While the details about how African American people lived during the Civil War in the Union states and the Confederate states are well known, the life experience of a black person in a border state often goes unnoticed. The Border States, also known as the middle ground, consisted of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Missouri, and Kentucky. These five states acted as the border between the part of the country where slaves were free in the North (Union) and the slavery dependent territory of the south (Confederation). Free blacks in the North were not treated like slaves due to the North’s non-recognition of slavery, but slavery was still extremely relevant in the South, where it is widely practiced and is essentially a way of life. The Border States differed from the Northern and Southern states because they did not have a definitive or unified opinion regarding the possession of slavery. In fact, most Border States had areas within them that had slaves and regions that did not, set only as little as a few mere miles away from each other. This placed the Border States apart from the Union and Confederate states. Their lack of parameters regarding slavery made them unique. With a multitude of differences between the northern and southern states, the question arises, how did life differ for black people in the middle ground states than the life of a freed slave in the north or a slave in the south? The border states comprised the Civil War’s middle ground and split America into two separate sides. Although these states maintained a neutral status throughout the war, Amy Taylor describes the many conflicts that were ever-present in the Border States: Yet, any hope that this pursuit of the middle ground would bring peace to border state residents was quickly dashed in wartime. Angry confrontations, including some of the most violent guerrilla warfare in American history, became an everyday fact of life in this region, as the two sides lived side-by-side and confronted one another on a daily basis. Taylor discusses the fact that although these states were neutral and had not committed to either the Confederacy or the Union, there were still countless confrontations that occurred because of the contradictory yet passionate positions taken by the citizens living in these states. Some people were starving for peace during the turmoil of war, while others were adversaries of peace and strongly believed in slavery. Depending on the location within these states, black people could be considered free and their neighbor down the road could be considered a slave. That being said, it was clear that peace was hard to come by in the Border States. Needless to say, because of the close proximity and the severity of these conflicting ideals, many disputes and quarrels took place in the Border States. Reporting on a specifically Maryland, Barbara Fields documents the lives of a person in Maryland in Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century. Maryland held a middle position during the war both politically and socially. Fields notes in her novel, “Like the United States as a whole, Maryland was a society divided against itself. There were, in effect, two Marylands by 1850: one founded upon slavery and the other upon free labor." Fields’ ideas correctly represent the conflicting interests that dominated the state of Maryland throughout the Civil War. Interestingly enough, Maryland’s black population was almost evenly divided between slaves and free people. Northern Maryland was a free labor society with very few slave owners while Southern Maryland was an agrarian region heavily populated with slave owners. This divide in beliefs made life tough for many black Americans, not only in the state of Maryland, but also in other border states under similar circumstances. Dangerously close boundaries between the county lines in Maryland created an intense situation for free black people, who did not dare to cross the lines to a slave populated area. This also resulted in damaged family ties between all people in Maryland, as people with family in conflicting areas were never at ease. It was so extreme where in some cases free black people would have family as slaves in another part of Maryland. These differences certainly tested the bonds of friends, family, and love among slaves and free black individuals. Citizens in Maryland worked hard towards abolition and hoped to construct a society of labor with slavery at the same time, which presented a dilemma that plagued the Border States throughout the Ci