By 1831, over 10,000 enslaved people and over 17,000 free people of color lived in Baltimore. Nat Turner’s rebellion in August that year made the churches even more important to the Maritime Underground Railroad. An integral part of its function in Baltimore was the African Methodist Bethel Society, founded in 1815. It incorporated the Bethel AME Church in 1816 for the Black community. The enslaved could attend, but could not become members under Maryland law.

In the Antebellum South (1815–1861), the planter class ensured a rigid, hierarchical society. Small farmers, or Yeomen, white workers, and poor whites made up seventy-five percent of the white population, but the wealthy planters controlled everything else. This produced significant economic and social tensions between the two classes.