I was born, raised, and educated in the Maryland suburbs just outside of Washington, DC. Maryland is one of those places that you're a bit reluctant to admit is your home, not because there's anything truly shameful about the state, but because you always get blank stares and perhaps a pathetically unemphatic "Oh" when someone asks about your origins. Early on, I learned to tell out-of-towners the half-truth that I'm from DC (silently adding "metro area" in my head). The District, if not hip, is at least happening. People know where it is, and even have a hazy idea of what it looks like. In contrast, Maryland is bland in a stranger's eyes. Maybe, just maybe, they harbor the vague preconception that Baltimore is the stagnant, violence-riddled asshole of the United States, a perception perpetually fueled by overly dramatic primetime programming. But most people barely remember that Maryland exists.
Maryland's intrinsic blandness (or at least, the perception thereof) extends even to the state song, with its wholly unoriginal title of "Maryland, My Maryland," and the unfortunate fact that it happens to be set to the tune of "O Tannenbaum." When I was an undergraduate at College Park, the clock tower used to chime out our state song multiple times each day. For the first few weeks of each fall semester, I would hear out-of-state freshmen remark, "That's funny - why are they playing 'O Christmas Tree' in September?" I would then be obliged to point out that it was actually "Maryland, My Maryland" and that the lyrics are pretty cool if you pay attention. I would, of course, feel like a raging hypocrite throughout this explanation, because every time I heard the state song as rendered by pre-recorded electronic bells, my brain would always obliterate the few lyrics I remembered to "Maryland, My Maryland" and replace them with a summer camp song I learned as a child (Oh Tom the Toad, Oh Tom the Toad / Why are you lying on the road? / You did not see that truck ahead, / And now you're marked with tire tread...).
I recently moved to Oregon, which manages to be quiet while being anything but bland. I can even see a slumbering volcano from my apartment (alright, so you have to walk down the street a ways to the river, and it's only visible on clear days, but it's still a damn volcano). Eager to learn more about my new home, I turned to everyone's trusty friend Google and started digging. Eventually, by happenchance, I came across several sites referencing the state song "Oregon, My Oregon." It at least has the advantage of not ripping off a christmas carol, and amusingly, someone keeps vandalizing the Wikipedia entry to replace every occurrence of the phrase "Oregon, My Oregon" with "My Mexico of Washington" and "My Canada of California." However, when viewed in detail, the lyrics are, well, pussified in comparison. Roses, sunshine, health, and vigor are all well and good, but where is the patriotic gore? The warlike thrust? Then I actually took a good look at the lyrics to "Maryland, My Maryland" for the first time in many, many years, and I was appalled.
"Maryland, My Maryland" began life as a nine-stanza poem penned by James Ryder Randall in 1861. Randall was a native Marylander who was educated at Georgetown University (although he never graduated) and eventually landed a position as a professor of English at a small college in Louisiana. By the end of January 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union, and on April 12, 1861, the first shot of the American Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The attack on Fort Sumter was closely followed by the secession of four more states, including Virginia. Meanwhile, Maryland was being torn asunder by internal strife. The state government, under heavy pressure from the powers-that-be in the nearby Union capital, tacitly agreed that Maryland would officially remain a neutral border state (the governor did so by simply failing to convene a special session of the state legislature to deal with the question of the war). However, the populace of Maryland was anything but neutral, passionately divided in their support for one side or the other.
Immediately after Fort Sumter, President Lincoln put out a general call for 75,000 volunteer militiamen. On April 19, 1861, a train carrying the 6th Massachusetts Regiment stopped in Baltimore on the way to Washington, DC. The rail line to DC was not actually contiguous, so the soldiers had to be transported along Pratt Street in horse-drawn railroad cars from one terminal to another. A violent group of pro-secessionists accosted the transports and forced the soldiers to escape on foot. In the ensuing confusion, several of the Union troops fired at random into the crowd before hastily withdrawing to the safety of the waiting train. Meanwhile, Baltimoreans, who have historically loved a good, bloody riot (they don't call it "Mobtown" for nothing), did what they do best: wreaking havoc.
