June 5, 2018 • 38 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".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hello, Hello, Hello, and thank you for tuning in. We're
going to begin today's episode with a bit of song. Goody,
I hear the distant thunder, hum Carlyn by Marylyn, the
online beutl Fighte and drum Marylyn by Marylyn. She is
(00:45):
not dead, nor deaf nor dumb Hussah. She's burns when
Mordern's come, she'd read she burns, she come, she come, Marylyn,
my marrow. What you just heard, Friends and Neighbors is
an excerpt from one of the most famous songs in
(01:08):
Maryland's history. Hello, I'm Ben, Oh, I'm no. And what
was it that gave it away? Was it the oh Maryland,
Oh Maryland? Yeah, and we only played a part of
that song, but trust us that that sick hook comes
in to play multiple times. Well, it starts off, you know,
innocently enough as a nice rollicking h if derivative tune.
(01:29):
What's that tune? Ben, I can't quite put my finger
on it. I'm pretty sure we both know it's a
tanabo vaguely holiday cent trick. Yeah, okay, I was being coined.
But right starts off innocently enough lyrically speaking, And then
the part we play things take a bit of a turn,
don't they ben they do, And we also hope this
(01:49):
amuses our estranged super producer, Casey Pegram, who we promise
is still out and about but will come in from
the cold very soon. Nol. Should we should we read
that last verse for anyone who didn't get it? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean those those big, booming, you know, swingle singer
type voices could have obscured some meaning there. So they're saying,
(02:14):
I hear the distant thunder hum Maryland, the old line bugle,
Fife and drum Maryland. So far, so good. Fine, 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, My Maryland. Man, they're really
(02:37):
into Maryland. I'm sorry, the northern scum. Yes, yes, indeed,
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 of the US. But man, why would they
(02:59):
do that. 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
(03:21):
a particular state. 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 they're more classic folky
type songs, right, And as you said, they're also occasionally
(03:43):
plagiarized in terms of melody. Well, you know, there's only
so many melodies, there are 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 food,
or which we might post on ridiculous historians when this
episode comes out. I'm more into google kwondo myself. Yeah,
you're a Google kwondo. So it's all about the uh
(04:04):
what is that? The grapple? Yeah, sweep sweep the lke.
I don't know about any of this stuff, and I
just just spit ball on here. But there here's 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
(04:26):
battle queen of your Maryland, my Maryland. Kind of this
personification of Maryland as being some sort of badass avenging warrior. Right,
and what's this? Uh? What's this? What are these gore
flexed streets of Baltimore reference here? Right? And right before
we get to that, just want to establish what I
was saying. We will go ahead, I'll do it. We'll
(04:49):
post these lyrics and full because you really should read
along with them if you can uh to to see this.
There's a lot of illusion and reference in this and
your app slutely ritinal. There's something more to the story
here when we see this personification of Maryland as a
(05:10):
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? A real life event indeed, um,
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.
(05:33):
I think it's like got the same sensibilities and historical leanings.
As it turns out not the case. 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,
(05:53):
Maryland was considered a Southern state, very much so, both
geographically and culturally ideologically 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. So then
let's get back to those gore speckled streets of Baltimore,
(06:14):
which is pretty dope to rhyme Gore and Baltimore. Yes,
let us travel there. The gore soaked streets in question
are themselves in Baltimore, specifically a street called Pratt Street
p R A T. T. On April nineteenth and eighteen
sixty one, on Pratt Street in Baltimore, there was a
(06:39):
conflict that led to a riot or what some would
call a massacre, between two ideologically opposed groups in the city.
That's right, um, honest, Abe, 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,
(07:02):
because I guess, and I can only assume it means
because he divided the country. Oh yep. Yeah, So that's
what happened, right. You had like the 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
(07:24):
for a rallying of troops to protect the capital in Washington,
d C. After the bombarding of Fort Sumter in um
is it Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, I believe right, Yes,
that's correct. Yeah, and which apparently wasn't of particular um
military strategic value to the North, but it became this
(07:45):
kind of symbol of Union forces that to the point
where it was symbolically, I suppose, attacked by Confederate forces.
And that is when the Civil War really kicked off. Yeah,
the first shots of the war. That occurs in the
first Battle of Fort Sumter on April twelfth, eighteen sixty one.
(08:08):
And so Lincoln, as we said, needs to protect d C.
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 of these
troops were brought through a major transportation hub at the time,
Baltimore City. But there was a problem because in Maryland
(08:32):
there were tons and tons of people who, even if
they were, you know, generally anti war, they were sympathetic
with the Confederate side 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,
(08:55):
or even the idea that they would be there to
prevent them from succeeding if they wanted to, and to
you know, try to hold them at gunpoint in the Union, right. Yeah,
And that's that's a fact that we can't gloss over
because you can imagine how easily people could perceive it
(09:16):
that way. It even if it is not intended to
be a show of force, it comes across as one
and there's there's no way around it. This leads to
simmering unsustainable tension because there were two sides. There were
people who were out and out Confederate sympathizers saying we
(09:38):
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 states to the south or southern neighbors. Whether or
not we agree with their aims right and and whether
or not this gentleman Baltimore mayor George W. Brown Down
(10:00):
personally agree with those aims isn't clear from what I've read.
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
a blank him, and it went as such, the people
are exasperated the highest degree by the passage of troops,
(10:22):
and the citizens are universally decided in the opinion that
no more should be ordered to come. Um. 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 had already been a
(10:42):
trickle of forces going through, because, as we said, there
was this railroad hub. They had to switch lines to
Camden Station, which was a mile and a half west
of the P W and B 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
(11:04):
streets during previous passing through of these forces, and the
mayor was really trying his best to keep these tensions
at a summer rather than boiling over to keep an
increasingly fragile peace. Unfortunately, his efforts, as well intentioned as
they were, were in vain, and as Union troops came
(11:28):
through Baltimore on their way south in April of eighteen
sixty one, they were attacked by mobs and Union troops
as well as Baltimore residents civilians. Mind you were killed
in these riots. Yeah, this gets super hairy, super quick.
