[2] In 1845, physician and planter Richard Sprigg Steuart published an open letter to Carey in Baltimore, addressing the slavery question.
[3] Carey and Steuart were both members of the Maryland State Colonization Society, believing that free American blacks should be resettled in an African colony.
Carey wrote a number of letters, books and essays on the subject, including Slavery in Maryland - Briefly Considered, published in Baltimore in 1845.
[4] Carey's conflicted position on slavery reflected the wider division of attitudes in Maryland prior to the Civil War.
On one hand, Carey could not imagine a world in which the two races coexisted peacefully in liberty and, like many other Southerners, he deeply resented the pressure from Northern abolitionists.