December 14, 2024 • 39 mins
On the first listen, Maryland's old state song sounds pretty innocuous. There's the usual lauding of the state, a refrain based on "O Tannenbaum" and so on. Yet the lyrics of this song refer to "Northern scum" and call for out and out war with various oppressors. So what gives? Join Ben and Noel as they dive into the strange origin story of "Maryland, My Maryland" in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, welcome to a classic Ridiculous History episode. Folks, we
love all kinds of I don't know they call us
silly for this, but we love stuff like state birds
and you know, state statements.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
State craft whatever.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Now I've actually only just recently kind of become less
terrified of birds, so I'm learning all about state birds
these days. But state songs are funny, right, Yeah, It's
not even something I knew that every state had.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Every state apparently has a song, and it may not
be the ones that you think of when you think
of that state. In this classic episode, we are exploring
something that surprised the heck out of.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Both of us.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The state of Maryland has a weird, weird banker for
their official.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Song, Oh Maryland, My Maryland, making references to things like
northern sky and calling out a war with their ops.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
There's some there's there's some firebars of this tune. We're
gonna jump into the story of Maryland state song right now.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Hello, Hello, Hello, and thank you for tuning in. We're
going to begin today's episode with a bit of song.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
A goodie, I.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Hear the Distant Thunder hum, then by Marylyn the online
bugle fife and drums man.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Marilyn. She is not dead, nor.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Deaf nor dumb.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Huzzas the Northern's Come, she burns you comshoe Come, Marilyn,
my ma, what you just heard? Friends and Neighbors is
an excerpt from one of the most famous songs in
(02:26):
Maryland's history. Hello, I'm Ben.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh, I'm Noah? And what was it that gave it away?
Was it the O'maryland O Maryland?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, and we only played a part of that song,
but trust us that that sick hook comes in to
play multiple times.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Well, it starts off, you know, innocently enough as a nice, rollicking,
if derivative tune.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
What's that tune? Ben, I can't quite put my finger
on it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I'm pretty sure we both know it's otanam vaguely holiday centric.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, okay, I was being coined. But right starts off
innocently enough lyrically. And then the part we play things
take a bit of a turn, don't they better?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They do? And we also hope this amuses our estranged
super producer, Casey Pegrim, whom we promise is still out
and about but will come in from the cold, very soon, Noel,
should we should we read that last verse for anyone
who didn't get it?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those big, booming, you know, swingle
singer type voices could have obscured some meaning there.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
So they're saying, I hear the distant thunder hum Maryland,
the old line bugle Fife and drum Maryland. So far,
so good. Fine, Yeah, she is not dead, nor deaf
nor dumb. Huzzah. She spurns the northern scum. Oh wait
what she breathes, she burns. She'll come, She'll come, Maryland,
(03:52):
my Maryland.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Oh man, they're really into Maryland. I'm sorry, the northern scum.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yes, yes, in eat my friend, the northern scum. You see,
the song that was for a long time the state
song of Maryland turned out to be belligerent to other
states in the fair Union.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Of the US. But Ben, why would they do that.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I'm so glad. I'm so glad that we asked this
question today, because it's one of those historical, I don't know,
historical footnotes that everyone would just accept as normal. Let's
face it, many people here in the US don't pay
that much attention to the song of a particular state.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, I think ours is Georgia on my mind, right,
And that's sort of rare to have something of a
modern song, like what you would consider a pop type
song as your state song. Typically there are more classic
folky type songs, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And as you said, they're also occasionally plagiarized in terms
of melody.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, you know, there's only so many melodies, there are.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Only so many notes to go around. And the lyrics
to this song, which you can find in full with
a little bit of Google foo or which we might
post on ridiculous historians when this episode comes out.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I'm more into google kwando myself.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, you're a Google kwando. So it's all about the
uh what is that the grapple?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, sweep sweep the leg I don't know about any
of this stuff, man, I'm just just spitball in here.
But there is a little passage in the tune that
really makes us think. And this is what kind of
got us to dig into a little bit more background here.
Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore
and be the battle queen of your Maryland, my Maryland.
(05:48):
Kind of this personification of Maryland as being some sort
of badass avenging warrior.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right, and what's this?
Speaker 5 (05:56):
What's this?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
What are these gore flecked streets of Baltimore? Difference here?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And right? Before we get to that, I just want
to establish what I was saying. We will go ahead,
I'll do it. We'll post these lyrics in full, because
you really should read along with them if you can
to see this. There's a lot of illusion and reference
in this. And you're absolutely right, Noal, there's something more
to the story here when we see this personification of
(06:25):
Maryland as a heroic protector of downtrodden people, and it
traces back to a real life event, isn't that correct?
One that occurred in eighteen sixty one?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
A real life event indeed, And it's something it really
drew attention to, something that I was unaware of. I
think Maryland and I think northern I think Maryland is
right next to New York. I think it's got the
same sensibilities and historical leanings.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
As it turns out, not the case.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
No, yeah, that's a mid Atlantic state. But during the
time of the Civil War and for a lot of
time during the formation of what would later become recognized
as the modern US. Sure, Maryland was considered a Southern
state very much so, both geographically and culturally. Yeah, ideologically
(07:18):
as well, right, yes, because Maryland, you see, had a
lot of tobacco and as a result, they were a
slave state for some time.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
So then let's get back to those gore speckled streets
of Baltimore, which is pretty dope to rhyme Gore and Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, let us travel there. The gore soaked streets in
question are themselves in Baltimore, specifically a street called Pratt
Street Pratt. On April nineteenth and eighteen sixty one, on
Pratt Street in Baltimore, there was a conflict that led
(07:58):
to a riot or what some would call a massacre,
between two ideologically opposed groups in the city.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's right, honest. Abe.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Lincoln, the president you might have heard of him, was
not the most popular guy. He actually had a nickname
that I only just recently discovered, the rail splitter. You
know about this, Yeah, I guess, I guess I can only.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Assume it means because he divided the country.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Oh yep, that yeah, So that's what happened, right, You had,
like the Union versus the Confederacy. Confederacy being the pro
slave states that wanted to secede from the Union, and
then you had the primarily northern Union states and the
Union army. Lincoln called for a rallying of troops to
protect the capital in Washington, d C. After the bombarding
(08:48):
of Fort Sumter in is it Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina,
I believe right, Yes, that's correct, Yeah, and which apparently
wasn't of particular military strategic value to the North, but
it became this kind of symbol of Union forces that
to the point where it was symbolically, I suppose, attacked
(09:11):
by Confederate forces, and that is when the Civil War
really kicked off.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, the first shots of the war. That occurs in
the first Battle of Fort Sumter on April twelfth, eighteen
sixty one. And so Lincoln, as we said, needs to