At the end of the day, which would later be known as the Pratt Street Riot or the Pratt Street Massacre, depending on who you ask, four soldiers and twelve civilians had died, and more than 100 people had been wounded. These deaths are generally considered the first official casualties of the Civil War (Fort Sumter had been bloodless, with the exception of three Union soldiers who died when their own cannon exploded while firing an exit salute after they had already surrendered). That's right, the first Union soldiers to die in battle during the Civil War were killed by the civilian residents of Charm City. One of the civilians wounded in the fray happened to be a good friend of James Ryder Randall. The news of his friend's condition inspired Randall to sit down and write the virulently pro-Confederate poem "Maryland, My Maryland," which simply drips with over-the-top martial grandeur and has all the subtlety of a hammer to the forebrain.
The poem was first published in the New Orleans Sunday Delta on April 26, 1861. It was quickly set to the tune of "O Tannenbaum" by some anonymous Baltimore native, and thereafter skyrocketed in popularity within not just Maryland, but the entire Confederacy. The Confederates' enthusiasm for the song was no doubt dampened by the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Robert E. Lee confidently marched into Maryland, fully expecting to be greeted (and joined) by the supposed thousands of Confederate sympathizers, only to find that all of Maryland's residents apparently decided to stay home that week. The song was not officially adopted as Maryland's state song until 1939. Although the official version includes all nine of the original stanzas, when it is performed at state functions, only the third verse (which cannot be directly tied to the Civil War at all) is sung. In recent years, there has been repeated discussion in the state legislature about replacing the state song, which is now almost universally viewed as something of a musty embarrassment.
Most of the modern-day criticism of the song is well-placed - it's a rusty relic that espouses bloody violence and suggests that Maryland join what we all now know was the losing side of a misguided war. The song is intentionally inflammatory and hardly indicative of the views of the majority of Marylanders today. "Maryland, My Maryland" has also been criticized as racist or condoning slavery, but the lyrics never specifically mention these issues. With the benefit of hindsight, some people argue that anyone who supported the Confederacy in any way was, by definition, an enraged bigot, and there were certainly enough of those to go around. However, this well-intentioned but trite analysis neglects the prevailing viewpoint of the time in Maryland and elsewhere, where many people who were not and would never be slave-holders still opposed the Union as a matter of principle (as the undoubtedly apocryphal story goes, when an impoverished Confederate private was asked by his Union captors why he was fighting, since he obviously owned no slaves, he replied, "I'm fighting because you're down here"). I don't know - it's been almost 150 years, and the whole thing is still an intractable mess. I leave it to you to make up your own mind regarding the racial implications of "Maryland, My Maryland."
An exhaustive explication of all nine stanzas of "Maryland, My Maryland" would undoubtedly try the gentle reader's patience. Here is the full text of the original poem, with an explanation of the more salient points. When it was set to music, the lyrics changed very little, except for the addition of a few exclamations of "My Maryland!" in order to make it scan correctly.
I
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!
"The despot" actually refers to Abraham Lincoln, who was desperate to prevent Maryland from joining the Confederacy (by force, if necessary), as such a turn of events would surround the Union capital of Washington, DC with hostile territory. The day after "Maryland, My Maryland" was first published, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland. Subsequently, as Virginia's secession from the Union became imminent, Lincoln sent the Union Army to occupy Annapolis and Baltimore, and declared martial law. Over the course of the next few months, the Union arrested several thousand Marylanders suspected of Southern sympathies, including 30 members of the state legislature, a US Congressman representing Maryland, the mayor and police commissioner of Baltimore, and most of the Baltimore city council. These political detainees were imprisoned in Fort McHenry and Point Lookout without trial, in many cases, for several years.
Nowadays, many Americans choose to gloss over these events, declaring that Lincoln's extraordinary actions were appropriate to the extraordinary situation, and implying that would-be rebels got what they deserved (don't rise up if you're not prepared to get smacked down). At the time, however, most Marylanders viewed it as a gross miscarriage of justice and a violation of the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. This may or may not have some bearing on current events. It should be noted that Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and declared martial law in the Confederacy, but did not catch nearly as much flak for his actions.
II
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! To thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!
III
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust, -
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!
