition in Maryland: how a border state wrote emancipation into its fundamental law and what that meant for government, citizenship, and the practice of US constitutional law. Out of print for decades and now republished by Alpha Editions, this edition has been restored for today's and future generations. More than a reprint -- a collector's item and a cultural treasure -- it belongs on the shelf of readers pursuing American history coursework, students tracing United States 1860s governance, and collectors of enduring works that connect scholarly interpretation to the primary source collection of constitutional change. Whether you come for statehouse drama or for careful argument, Myers shows why a single state charter matters to the history of the Union, and why collectors prize such period scholarship even now, too.