protect DC and he orders a ton of troops to
go to the capitol and prepare for war with the
Southern states who are seceding from the Union. A lot
(09:40):
of these troops were brought through a major transportation hub
at the time, Baltimore City. But there was a problem
because in Maryland there were tons and tons of people who,
even if they were, you know, generally anti war, they
were sympathetic with the Confederate side.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
To secession, to this idea they should be allowed to
do that if they so chose, and they really resented
this notion of Union troops passing through their city. They
saw it as intimidation in some form or even the
idea that they would be there to prevent them from
seceding if they wanted to, and to you know, try
(10:21):
to hold them at gunpoint in the Union, right.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, And that's that's a fact that we can't gloss
over because you can imagine how easily people could perceive
it that way. Even if it is not intended to
be a show of force, it comes across as one
and there's no way around it. This leads to simmering,
(10:46):
unsustainable tension because there were two sides. There were people
who were out and out Confederate sympathizers saying we should
join with what we see as the good cause, the
right to secede, and then there were other people who
were saying, we object to waging a war against our
(11:09):
states to the south or southern neighbors, whether or not
we agree with their aims right.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And whether or not this gentleman Baltimore Mayor, George W. Brown,
personally agreed with those aims isn't clear from.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
What I've read.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
But what he knew was that it wasn't going to
go particularly well if these Union soldiers marched through his city,
and so he actually wrote a letter of warning to
ab link him, and it went as such, the people
are exasperated to the highest degree by the passage of troops,
and the citizens are universally decided in the opinion that
(11:43):
no more should be ordered to come. The authorities did
their best to protect both strangers and citizens and to
prevent a collision. But in vain does my solemn duty
to inform you that it is not possible for more
soldiers to pass through Baltimore unless they fight their way
at every step. So there a been a trickle of
forces going through because, as we said, there was this
(12:03):
railroad hub. They had to switch lines to Camden Station,
which was a mile and a half west of the
PWNB depot, where they would get off and march through
the city to the other line and then make their
way directly to Washington, d C. So there had clearly
already been some tensions in the streets during previous passings
(12:24):
through of these forces, and the mayor was really trying
his best to keep these tensions at a simmer rather
than boiling over.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
To keep an increasingly fragile peace. Unfortunately, his efforts, as
well intentioned as they were, were in vain, and as
Union troops came through Baltimore on their way south in
April of eighteen sixty one, they were attacked by mobs
(12:55):
and Union troops as well as Baltimore residents civilians. Mind
you were killed in these riots.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, this gets super hairy, super quick. There's another story too,
involving travel on this line. Lincoln himself had to pass
through this area under cover of night because of the
Union sympathizers there and fear that there would be an
attempt on his life. So there was actually like a
political cartoon that was circulating of a Lincoln kind of
(13:26):
sheepishly peeking out of a box car as though he were,
you know, a thief in the night kind of. So, yeah,
Lincoln had only won i think something in the neighborhood
of three percent of the vote in Baltimore during the election,
so not a well liked guy. But similarly to the
Lincoln story, at first, no one knew that there were
(13:47):
troops on this train that was coming through. It looked
like any other freight train, right.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
The arrival of the soldiers was largely not registered by
the civilians. The people just wan round in Baltimore. But
rumors started spreading very quickly. And again, as you said,
there was that what three percent approval rating you mentioned,
not so good, not good at all, And the residents
(14:14):
and the local community leaders absolutely publicly disliked the new
administration of the Union. And when they found out that
these soldiers, specifically volunteers from the sixth Massachusetts, I believe
when they found out they were in the city, that
(14:35):
they were about to make the transfer to Camden. They
were doing this in daylight, and there was a relatively
short distance for them, right it was. Let's see, it's
like they go four blocks north, two blocks south, like
we have the blocks mapped out, and this short distance
(14:59):
is where everything hits the fan. Historically speaking, because the
Baltimoreans are already very sensitive, these rumors are becoming increasingly
believable to the average citizen. Railroad officials already anticipate that
there could be trouble, and if trouble occurs, it will
(15:21):
occur in this switch.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Did you know that during that switch, they would literally
unhook the train cars from the track and pull them
through town with horse horses. Yeah, that's wild. So that
was happening right with these soldiers, and it kind of
ended up like a you know, a Wild West wagon
train shootout because even before this crazy decoupling situation happens,
(15:46):
the soldiers were noticed.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, the soldiers were noticed, and the soldiers themselves from
Massachusetts were prepared because the commander, Colonel Edward Jones, had
received these warnings from railroad officials, so they were ready
for a situation to go sideways, to go pear shaped,
or appropriate for this episode, for things to go south.
(16:11):
So imagine the tension in the inside these cars. These
guys are sitting ducks. They know their commander knows that
if something is going to go wrong, it's going to
go wrong in this fateful passage between railroad stations. So
inside the cars, the soldiers are literally trying not to
(16:34):
look out of the windows because just like the beginning
maybe of a zombie film. You mentioned Wild West. To me,
it feels like a zombie thing where you see one
straggler approach right, and then more and then more and
then more because workers and residents of the area start
following the line of cars, which is I believe about
(16:57):
seven cars long at this time.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That is correct, And they were pulled by horses down
Pratt Street heading towards this canden station, and the crowd gets.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Bigger and bigger and more unruly. People are shouting jeff Davis,
as in Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And as this, as this simmer grows into a roiling boil,
all the sudden something snaps. People start throwing stones at
the very last coach, like big old paving stones. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah yeah. And some of them were armed
(17:36):
with pistols. I think someone got their their thumb blasted off,
you know, bleeding out in the streets there, people were
getting hit. So all of the cars except for two,
got to where they needed to go. But these these
mobsters I'm gonna call them, were doing stuff like they
were throwing obstacles in the road like anvils and sand
(17:58):
and just I mean, and they were ready, I guess right,
this is crazy. And so the cars that were remaining
that were blocked. The soldiers had to get off. And
again we have to emphasize that they had no sympathizers
in the crowd on their side.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Sure didn't seem like it.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, there was nobody standing by moving anchors away from
the road. Now, in fact, there was a there was
a businessman named Charles Pendergast who supplied people with crowbars
and pickaxes and said, you know, and convinced them, not
that it took much arm twisting, convinced them to pull
the rails up from the street because the paved streets
(18:40):
we should mention, had rails to make it easier for
the horses to pull.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
The cars exactly. So let's just clarify real quick.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
So this first onslaught on these troops came while they
were still in the cars right right. They were trying
their damn just not to make eye contact with the
zombie weirdos that were outside that you mentioned earlier. But
then of course they unleashed hell on these cars, started
literally firing upon them and throwing paving stones, like I said,
(19:08):
through it and a guy got his thumb blown off.
And that was when he asked Major Benjamin Watson, who
was in this car with him for permission to fire
on the crowd, and he granted this permission, and so
they were able to kind.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Of shoot up and away a volley of shots yea
through the windows ye meaning to disperse the crowd.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Shot yeah, not to hurt, not not directly to kill.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
And that was enough to get them a little bit
more freedom where they could they could kind of proceed.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
For a second, for a minute.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, because after after not much time had passed, this
began to turn into a full on gun battle, and
the rails were successfully pulled from the pavement, so there
wasn't a way for the horses to continue pulling the cars.
