This day in History April 28 1864 Maryland’s Chain Exchange
This Day in History: April 28, 1864
Maryland’s Chain Exchange: The False Freedom That Crushed Liberty
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The Calm Before the Crash
On April 28, 1864, Maryland announced a new constitution — one that abolished slavery within its borders.
It was hailed as a victory for freedom, a proud step toward the “new birth of liberty” Lincoln had promised.
But under the surface, something darker stirred.
The freedom Maryland gained that day was not birthed by the will of a free people.
It was birthed by the bayonet.
Forced, not chosen.
Occupied, not liberated.
Maryland’s 1864 constitution passed by a razor’s edge — mere hundreds of votes.
And behind those votes stood not farmers and townsmen, but the long arm of the Union Army.
For the first time in American history, mass absentee voting became a weapon.
Soldiers stationed outside Maryland were allowed to vote — ballots filled out under the watchful eye of Union officers, gathered by military hands, counted under federal supervision.
Verification was a fantasy.
Ballots were gathered and guarded by men loyal to Lincoln — often soldiers themselves.
Remove the soldier votes, and the constitution would have failed.
The people of Maryland would have spoken.
But Maryland’s voice was gagged, and her hands were bound.
And thus, with sleight of hand and steel of sword, a federal edict masqueraded as a people’s choice.
The boulder shifted on the mountain.
No one noticed — yet.
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The First Push: Lincoln’s Corporate War for Union and Industry
When civil war broke out, Lincoln pledged to preserve the Union without trampling the Constitution.
But in the border states — in places like Maryland, where loyalty wavered — Lincoln moved with brutal pragmatism.
He suspended habeas corpus —
that ancient right, rooted in Magna Carta, which shielded the free man from unlawful imprisonment.¹
Without it, any man could be seized, silenced, imprisoned without charge or trial.
And many were.
Maryland’s legislature was raided; suspected Confederates dragged bodily from their seats.³
Baltimore groaned under martial law.
Newspapers critical of the administration were smashed by federal boots.
By 1864, Maryland was not a state.
It was a captive — a trophy displayed for the world to admire.
The boulder rumbled forward.
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The False Freedom: Economic Self-Interest Masquerading as Morality
Today, Americans are taught a clean story —
that the North fought to free the slave purely out of moral conviction.
Reality tells a colder tale.
Northern workers did not fear the injustice of slavery.
They feared its competition.
Slave labor depressed white wages.
Slave expansion threatened free labor markets in the West.
Freedom for the black man?
Only if he could be made invisible afterward.
Northern states like Illinois and Oregon banned freed blacks from settling.⁵
Lincoln himself — until the twilight of his life — championed colonization, calling for freed slaves to be shipped to Africa or Central America.⁶
Abolition was not the death of racism.
It was the repositioning of economic power.
The boulder gained momentum.
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The Controlled Workers: Racist Unions and Labor Tyranny
When the guns fell silent, black Americans found themselves in a new bondage.
Northern labor unions sprang up — and slammed the door in the face of the freedman.⁷
In New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, unions forbade black membership, demanded whites-only contracts, and froze out competition.
The first national labor union, the NLU, formed in 1866, declared openly:
white labor must be protected from black labor.⁸
It was not liberty that triumphed.
It was monopoly.
Freedom had been traded, not for liberty —
but for corporate servitude.
The boulder howled.
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The Erasure of Memory: Canceling Maryland, My Maryland
For a century and a half, Maryland’s official song stood as a quiet rebel against the empire.
“The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!”
“Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore…”⁹
It remembered.
It remembered that Maryland had not surrendered willingly.
It remembered the bayonets, the gags, the stolen votes.
But memory is dangerous to an empire.
In 2021, in the feverish wake of BLM riots and cultural purges, Maryland’s legislature struck the song from the books.¹⁰
Not because it was “Confederate.”
But because it refused to forget.
The boulder crashed through the last thin barriers of truth.
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The Modern Avalanche: Corporate Fascism and the Death of Personal Liberty
Today, the boulder has grown into an unstoppable avalanche.
Corporations dictate thought.
Federal agencies hunt dissenters.
Speech, property, family — all are prey.
Liberty is mocked as extremism.
Racism is wielded not to heal, but to divide.
A new plantation has risen — paved in silicon and debt, fenced in by invisible chains.
Freedom was a word rebranded.
It became a tool of conquest.
The cries for liberty grow weaker.
The cries for security grow louder.
And at the bottom of the valley, a broken people will cry out —
not for liberty —
but for chains disguised as peace.
And the Antichrist will be there to answer.
The white horse rides with the false promise of peace.¹¹
The red horse follows, to tear it away.¹²
The mountain shatters.
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Spiritual Climax: Only Christ Can Stop the Crash
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” (2 Timothy 3:13)
False liberty leads to collapse.
False hope leads to tyranny.
False saviors lead to chains.
There is only One who can make men truly free:
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
Not by ballots.
Not by bayonets.
Not by banks.
Only by the blood of Christ.
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The boulder still rolls.
It devours every foundation not built upon the Rock.
It crushes every false hope.
It feeds on every compromise.
And soon —
at the bottom of the valley —
a broken world will cry out not for liberty,
but for chains disguised as peace.
And the Antichrist will be there to answer.
The rider on the white horse — carrying a bow without arrows¹¹ — will ride forth, conquering through deception.
The world will hail him as a savior.
But behind him follows the red horse, to tear away the illusion of peace and unleash bloodshed.¹²
The time of Jacob’s trouble will fall like a snare upon all nations. (Jeremiah 30:7; Luke 21:35)
The wrath of God will be poured out — not upon the Church, which will be caught away before the storm (1 Thessalonians 1:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:9) —
but upon the earth that rejected the true Christ and chose a counterfeit.
Then — at the appointed hour — Christ will return.
Not with open arms —
but with a sharp sword. (Revelation 19:15)
Not to offer salvation —
but to execute judgment.
Not alone —
but with His saints, arrayed in white, following Him upon white horses. (Revelation 19:14)
“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron…” (Revelation 19:15)
The false king will fall.
The boulder will be crushed beneath the mountain of the Lord.
“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…” (Daniel 2:44)
Only one Kingdom will stand.
Only one King will reign.
And every knee shall bow —
whether in joy or in terror —
before the True Rock, Jesus Christ.
Run to Him now —
while there is still time to flee the coming avalanche.
The mountain is falling.
The King is coming.
And the Rock of Ages shall not be moved.
He is the refuge for the weary,
The shield for the hunted,
The shelter from the coming storm.
“The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;
my God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”
(Psalm 18:2)
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Footnotes
1. Magna Carta, 1215, Clause 39: Establishes habeas corpus — the right not to be imprisoned unlawfully.
2. Neely, Mark E., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 3–12.
3. Ibid., p. 34–35; Mass arrests of Maryland legislators in 1861.
4. Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 10–12.
5. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States (University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 12–15.
6. Abraham Lincoln, Address to Colonization Society (1862); Lincoln advocated gradual emancipation paired with voluntary colonization.
7. Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (International Publishers, 1947), Vol. 1, p. 23–25.
8. Ibid., p. 30–31.
9. James Ryder Randall, Maryland, My Maryland (1861); public domain text.
10. Maryland General Assembly, Senate Bill 8, 2021 Session (Repeal of “Maryland, My Maryland” as state song).
11. Revelation 6:2 — “And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.”
12. Revelation 6:4 — “And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”