The preceding verse is the only one that is still sung at public functions, with good reason. For one thing, it contains no references to the despotic Abraham Lincoln, who has become, in retrospect, America's most beloved president. It also alludes to several prominent figures in Maryland's history. "Carroll's sacred trust" is a reference to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a wealthy Maryland landowner who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. After the American Revolution, Carroll was briefly both a member of the US Senate and a member of the Maryland state legislature. In 1792, when Maryland passed a law barring public officials from simultaneously serving in positions in the federal and state governments, Carroll immediately resigned his position as US Senator in order to continue as a member of the state senate. Even if Marylanders can't remember exactly who Charles Carroll was, they still recognize the name because of Carroll County, Maryland.
"Howard's warlike thrust" is a reference to John Eager Howard, who started his career in the American military before it even officially existed. During the American Revolution, he rose to rank of colonel in the Continental Army, and led his troops in several major battles of the war. After the war ended, he started a new career as a politician, serving as a member of the Continental Congress, then as Governor of Maryland, then as a state senator, and finally as a US Senator. He was offered the position of Secretary of War in the Washington administration, but declined. During the War of 1812, Howard commanded the defense of Baltimore. He eventually ran for Vice President on the Federalist party ticket in 1816, but was soundly defeated. Howard County, Maryland is named after him.
IV
Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!
This stanza contains a host of names, none of whom would be familiar to your typical Maryland resident today. Samuel Ringgold was a native Marylander who was an artillery officer with the US Army in the early to mid 19th century. He invented a military saddle and several artillery techniques that remained in use for decades. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Palo Alto in the Mexican-American War in 1846. As the first American to die in that war, Ringgold was memorialized in the (at the time) popular song "The Death of Ringgold," which became far more well-known during the time period than Ringgold himself ever was while alive. William Watson was virtually unknown outside of Baltimore. He commanded the Battalion of Baltimore and District of Columbia Volunteers during the Mexican-American War before getting himself killed at the Battle of Monterrey.
The references to "fearless Lowe" and "dashing May" are even more obscure, to the point where modern-day historians are not exactly sure whom Randall intended to laud here. It is possible that "fearless Lowe" is a reference to Enoch Louis Lowe, who served as Governor of Maryland from 1851 to 1854, and after the Pratt Street Riots, successfully encouraged then Governor Thomas H. Hicks to burn the railroad bridges and cut the telegraph lines leading to Washington, DC through Baltimore. "Dashing May" was probably Henry May, who served as congressman for Maryland's 4th Congressional District from 1861 to 1863. His service during this term was only slightly hampered by his arrest and subsequent imprisonment in Fort McHenry and then Fort Lafayette in late 1861.
V
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own anointed throng,
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chaunt thy dauntless slogan song,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Women may sing, and androgynous monks may chant, but real men friggin' chaunt. No one knows exactly which "slogan song" Randall intended, unless this line is an example of self-referential humor. When "Maryland, My Maryland" was set to music, many versions changed "And chaunt thy dauntless slogan song" to "And give a new Key to thy song." Marylander Francis Scott Key penned the poem that would become the United States' national anthem after witnessing the shelling of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. His grandson, Francis Key Howard (also the grandson of John Eager Howard), was editor of the Baltimore Exchange, and was arrested and imprisoned without trial in Fort McHenry for more than a year after publishing an editorial criticizing Lincoln for the recent arrests of state officials. This ironic turn of events was (and still is) seized upon by Southern sympathizers with much glee.
VI
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain -
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!
For reasons unknown, the poet decided to insert an extra line here, totally disrupting the rhythm established in the other eight stanzas (as well as making it impossible to sing to "O Tannenbaum" without omitting either "That baffles minions back amain" or "Arise in majesty again"). The "tyrant's chain" is yet another reference to Lincoln and the Union. The mention of Virginia calling in vain is somewhat interesting, since at the time this poem was written, Virginia had not yet officially seceded from the Union - a preliminary vote on secession in February 1861 actually failed, and although Virginia's Ordinance of Secession was passed during a secret meeting of the secession convention on April 17, 1861, it was not publicly ratified until May 23rd, a month after the poem was written. In retrospect, given the events of Antietam a year and a half later, this line is more than a little ironic as well.