And this means that the stranded soldiers have to do
(20:04):
something incredibly dangerous a last resort, over two hundred of
them have to get out of the cars in gunfire
and walk their unlucky keisters to the train station.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And they formed a sort of a FAILANX like a formation,
and in the hopes that they could keep these rioters
at bay. I do want to read a pretty cool
quote from this article on History Net about this particular
event called Baltimore Riot of eighteen sixty one. In this car,
the major gives kind of a pep talk where he
(20:39):
says that you will likely be called horrible names. People
will throw things at you, people will do anything they
can to mess with you, and he uses the term
even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles at you,
just don't look at them, don't pay them any mind.
But if you're fired upon and any one of you
is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Not
(21:00):
fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select any man whom
you may see aiming at you, and be sure you
drop him.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So don't hurt anyone who is just standing with the
crowd protest, yes, but if someone is aiming to do
a possibly fatal damage, take him out.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So now this has come to pass. This was earlier.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
This was them kind of like preparing for what might happen,
gripping their rifles. They were all issued a certain number
of rounds in preparation for this hairy journey.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And now the s has.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Hit the f My friend, yes, very much so. And
there's a merchant named Richard Fisher. He is doing business
with a sea captain from Spain, a Spanish guy. They're
watching these riders on the second floor of Fisher's business,
and the sea captain says, you seem much agitated. This
is nothing. We frequently have these things in Spain, to
(21:53):
which Fisher replies, in Spain, this might mean nothing. In America,
it means civil war. And he was correct because this situation,
as we said, this situation is turned terrible, very very quickly.
The columns are moving forward, trying to get to the station.
(22:16):
They are surrounded on all sides by this howling mob
of people shouting racial epithets of a very specific time
and threatening their lives. We were going to kill you
before we reach the station.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
They call them white inwards. I'm just going to put
that out there. I'd never heard that one before. That's outragious.
This goes to show, like again my notion of the
ideology of Baltimore way off. Ben did not know about
any of this stuff. And so yeah, the soldiers fired back,
the rioters fired.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
On the soldiers.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Stray bullets are flying everywhere, paving stones are hitting people
in the face. It is an absolute ship show, my friend.
And they did finally make it to Camden Station, but
not without some casualties. And these casualties would be considered
some of the first of the Civil War. Are somewhere
in the neighborhood of eight to eleven of these assembled
(23:09):
lunatic riders. A bystander who was a child, I believe,
who caught like a ship cabin boy who caught a
bullet in the gut, a stray.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Bullet, which is an ugly way to die a reservoir dogs.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Have you seen that? With tim Roth? That's no good.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah, and twenty four soldiers and an unknown number of
civilians according to a report from NPS dot gov.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And on the other side, with the soldiers, four died,
There were four casualties. Thirty six soldiers were in some
way wounded, and we don't have the exact accounts of
the degree of damage they received. So it's about you know,
one guy obviously lost his thumb. That's a tremendous bummer.
But there may have been people who were just slightly wounded,
(24:00):
you know.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, there's no real record of like how many people
just had to hobble off tend to get you know, triaged, right,
And there may have been people who were rendered useless.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
In the war effort. But that is the riots in
a nutshell. Why are we talking about this riot? Why
are we talking about the six Massachusetts Infantry, this change
(24:32):
of trains. We're talking about it because one of the
people who died was the friend of a journalist and
poet named James Ryder Randall, also a resident of Baltimore, Maryland.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, and I think he originally came from Louisiana, so
he was already super entrenched in the idea of owning
slaves and that Southern ideology that you know, it was
such a huge part of this divide.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It was originally just a poem. It became a song
when it was set to music to the tune of
the German O Tannenbaum or Larger Heredius by Jenny Carey,
who is the sister of Hetty Carrey. And we had
a cool note from our Powell Christopher who says that
(25:22):
Hetty Carrey could be quote sort of kind of considered
the Confederate Betsy.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Ross Rick because she designed the Confederate flag. Yeah, and
also was married to a guy. His last name was Pegrum.
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, And you noticed Casey is never in the same
room when we mentioned that guy.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, well it's the first time.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, but technically that means he's never been in the
same room.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Well, technically he's never in the same room because we're
in the shipping container and he's out in the real world.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
We're in a partition of a room. Okay, that's fair,
but what makes a room. That's a story for a
different day. So the song, this Maryland state song.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Is the Maryland My Maryland.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, is the sivalent of a disc track today. And
we can see through the lyrics that they're clearly you know,
the mention of a titan clearly referring to Abraham Lincoln.
Northern scum is clearly referring to the Union, the invading horde,
right right, right, And Randall himself wrote this as a
(26:22):
protest poem, but did not originally plan for it to
become a state song. He was also known as the
poet Laureate of the Lost Cause.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Oh that's that sounds like a very backhanded compliment.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It feels very emo to me. It's like the album
name for an unreleased Bright Eyes track.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So this song remains a protest song. It's not the
official state song yet, and we'll get to when that happens.
But Maryland is not all the sudden cowed by the Union.
In just because this one riot occurred, right as a
(27:04):
matter of fact, they doubled down, I believe.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, it didn't beat them down right away, but the
effects were pretty definitive. The governor and the mayor and
that we talked about earlier called out for militia forces
to come in and keep the peace in the streets.
And then a little later in June of eighteen sixty one,
Maryland did in fact vote to secede from the Union.
(27:29):
But by that time, essentially because of their actions in
this riot, Maryland was occupied by Union forces.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, which is weird because, according to a couple of
different articles won by Michael Dresser over at the Baltimore Sun,
originally after the riot to QWEL tensions, Lincoln himself had
promised that they wouldn't do that, and then that's exactly
what they did.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, can can you fill in the gaps there for
me a little bit? I was kind of having a
hard I wrapping my head around what happened. It looks
like they had these militia forces, they were trying to
keep the peace. But there was a threat made against
a fort a Union.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Fort, Yeah, Fort McHenry, Sot, Fort McHenry in the aftermath
of the riot becomes incredibly important. Like in July, the
very next month, there's a grand jury that's already indicting
several people for their role in the riot. After the riot,
(28:32):
there are still skirmishes occurring between just the local police
and citizens and Mayor Brown and Governor Hicks, as you said,
asked Lincoln to please don't send any more troops through
our town. This is bad for everybody. It's a lose lose,
And he said a couple of different conflicting things. It
(28:53):
was at a peace delegation who speaking at a YMCA meeting.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
True story, and.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
He said that, you know, no matter what people say
about it, Union soldiers were neither birds to fly over
Maryland nor moles to burrow under it. So Hicks, the
governor authorized the mayor to send the militia, you know,
mentioned the militias to disable the railroad bridges into the city.
(29:21):
He said he didn't do it. But the stories differ.
