them enslaved) served in Patriot military units during the war. Thousands of slaves in the South left their plantations to join the British. Keeping their promise, the British transported about 3,000 freed slaves to Nova Scotia, where they granted them land. Others were taken to the Caribbean colonies, or to London. In general, the war left the institution of slavery largely unaffected, and the prosperous life of successful Maryland planters was revived. The writer Abbe Robin, who travelled through Maryland during the American Revolutionary War, described the lifestyle enjoyed by families of wealth and status in the Province: [Maryland houses] are large and spacious habitations, widely separated, composed of a number of buildings and surrounded by plantations extending farther than the eye can reach, cultivated ... by unhappy black men whom European avarice brings hither ... Their furniture is of the most costly wood, and rarest marbles, enriched by skilful and artistic work. Their elegant and light carriages are drawn by finely bred horses, and driven by richly apparelled slaves. Slave labor made possible the export-driven plantation economy. The English observer William Strickland wrote of agriculture in Virginia and Maryland in the 1790s: Nothing can be conceived more inert than a slave; his unwilling labour is discovered in every step he takes; he moves not if he can avoid it; if the eyes of the overseer be off him, he sleeps. The ox and horse, driven by the slave, appear to sleep also; all is listless inactivity; all motion is evidently compulsory. Voices for abolition Methodists and Quakers The American Revolution had been fought for the cause of liberty of individual men, and many Marylanders who opposed slavery believed that Africans were equally men and should be free. Methodists in particular, of whom Maryland had more than any other state in the Union, were opposed to slavery on Christian grounds. In 1780 the National Methodist Conference in Baltimore officially condemned slavery. In 1784 the church threatened Methodist preachers with suspension if they held people in slavery. This was a period of the Great Awakening, and Methodists preached the spiritual equality of men, as well as licensing slaves and free blacks as preachers and deacons. The Methodist movement in the United States as a whole was not of one voice on the subject of slavery. By the antebellum years in the South, most Methodist congregations supported the institution and preachers had