In Queen Anne's County and across Maryland's Eastern Shore, the Civil War reached quiet water-laced communities whose residents faced difficult choices. Before the war, enslaved African Americans actively sought freedom through the Underground Railroad, aided by courageous conductors such as Eastern Shore native Harriet Tubman and other sympathetic residents. During the conflict, hundreds of formerly enslaved and free Black men from the Eastern Shore enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops after those units were authorized in January 1863 with President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, Black veterans returned to establish towns and emancipation celebrations that continued to shape Eastern Shore culture. At the same time, some white residents remained loyal to the Union while others supported the Confederacy, leading Union authorities to arrest newspaper publishers suspected of disloyalty. Watermen used the region's twisting rivers and waterside towns to run the Federal blockade and supply Confederate forces. Although major combat did not devastate the area, families with loyalties on both sides endured the loss of soldier relatives on distant battlefields and suffered other wartime hardships.