And Fort McHenry in this crazy will they won't they
debate over putting Union soldiers in there. Fort McHenry becomes
a place for the Union forces to detain people. There's
a newspaper editor who gets detained. There is a man
(29:47):
who was supposed to be a Maryland Militias state soldier
was detained, and the legal system is getting involved, and
Fort McHenry becomes this sort of center for the Union
forces and quite controversial.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And the reason that the occupation of Maryland really kicked
off was that the for mckenry was under attack by
some secessionists and one of these militia units was sent
to help out with that. And then the commander in charge,
General Butler, of the same unit of troops that had
(30:21):
come into Baltimore in the first place.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
During the riots, exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
He kind of knew, becased on previous events that there
were secessionists in the ranks of these militiamen, and agreed
to accept their assistance, but didn't really want them to get.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Too close, right, They want them to get too close,
So he said, if they did get any closer than
the there was like a chapel, it was a mile
and a half from the fort, then they would unleash
gunfire upon them.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And again we find ourselves in an untenable, unsustainable situation,
a city largely divided and separate from in many ways
the aims of the federal government. However, as you can tell,
despite the precarious nature of the state, city and federal
(31:15):
government relationship, ultimately many of the very very extremely pro
Confederate Baltimoreans and civil leaders they leave town r they
go south and not on a rail because they had
already cried up all the rails, and they eventually about
sixty thousand Marylanders end up fighting for the Union and
(31:39):
only about twenty to twenty five thousand end up fighting
for the Confederacy.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeahues that's one thing that we didn't really talk about.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
A lot of places I read there were there was
kind of a split in Maryland because it was below
the Mason Dixon line, so it was they did have
this kind of sense of themselves as being more part
of the South. They depended on slavery for commerce, with
the tobacco and the being sort of a hub for trade.
But it was a little more divided than maybe initially
seemed to be the case.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, many places were pretty divided and not ideologically homogeneous.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Because here's the thing, who's going to take to the
streets and you know, put themselves life and limb and
harms away.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
It's not the casual racists.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, it's the hardcore ones, the real zealots, the
ones that would probably go on to cut bait, leave town,
go fight for their cause.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Right right. And here's one fact that many people may
miss when we hear the story, because of course the
riot is the huge, big tent item.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
But later that year, on September seventeenth, eighteen sixty one,
when the legislature reconvened to discuss the riot, the aftermath
of the riot, and what could be construed as unconstitutional
actions on the part of the US President. On that day,
twenty seven state lefs legislatures, that is, one third of
(33:02):
the General Assembly were arrested and jailed by the FEDS
because Lincoln, you see, had suspended habeas corpus.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And habeas corpus being like rules of engagement kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Habeas corpus is the way a person can legally report
unlawful detention or imprisonment. It's ordering someone to bring a
detained person to a court to determine whether it's legal
to keep them in jail. Got it, So, suspending habeas
corpus means we could just.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Throw you in jail. It's sot of like how we
do with you know, Guantanamo Bay and stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
History is much more of a circle than a straight line.
So because they arrested so many people at once, the
legislative session was canceled and Maryland could not continue debating
secession or anti war movements.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, not to mention that they were already under Union control.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Absolutely, But as we said before, a lot of those
Zealots decided to take off and go fight for the Confederacy.
One of them, surprise surprise, was the guy who wrote
that poem no Way, Yeah, James writer Randall. He took
off and went to Georgia. And there's a really great
quote in this article from NPR Maryland gets closer to
(34:25):
retiring state song that calls Northerners scum. That kind of
sums up Maryland's position in the war in general.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
From their state archives.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
It described it as walking a tight rope between the
Union and the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between
the two sides, Maryland depended equally on the North and
the South for its economy. Although Maryland had always leaned
towards the South, culturally, sympathies in the state were as
much pro Union as they were pro Confederate, and.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Now let's use our fast forward buttons just a bit.
The Soul, which exists for decades afterwards as a very
popular protest song in some circles, becomes the official state
song of Maryland in nineteen thirty nine, and remained so
until this year. Until just a few months ago, as
we record this, in March of twenty eighteen, state senators
(35:20):
approved a bill that would strip Maryland, My Maryland, of
its designation as the official state song and rebrands this
pro Confederate anthem as an historical tune.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Kind of a demotion, I guess, yeah, which makes sense
in the cultural moment that we're having with racist monuments.
Yeah yeah, they're getting covered up, getting pulled down by
the people.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
You know. In some Georgia we got a lot of
that going.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and some still remain today because, to
paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not over. It's not even
the past yet, you know. And interesting point there, Noel
in nineteen thirty nine, that was the same year Gone
with the Wind was released, So I wonder if culturally
(36:08):
there was an impetus to tap into that romanticized picture
of anti Bell himself.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, it's funny in a place Athens, Georgia, you may
know from its place in the music industry with rim
and the B fifty twos and all that.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I lived there for a while and there are.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
A few Confederate monuments there, and somebody, it being kind
of a hipster college town, some clever, clever devil put
up a sign on one of the monuments saying second place.
You know, I'm buying that the Confederates they lost the war,
So why do we need monuments people?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Some people' say it's heritage. It did.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
It's just you know, memorializing our history rather than these
negative ideas. You know, there's an argument to be made
for that, I suppose, but I think there's probably better
ways of doing it than having giant obelisks in the
middle of intersections.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Right and there. There's also a lot of interesting stuff
we won't have time for today, regarding the plagiarization of
melodies in state songs, the weird in between status that
a lot of state songs occupy. Like, there are other
state songs that have used the melody of otanimbam right.
(37:22):
There are other state songs that for a while had
derogatory things or at least at the very least implications
and illusions inherent in the verse. And at this point,
as Maryland moves this song from an official status to
slightly less prestigious historical status, we have to ask ourselves
(37:46):
how many of these vestiges remain statues. As you said,
nol obelisk songs. I mean, hopefully there's not like a
racist state bird or something. So we want to hear
from you, whether you are in the US or abroad,
what is a silly official thing about your state or country?
(38:09):
And where did it come from?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, and you know Confederate monuments firm and again.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
And if so, why or why not exactly?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
You can write to us at Ridiculous at houstuffworks dot com.
You can catch us on the social media, or we
are Ridiculous History on Facebook and Instagram. You can check
out our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, or there's always
fun stuff popping off.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oh oh oh, and let me check, let me check.
