Maryland ? Maryland lawmakers approved an apology Monday for the state’s role in the slave trade, expressing “profound regret” that it once “trafficked in human flesh.”

Maryland follows Virginia in issuing a formal apology.

The vote in the House of Delegates makes the apology official because a resolution doesn’t require the governor’s signature. The state Senate already approved it.

In the 1700s, slave ships docked blocks away from the Maryland State House, and thousands of enslaved men and women arrived in the town. Slavery officially ended in Maryland with the adoption of a new state constitution in 1864.