"Sic semper" is a reference to Virginia's state motto and a popular rallying cry of the American Revolution: "Sic semper tyrannis," Latin for "Thus always to tyrants." The phrase was supposedly uttered by Marcus Brutus at the assassination of Julius Caesar, although it has long been overshadowed in popular culture by Caesar's alleged dying words. During the Civil War, the phrase became an extremely popular motto for the South, as most Confederates likened the conflict following their secession to the war with England that followed the Declaration of Independence. In 1865, when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, he was heard to shout "Sic semper tyrannis!" after pulling the trigger.
VII
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek -
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!
The "shriek" may refer to the rebel yell, a peculiar affectation adopted by Confederate soldiers during battle, which at least for a time, was quite effective at scaring the bejeezus out of the Union forces. Although the Mason-Dixon Line is often cited as the dividing line between the North and South, for all practical purposes during the Civil War, that border was really the Potomac River. The Chesapeake Bay is often associated specifically with Maryland, but the bay actually belongs to both Maryland and Virginia, making it particularly appropriate in this context.
VIII
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!
You guessed it, the "Vandal" is, once again, Honest Abe. The poet is nothing if not consistent in theme. In this case, he is alluding to the Vandals of Europe, who were one of those groups of pesky barbarians that invaded the Roman Empire. The Romans had an on-again, off-again policy of appeasement regarding the Vandals, as they often found it convenient to use the Vandals to keep their other enemies in check. This policy, of course, did not deter the Vandals from sacking the city of Rome in 455. The amount of seemingly wanton destruction that occurred during Vandal raids leads to the modern meaning of the word and is undoubtedly why Randall chose to use it here.
Maryland was originally established by the Calvert family in 1632 as a haven for Roman Catholics to escape religious persecution in England. Although Catholics never formed a true majority in Maryland, they are the largest denomination in the state to this day. Speaking as a former member of the Church, I can tell you that if your goal is to incite the violent passion of a group of Catholics, evoking images of religious martyrdom with a healthy helping of guilt is a remarkably effective tactic.
IX
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb -
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!
The last stanza is also the most controversial, by far. Of real interest, of course, is the line "Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!" That's some pretty strong rhetoric, even in the context of the rest of the poem. Ironically, due to the events of the Civil War, modern-day Maryland is not accepted as part of the South, despite the fact that many Marylanders comfortably use the construction "y'all" on a daily basis. If you tell anyone from the Deep South that you're a Southerner because you're from Maryland, you will undoubtedly be greeted with a look of patronizing pity, because they know that you're really just a damn Yankee who's too stupid to realize it.
In the end, despite Randall's best efforts to fan the flames of Confederate sympathy in Maryland, the widespread perception that Maryland was overwhelmingly pro-Confederate just did not pan out as he had hoped. By the conclusion of the war, 25,000 Marylanders had fought on the side of the Confederacy. More than 60,000 opted to take up arms for the Union.
Sources:
- Brave, Ralph. "First Blood: Baltimore, the Civil War, and the Lasting Legacy of the Pratt Street Riots." Citypaper Online. http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3506. April 18, 2001. Accessed: May 28, 2007.
- Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House, 1958.
- Hagerty, J.E. "Charles Carroll of Carrollton." The Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03379c.htm. Accessed: May 28, 2007.
- Harper, Douglas. "Maryland, My Maryland." The American Civil War. http://www.etymonline.com/cw/maryland.htm. 2002. Accessed: May 27, 2007.
- "James Ryder Randall (1839-1908)." The Morrison Foundation for Musical Research. http://www.morrisonfoundation.org/james_ryder_randall.htm. January 15, 2004. Accessed: May 27, 2007.
- "John Eager Howard." Portraits from the Southern Theater. http://www.cr.nps.gov.museum/exhibits/revwar/image_gal/indeimg/howard.html. October 17, 2001. Accessed: May 28. 2007.
- "Maryland State Song - 'Maryland, My Maryland'." Maryland State Archives. http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/song.html. June 17, 2004. Accessed: May 27, 2007.
- "Samuel Ringgold." Portrait of a Nation. http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/brush/ring.thm. 2002. Accessed: May 28, 2007.
- United States War Dept., et al. "Case of Henry May, Member of Congress." The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Ser 2, Vol 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. pp 790-801.
- United States War Dept., et al. "Case of Howard and Glenn, of the Baltimore Exchange Newspaper." The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Ser 2, Vol 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. pp 778-786.
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