We're almost there. As we're going into the studio today,
we were on pins and needles, or at least I
was to see when we get our one thousandth member
of Ridiculous historians, and right now as we're closing, we're
(38:50):
at nine hundred and ninety five.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Man, it is so close. It's fine.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
We were texting about this this all day, but if
you're all day all, if you're already on this group,
we appreciate it, and I'm especially enjoyed all the hilarious
moons and dives into history and the fantastic stories we're reading.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
It is a lot of fun. So check us out
there and leave us a nice review on iTunes. We
appreciate that too, and please join us next time when
we talk about a particular baseball game, a no hitter
in fact, that was done while on some psychedelic drugs.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No spoilers. Tune in and we'll talk to you very soonous.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
See you then.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, welcome to a classic Ridiculous History episode. Folks, we
love all kinds of I don't know they call us
silly for this, but we love stuff like state birds
and you know, state statements.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
State craft whatever.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Now I've actually only just recently kind of become less
terrified of birds, so I'm learning all about state birds
these days. But state songs are funny, right, Yeah, It's
not even something I knew that every state had.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Every state apparently has a song, and it may not
be the ones that you think of when you think
of that state. In this classic episode, we are exploring
something that surprised the heck out of.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Both of us.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The state of Maryland has a weird, weird banker for
their official.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Song, Oh Maryland, My Maryland, making references to things like
northern sky and calling out a war with their ops.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
There's some there's there's some firebars of this tune. We're
gonna jump into the story of Maryland state song right now.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Hello, Hello, Hello, and thank you for tuning in. We're
going to begin today's episode with a bit of song.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
A goodie, I.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Hear the Distant Thunder hum, then by Marylyn the online
bugle fife and drums man.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Marilyn. She is not dead, nor.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Deaf nor dumb.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Huzzas the Northern's Come, she burns you comshoe Come, Marilyn,
my ma, what you just heard? Friends and Neighbors is
an excerpt from one of the most famous songs in
(02:26):
Maryland's history. Hello, I'm Ben.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh, I'm Noah? And what was it that gave it away?
Was it the O'maryland O Maryland?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, and we only played a part of that song,
but trust us that that sick hook comes in to
play multiple times.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Well, it starts off, you know, innocently enough as a nice, rollicking,
if derivative tune.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
What's that tune? Ben, I can't quite put my finger
on it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I'm pretty sure we both know it's otanam vaguely holiday centric.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, okay, I was being coined. But right starts off
innocently enough lyrically. And then the part we play things
take a bit of a turn, don't they better?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
They do? And we also hope this amuses our estranged
super producer, Casey Pegrim, whom we promise is still out
and about but will come in from the cold, very soon, Noel,
should we should we read that last verse for anyone
who didn't get it?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean those big, booming, you know, swingle
singer type voices could have obscured some meaning there.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
So they're saying, I hear the distant thunder hum Maryland,
the old line bugle Fife and drum Maryland. So far,
so good. Fine, Yeah, she is not dead, nor deaf
nor dumb. Huzzah. She spurns the northern scum. Oh wait
what she breathes, she burns. She'll come, She'll come, Maryland,
(03:52):
my Maryland.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Oh man, they're really into Maryland. I'm sorry, the northern scum.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yes, yes, in eat my friend, the northern scum. You see,
the song that was for a long time the state
song of Maryland turned out to be belligerent to other
states in the fair Union.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Of the US. But Ben, why would they do that.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I'm so glad. I'm so glad that we asked this
question today, because it's one of those historical, I don't know,
historical footnotes that everyone would just accept as normal. Let's
face it, many people here in the US don't pay
that much attention to the song of a particular state.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, I think ours is Georgia on my mind, right,
And that's sort of rare to have something of a
modern song, like what you would consider a pop type
song as your state song. Typically there are more classic
folky type songs, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And as you said, they're also occasionally plagiarized in terms
of melody.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, you know, there's only so many melodies, there are.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Only so many notes to go around. And the lyrics
to this song, which you can find in full with
a little bit of Google foo or which we might
post on ridiculous historians when this episode comes out.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
I'm more into google kwando myself.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, you're a Google kwando. So it's all about the
uh what is that the grapple?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, sweep sweep the leg I don't know about any
of this stuff, man, I'm just just spitball in here.
But there is a little passage in the tune that
really makes us think. And this is what kind of
got us to dig into a little bit more background here.
Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore
and be the battle queen of your Maryland, my Maryland.
(05:48):
Kind of this personification of Maryland as being some sort
of badass avenging warrior.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right, and what's this?
Speaker 5 (05:56):
What's this?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
What are these gore flecked streets of Baltimore? Difference here?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And right? Before we get to that, I just want
to establish what I was saying. We will go ahead,
I'll do it. We'll post these lyrics in full, because
you really should read along with them if you can
to see this. There's a lot of illusion and reference
in this. And you're absolutely right, Noal, there's something more
to the story here when we see this personification of
(06:25):
Maryland as a heroic protector of downtrodden people, and it
traces back to a real life event, isn't that correct?
One that occurred in eighteen sixty one?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
A real life event indeed, And it's something it really
drew attention to, something that I was unaware of. I
think Maryland and I think northern I think Maryland is
right next to New York. I think it's got the
same sensibilities and historical leanings.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
As it turns out, not the case.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
No, yeah, that's a mid Atlantic state. But during the
time of the Civil War and for a lot of
time during the formation of what would later become recognized
as the modern US. Sure, Maryland was considered a Southern
state very much so, both geographically and culturally. Yeah, ideologically
(07:18):
as well, right, yes, because Maryland, you see, had a
lot of tobacco and as a result, they were a
slave state for some time.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
So then let's get back to those gore speckled streets
of Baltimore, which is pretty dope to rhyme Gore and Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, let us travel there. The gore soaked streets in
question are themselves in Baltimore, specifically a street called Pratt
Street Pratt. On April nineteenth and eighteen sixty one, on
Pratt Street in Baltimore, there was a conflict that led
(07:58):
to a riot or what some would call a massacre,
between two ideologically opposed groups in the city.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's right, honest. Abe.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Lincoln, the president you might have heard of him, was
not the most popular guy. He actually had a nickname
that I only just recently discovered, the rail splitter. You
know about this, Yeah, I guess, I guess I can only.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Assume it means because he divided the country.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Oh yep, that yeah, So that's what happened, right, You had,
like the Union versus the Confederacy. Confederacy being the pro
slave states that wanted to secede from the Union, and
then you had the primarily northern Union states and the
Union army. Lincoln called for a rallying of troops to
protect the capital in Washington, d C. After the bombarding
(08:48):
of Fort Sumter in is it Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina,
I believe right, Yes, that's correct, Yeah, and which apparently
wasn't of particular military strategic value to the North, but
it became this kind of symbol of Union forces that
