the shift away from tobacco culture, and slaves were being sold to the Deep South, slavery was still too deeply embedded into Maryland society for the wealthiest whites to give it up voluntarily on a wide scale. Wealthy planters exercised considerable economic and political power in the state. Slavery did not end until after the Civil War. Civil War Approach of war Like other border states such as Kentucky and Missouri, Maryland had a population divided over politics as war approached, with supporters of both North and South. The western and northern parts of the state, especially those Marylanders of German origin, held fewer slaves and tended to favor remaining in the Union, while the Tidewater Chesapeake Bay area – the three counties referred to as Southern Maryland which lay south of Washington D.C.: Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's – with its slave economy, tended to support the Confederacy if not outright secession. After John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), some citizens in slaveholding areas began forming local militias. Of the 1860 population of 687,000, about 60,000 men joined the Union and about 25,000 fought for the Confederacy. The political sentiments of each group generally reflected their economic interests. The first bloodshed of the Civil War occurred on April 19, 1861 in Baltimore involving Massachusetts troops who were fired on by civilians while marching between railroad stations. After that, Baltimore Mayor George William Brown, Marshal George P. Kane, and former Governor Enoch Louis Lowe requested that Maryland Governor Thomas H. Hicks, a slaveholder from the Eastern Shore, burn the railroad bridges and cut the telegraph lines leading to Baltimore to prevent further troops from entering the state. Hicks reportedly approved this proposal. These actions were addressed in the famous federal court case of Ex parte Merryman. Maryland remained part of the Union during the United States Civil War, thanks to President Abraham Lincoln's swift action to suppress dissent in the state. The belated assistance of Governor Hicks also played an important role; although initially indecisive, he co-operated with federal officials to stop further violence and prevent a move to secession. Maryland left out of Emancipation Proclamation Emancipation remained by no means a foregone conclusion at the start of the war, though events soon began to move against slaveholding interests in Maryland. On December 16, 1861 a bill was presented to Congress to emancipate enslaved people