to the point where it was symbolically, I suppose, attacked
(09:11):
by Confederate forces, and that is when the Civil War
really kicked off.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, the first shots of the war. That occurs in
the first Battle of Fort Sumter on April twelfth, eighteen
sixty one. And so Lincoln, as we said, needs to
protect DC and he orders a ton of troops to
go to the capitol and prepare for war with the
Southern states who are seceding from the Union. A lot
(09:40):
of these troops were brought through a major transportation hub
at the time, Baltimore City. But there was a problem
because in Maryland there were tons and tons of people who,
even if they were, you know, generally anti war, they
were sympathetic with the Confederate side.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
To secession, to this idea they should be allowed to
do that if they so chose, and they really resented
this notion of Union troops passing through their city. They
saw it as intimidation in some form or even the
idea that they would be there to prevent them from
seceding if they wanted to, and to you know, try
(10:21):
to hold them at gunpoint in the Union, right.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Yeah, And that's that's a fact that we can't gloss
over because you can imagine how easily people could perceive
it that way. Even if it is not intended to
be a show of force, it comes across as one
and there's no way around it. This leads to simmering,
(10:46):
unsustainable tension because there were two sides. There were people
who were out and out Confederate sympathizers saying we should
join with what we see as the good cause, the
right to secede, and then there were other people who
were saying, we object to waging a war against our
(11:09):
states to the south or southern neighbors, whether or not
we agree with their aims right.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And whether or not this gentleman Baltimore Mayor, George W. Brown,
personally agreed with those aims isn't clear from.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
What I've read.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
But what he knew was that it wasn't going to
go particularly well if these Union soldiers marched through his city,
and so he actually wrote a letter of warning to
ab link him, and it went as such, the people
are exasperated to the highest degree by the passage of troops,
and the citizens are universally decided in the opinion that
(11:43):
no more should be ordered to come. The authorities did
their best to protect both strangers and citizens and to
prevent a collision. But in vain does my solemn duty
to inform you that it is not possible for more
soldiers to pass through Baltimore unless they fight their way
at every step. So there a been a trickle of
forces going through because, as we said, there was this
(12:03):
railroad hub. They had to switch lines to Camden Station,
which was a mile and a half west of the
PWNB depot, where they would get off and march through
the city to the other line and then make their
way directly to Washington, d C. So there had clearly
already been some tensions in the streets during previous passings
(12:24):
through of these forces, and the mayor was really trying
his best to keep these tensions at a simmer rather
than boiling over.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
To keep an increasingly fragile peace. Unfortunately, his efforts, as
well intentioned as they were, were in vain, and as
Union troops came through Baltimore on their way south in
April of eighteen sixty one, they were attacked by mobs
(12:55):
and Union troops as well as Baltimore residents civilians. Mind
you were killed in these riots.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, this gets super hairy, super quick. There's another story too,
involving travel on this line. Lincoln himself had to pass
through this area under cover of night because of the
Union sympathizers there and fear that there would be an
attempt on his life. So there was actually like a
political cartoon that was circulating of a Lincoln kind of
(13:26):
sheepishly peeking out of a box car as though he were,
you know, a thief in the night kind of. So, yeah,
Lincoln had only won i think something in the neighborhood
of three percent of the vote in Baltimore during the election,
so not a well liked guy. But similarly to the
Lincoln story, at first, no one knew that there were
(13:47):
troops on this train that was coming through. It looked
like any other freight train, right.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
The arrival of the soldiers was largely not registered by
the civilians. The people just wan round in Baltimore. But
rumors started spreading very quickly. And again, as you said,
there was that what three percent approval rating you mentioned,
not so good, not good at all, And the residents
(14:14):
and the local community leaders absolutely publicly disliked the new
administration of the Union. And when they found out that
these soldiers, specifically volunteers from the sixth Massachusetts, I believe
when they found out they were in the city, that
(14:35):
they were about to make the transfer to Camden. They
were doing this in daylight, and there was a relatively
short distance for them, right it was. Let's see, it's
like they go four blocks north, two blocks south, like
we have the blocks mapped out, and this short distance
(14:59):
is where everything hits the fan. Historically speaking, because the
Baltimoreans are already very sensitive, these rumors are becoming increasingly
believable to the average citizen. Railroad officials already anticipate that
there could be trouble, and if trouble occurs, it will
(15:21):
occur in this switch.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Did you know that during that switch, they would literally
unhook the train cars from the track and pull them
through town with horse horses. Yeah, that's wild. So that
was happening right with these soldiers, and it kind of
ended up like a you know, a Wild West wagon
train shootout because even before this crazy decoupling situation happens,
(15:46):
the soldiers were noticed.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, the soldiers were noticed, and the soldiers themselves from
Massachusetts were prepared because the commander, Colonel Edward Jones, had
received these warnings from railroad officials, so they were ready
for a situation to go sideways, to go pear shaped,
or appropriate for this episode, for things to go south.
(16:11):
So imagine the tension in the inside these cars. These
guys are sitting ducks. They know their commander knows that
if something is going to go wrong, it's going to
go wrong in this fateful passage between railroad stations. So
inside the cars, the soldiers are literally trying not to
(16:34):
look out of the windows because just like the beginning
maybe of a zombie film. You mentioned Wild West. To me,
it feels like a zombie thing where you see one
straggler approach right, and then more and then more and
then more because workers and residents of the area start
following the line of cars, which is I believe about
(16:57):
seven cars long at this time.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
That is correct, And they were pulled by horses down
Pratt Street heading towards this canden station, and the crowd gets.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Bigger and bigger and more unruly. People are shouting jeff Davis,
as in Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And as this, as this simmer grows into a roiling boil,
all the sudden something snaps. People start throwing stones at
the very last coach, like big old paving stones. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah yeah. And some of them were armed
(17:36):
with pistols. I think someone got their their thumb blasted off,
you know, bleeding out in the streets there, people were
getting hit. So all of the cars except for two,
got to where they needed to go. But these these
mobsters I'm gonna call them, were doing stuff like they
were throwing obstacles in the road like anvils and sand
(17:58):
and just I mean, and they were ready, I guess right,
this is crazy. And so the cars that were remaining
that were blocked. The soldiers had to get off. And
again we have to emphasize that they had no sympathizers
in the crowd on their side.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Sure didn't seem like it.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, there was nobody standing by moving anchors away from
the road. Now, in fact, there was a there was
a businessman named Charles Pendergast who supplied people with crowbars
and pickaxes and said, you know, and convinced them, not
that it took much arm twisting, convinced them to pull
the rails up from the street because the paved streets
(18:40):
we should mention, had rails to make it easier for
the horses to pull.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
The cars exactly. So let's just clarify real quick.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
So this first onslaught on these troops came while they
were still in the cars right right. They were trying
their damn just not to make eye contact with the
zombie weirdos that were outside that you mentioned earlier. But
then of course they unleashed hell on these cars, started
literally firing upon them and throwing paving stones, like I said,
(19:08):
through it and a guy got his thumb blown off.
And that was when he asked Major Benjamin Watson, who
was in this car with him for permission to fire
on the crowd, and he granted this permission, and so
they were able to kind.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Of shoot up and away a volley of shots yea
through the windows ye meaning to disperse the crowd.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Shot yeah, not to hurt, not not directly to kill.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
And that was enough to get them a little bit
more freedom where they could they could kind of proceed.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
For a second, for a minute.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, because after after not much time had passed, this
began to turn into a full on gun battle, and
the rails were successfully pulled from the pavement, so there
wasn't a way for the horses to continue pulling the cars.
And this means that the stranded soldiers have to do
(20:04):
something incredibly dangerous a last resort, over two hundred of
them have to get out of the cars in gunfire
and walk their unlucky keisters to the train station.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And they formed a sort of a FAILANX like a formation,
and in the hopes that they could keep these rioters
at bay. I do want to read a pretty cool
quote from this article on History Net about this particular
event called Baltimore Riot of eighteen sixty one. In this car,
the major gives kind of a pep talk where he
(20:39):
says that you will likely be called horrible names. People
will throw things at you, people will do anything they
can to mess with you, and he uses the term
even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles at you,
just don't look at them, don't pay them any mind.
But if you're fired upon and any one of you
is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Not
(21:00):
fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select any man whom
you may see aiming at you, and be sure you
drop him.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So don't hurt anyone who is just standing with the
crowd protest, yes, but if someone is aiming to do
a possibly fatal damage, take him out.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So now this has come to pass. This was earlier.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
This was them kind of like preparing for what might happen,
gripping their rifles. They were all issued a certain number
of rounds in preparation for this hairy journey.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And now the s has.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Hit the f My friend, yes, very much so. And
there's a merchant named Richard Fisher. He is doing business
with a sea captain from Spain, a Spanish guy. They're
watching these riders on the second floor of Fisher's business,
and the sea captain says, you seem much agitated. This
is nothing. We frequently have these things in Spain, to
(21:53):
which Fisher replies, in Spain, this might mean nothing. In America,
it means civil war. And he was correct because this situation,
as we said, this situation is turned terrible, very very quickly.
The columns are moving forward, trying to get to the station.
(22:16):
They are surrounded on all sides by this howling mob
of people shouting racial epithets of a very specific time
and threatening their lives. We were going to kill you
before we reach the station.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
They call them white inwards. I'm just going to put
that out there. I'd never heard that one before. That's outragious.
This goes to show, like again my notion of the
ideology of Baltimore way off. Ben did not know about
any of this stuff. And so yeah, the soldiers fired back,
the rioters fired.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
On the soldiers.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Stray bullets are flying everywhere, paving stones are hitting people
in the face. It is an absolute ship show, my friend.
And they did finally make it to Camden Station, but
not without some casualties. And these casualties would be considered
some of the first of the Civil War. Are somewhere
in the neighborhood of eight to eleven of these assembled
(23:09):
lunatic riders. A bystander who was a child, I believe,
who caught like a ship cabin boy who caught a
bullet in the gut, a stray.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Bullet, which is an ugly way to die a reservoir dogs.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Have you seen that? With tim Roth? That's no good.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah, and twenty four soldiers and an unknown number of
civilians according to a report from NPS dot gov.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And on the other side, with the soldiers, four died,
There were four casualties. Thirty six soldiers were in some
way wounded, and we don't have the exact accounts of
the degree of damage they received. So it's about you know,
one guy obviously lost his thumb. That's a tremendous bummer.
But there may have been people who were just slightly wounded,
(24:00):
you know.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah, there's no real record of like how many people
just had to hobble off tend to get you know, triaged, right,
And there may have been people who were rendered useless.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
In the war effort. But that is the riots in
a nutshell. Why are we talking about this riot? Why
are we talking about the six Massachusetts Infantry, this change
(24:32):
of trains. We're talking about it because one of the
people who died was the friend of a journalist and
poet named James Ryder Randall, also a resident of Baltimore, Maryland.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, and I think he originally came from Louisiana, so
he was already super entrenched in the idea of owning
slaves and that Southern ideology that you know, it was
such a huge part of this divide.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It was originally just a poem. It became a song
when it was set to music to the tune of
the German O Tannenbaum or Larger Heredius by Jenny Carey,
who is the sister of Hetty Carrey. And we had
a cool note from our Powell Christopher who says that
(25:22):
Hetty Carrey could be quote sort of kind of considered
the Confederate Betsy.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Ross Rick because she designed the Confederate flag. Yeah, and
also was married to a guy. His last name was Pegrum.
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah, And you noticed Casey is never in the same
room when we mentioned that guy.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, well it's the first time.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Yeah, but technically that means he's never been in the
same room.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Well, technically he's never in the same room because we're
in the shipping container and he's out in the real world.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
We're in a partition of a room. Okay, that's fair,
but what makes a room. That's a story for a
different day. So the song, this Maryland state song.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Is the Maryland My Maryland.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, is the sivalent of a disc track today. And
we can see through the lyrics that they're clearly you know,
the mention of a titan clearly referring to Abraham Lincoln.
Northern scum is clearly referring to the Union, the invading horde,
right right, right, And Randall himself wrote this as a
(26:22):
protest poem, but did not originally plan for it to
become a state song. He was also known as the
poet Laureate of the Lost Cause.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Oh that's that sounds like a very backhanded compliment.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It feels very emo to me. It's like the album
name for an unreleased Bright Eyes track.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So this song remains a protest song. It's not the
official state song yet, and we'll get to when that happens.
But Maryland is not all the sudden cowed by the Union.
In just because this one riot occurred, right as a
(27:04):
matter of fact, they doubled down, I believe.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, it didn't beat them down right away, but the
effects were pretty definitive. The governor and the mayor and
that we talked about earlier called out for militia forces
to come in and keep the peace in the streets.
And then a little later in June of eighteen sixty one,
Maryland did in fact vote to secede from the Union.
(27:29):
But by that time, essentially because of their actions in
this riot, Maryland was occupied by Union forces.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, which is weird because, according to a couple of
different articles won by Michael Dresser over at the Baltimore Sun,
originally after the riot to QWEL tensions, Lincoln himself had
promised that they wouldn't do that, and then that's exactly
what they did.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Yeah, can can you fill in the gaps there for
me a little bit? I was kind of having a
hard I wrapping my head around what happened. It looks
like they had these militia forces, they were trying to
keep the peace. But there was a threat made against
a fort a Union.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Fort, Yeah, Fort McHenry, Sot, Fort McHenry in the aftermath
of the riot becomes incredibly important. Like in July, the
very next month, there's a grand jury that's already indicting
several people for their role in the riot. After the riot,
(28:32):
there are still skirmishes occurring between just the local police
and citizens and Mayor Brown and Governor Hicks, as you said,
asked Lincoln to please don't send any more troops through
our town. This is bad for everybody. It's a lose lose,
And he said a couple of different conflicting things. It
(28:53):
was at a peace delegation who speaking at a YMCA meeting.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
True story, and.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
He said that, you know, no matter what people say
about it, Union soldiers were neither birds to fly over
Maryland nor moles to burrow under it. So Hicks, the
governor authorized the mayor to send the militia, you know,
mentioned the militias to disable the railroad bridges into the city.
(29:21):
He said he didn't do it. But the stories differ.
And Fort McHenry in this crazy will they won't they
debate over putting Union soldiers in there. Fort McHenry becomes
a place for the Union forces to detain people. There's
a newspaper editor who gets detained. There is a man
(29:47):
who was supposed to be a Maryland Militias state soldier
was detained, and the legal system is getting involved, and
Fort McHenry becomes this sort of center for the Union
forces and quite controversial.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And the reason that the occupation of Maryland really kicked
off was that the for mckenry was under attack by
some secessionists and one of these militia units was sent
to help out with that. And then the commander in charge,
General Butler, of the same unit of troops that had
(30:21):
come into Baltimore in the first place.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
During the riots, exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
He kind of knew, becased on previous events that there
were secessionists in the ranks of these militiamen, and agreed
to accept their assistance, but didn't really want them to get.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Too close, right, They want them to get too close,
So he said, if they did get any closer than
the there was like a chapel, it was a mile
and a half from the fort, then they would unleash
gunfire upon them.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And again we find ourselves in an untenable, unsustainable situation,
a city largely divided and separate from in many ways
the aims of the federal government. However, as you can tell,
despite the precarious nature of the state, city and federal
(31:15):
government relationship, ultimately many of the very very extremely pro
Confederate Baltimoreans and civil leaders they leave town r they
go south and not on a rail because they had
already cried up all the rails, and they eventually about
sixty thousand Marylanders end up fighting for the Union and
(31:39):
only about twenty to twenty five thousand end up fighting
for the Confederacy.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeahues that's one thing that we didn't really talk about.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
A lot of places I read there were there was
kind of a split in Maryland because it was below
the Mason Dixon line, so it was they did have
this kind of sense of themselves as being more part
of the South. They depended on slavery for commerce, with
the tobacco and the being sort of a hub for trade.
But it was a little more divided than maybe initially
seemed to be the case.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, many places were pretty divided and not ideologically homogeneous.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Because here's the thing, who's going to take to the
streets and you know, put themselves life and limb and
harms away.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
It's not the casual racists.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, it's the hardcore ones, the real zealots, the
ones that would probably go on to cut bait, leave town,
go fight for their cause.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Right right. And here's one fact that many people may
miss when we hear the story, because of course the
riot is the huge, big tent item.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
But later that year, on September seventeenth, eighteen sixty one,
when the legislature reconvened to discuss the riot, the aftermath
of the riot, and what could be construed as unconstitutional
actions on the part of the US President. On that day,
twenty seven state lefs legislatures, that is, one third of
(33:02):
the General Assembly were arrested and jailed by the FEDS
because Lincoln, you see, had suspended habeas corpus.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And habeas corpus being like rules of engagement kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Habeas corpus is the way a person can legally report
unlawful detention or imprisonment. It's ordering someone to bring a
detained person to a court to determine whether it's legal
to keep them in jail. Got it, So, suspending habeas
corpus means we could just.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Throw you in jail. It's sot of like how we
do with you know, Guantanamo Bay and stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
History is much more of a circle than a straight line.
So because they arrested so many people at once, the
legislative session was canceled and Maryland could not continue debating
secession or anti war movements.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, not to mention that they were already under Union control.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Absolutely, But as we said before, a lot of those
Zealots decided to take off and go fight for the Confederacy.
One of them, surprise surprise, was the guy who wrote
that poem no Way, Yeah, James writer Randall. He took
off and went to Georgia. And there's a really great
quote in this article from NPR Maryland gets closer to
(34:25):
retiring state song that calls Northerners scum. That kind of
sums up Maryland's position in the war in general.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
From their state archives.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
It described it as walking a tight rope between the
Union and the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between
the two sides, Maryland depended equally on the North and
the South for its economy. Although Maryland had always leaned
towards the South, culturally, sympathies in the state were as
much pro Union as they were pro Confederate, and.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Now let's use our fast forward buttons just a bit.
The Soul, which exists for decades afterwards as a very
popular protest song in some circles, becomes the official state
song of Maryland in nineteen thirty nine, and remained so
until this year. Until just a few months ago, as
we record this, in March of twenty eighteen, state senators
(35:20):
approved a bill that would strip Maryland, My Maryland, of
its designation as the official state song and rebrands this
pro Confederate anthem as an historical tune.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Kind of a demotion, I guess, yeah, which makes sense
in the cultural moment that we're having with racist monuments.
Yeah yeah, they're getting covered up, getting pulled down by
the people.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
You know. In some Georgia we got a lot of
that going.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and some still remain today because, to
paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not over. It's not even
the past yet, you know. And interesting point there, Noel
in nineteen thirty nine, that was the same year Gone
with the Wind was released, So I wonder if culturally
(36:08):
there was an impetus to tap into that romanticized picture
of anti Bell himself.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, it's funny in a place Athens, Georgia, you may
know from its place in the music industry with rim
and the B fifty twos and all that.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I lived there for a while and there are.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
A few Confederate monuments there, and somebody, it being kind
of a hipster college town, some clever, clever devil put
up a sign on one of the monuments saying second place.
You know, I'm buying that the Confederates they lost the war,
So why do we need monuments people?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Some people' say it's heritage. It did.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
It's just you know, memorializing our history rather than these
negative ideas. You know, there's an argument to be made
for that, I suppose, but I think there's probably better
ways of doing it than having giant obelisks in the
middle of intersections.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Right and there. There's also a lot of interesting stuff
we won't have time for today, regarding the plagiarization of
melodies in state songs, the weird in between status that
a lot of state songs occupy. Like, there are other
state songs that have used the melody of otanimbam right.
(37:22):
There are other state songs that for a while had
derogatory things or at least at the very least implications
and illusions inherent in the verse. And at this point,
as Maryland moves this song from an official status to
slightly less prestigious historical status, we have to ask ourselves
(37:46):
how many of these vestiges remain statues. As you said,
nol obelisk songs. I mean, hopefully there's not like a
racist state bird or something. So we want to hear
from you, whether you are in the US or abroad,
what is a silly official thing about your state or country?
(38:09):
And where did it come from?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, and you know Confederate monuments firm and again.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
And if so, why or why not exactly?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
You can write to us at Ridiculous at houstuffworks dot com.
You can catch us on the social media, or we
are Ridiculous History on Facebook and Instagram. You can check
out our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, or there's always
fun stuff popping off.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oh oh oh, and let me check, let me check.
We're almost there. As we're going into the studio today,
we were on pins and needles, or at least I
was to see when we get our one thousandth member
of Ridiculous historians, and right now as we're closing, we're
(38:50):
at nine hundred and ninety five.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Man, it is so close. It's fine.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
We were texting about this this all day, but if
you're all day all, if you're already on this group,
we appreciate it, and I'm especially enjoyed all the hilarious
moons and dives into history and the fantastic stories we're reading.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
It is a lot of fun. So check us out
there and leave us a nice review on iTunes. We
appreciate that too, and please join us next time when
we talk about a particular baseball game, a no hitter
in fact, that was done while on some psychedelic drugs.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No spoilers. Tune in and we'll talk to you very soonous.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
See you then.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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