(11:50):
There's another story to 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 um
of a Lincoln kind of sheepishly peeking out of a
(12:11):
box car as though he were, you know, a thief
in the night kind of. So yeah, he Um Lincoln
had only one, i think something in the neighborhood of
three percent of the vote in Baltimore during the election,
So not not a well liked guy. But similarly to
the Lincoln story, at first, no one knew that there
were troops on this train that was coming through. It
(12:32):
looked like any other um freight train, right. The arrival
of the soldiers was largely not registered by the civilians,
the people just walking around 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,
(12:54):
not good at all, And the residents and the local
community leaders aps lutely publicly disliked the new administration of
the Union. And when they found out that the soldiers,
specifically volunteers from the sixth Massachusetts, I believe when they
found out they were in the city, that they were
(13:18):
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 that It's like
they go four blocks north to blocks south, Like we
have the blocks mapped out, and this short distance is
(13:41):
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 and Tis spate
that there could be trouble, and if trouble occurs, it
(14:04):
will occur in this switch. Did you know that during
that switch they would literally unhook the train cars from
the track and pull them through town. Yeah, that's wild.
So that was happening right with these soldiers, and it
kind of ended up like a you know, wild West
wagon train shootout because even before this crazy decoupling situation happens,
(14:28):
the soldiers were noticed. 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,
(14:48):
to go pear shaped, or appropriate for this episode, for
things to go south. So imagine the tension in the
inside these cars. These guys are sitting ducks. They know
the a 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
(15:14):
are literally trying not to 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, and then more,
and then more and then more. Because workers and residents
of the area start following the line of cars, which
(15:38):
is I believe about seven cars long at this time,
that is correct, And they were pulled by horses down
Pratt Street heading towards this Camden station, and the crowd
gets bigger and bigger and more unruly. People are shouting
jeff Davis, as in Jefferson Davis, who was the president
of the Confederacy. And as this, as this simmer grows
(16:03):
into a roilng boil, all the sudden something snaps. People
start throwing stones at the very last coach, like big
old paving stones. Yeah yeah, and some of them were
armed with pistols. I think someone got their their thumb
blasted off, you know, bleeding out in the streets there.
(16:26):
People were getting hit. So all of the cars except
for two got to where they needed to go. But
these uh, these mobsters I'm gonna call them, we're doing
stuff like they were throwing obstacles in the road like
anvils and sand and and and just I mean they
were ready, I guess right, this is crazy. And so
(16:46):
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,
so it didn't seem like it. Yeah, there was nobody
standing by moving anchors away from the road. In fact,
there was a there was a businessman named Charles Pendergast
(17:07):
who supplied people with crowbars and pick axes 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 we should mention, had
rails to make it easier for the horses to pull
the cars. Exactly. So let's just clarify real quick. So
(17:29):
this first onslaught on these troops came while they were
still in the cars. They were trying their damn just
not to make eye contact with the zombie weirdos. That
were outside that you mentioned earlier. Um, But then of
course they unleashed hell on these cars, started literally firing
upon them and throwing paving stones, like I said, through it,
(17:51):
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 of shoot up and away a volley of
shots through the windows, meaning to disperse the crowd, not
(18:12):
to hurt, not not that directly to kill, uh. And
that was enough to to get them a little bit
more freedom where they could they could kind of proceed
for a second, for a minute, because after after not
much time had passed, this began to turn into a
full on gun battle, and the rails were successfully pulled
(18:35):
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 something incredibly dangerous. A
last resort, over two hundred of them have to get
out of the cars in gunfire and walk they're unlucky
(18:59):
keisters to the train station and they they formed a
sort of a phalanx like a formation um and in
the hopes that they could keep these riders at bay.
I do want to read a pretty cool quote from
this article on history net Um about this particular event
called Baltimore Riot of eighteen sixty one. In this car um,
the major gives kind of a pep talk where he
(19:22):
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, Um,
just don't look at them, don't 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. Do
(19:42):
not fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select any man
whom you may see aiming at you, and be sure
you drop him. So don't hurt anyone who is just
standing with the crowd protests, I guess. But if someone
is aiming to do of possibly fatal damage, take him out.
So now this has come to pass. This was earlier.
(20:03):
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. And now
the the s has 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.
(20:24):
A Spanish guy there 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 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
(20:48):
situation is turned terrible, very very quickly. The columns are
moving forward, trying to get to the station. They are
surround did on all sides by this howling mob of
people shouting racial epithets of a very specific time that
(21:08):
and threatening their lives. We're going to kill you before
they call them white inwards. I'm just gonna put that
out there that I had never heard that one before.
That's that's outrageous. It goes to show, like again my
notion of the ideology of Baltimore way off, Ben did
not know about any of this stuff. Um and so yeah,
the soldiers fired back, the riders fired on the soldiers.
(21:31):
Stray bullets are flying everywhere, paving stones are hitting people
in the face. It is an absolute ship show, my friend. Um.
And they did finally make it to Camden Station. Um,
but not without some casualties. And these casualties would be
considered some of the first of the Civil War, or
somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to eleven of these
(21:51):
assembled lunatic riders. UM. A bystander who was a child,
I believe, who caught like a ship. Um, cabin boy
who caught a bullet in the gut, a stray bullet,
which is an ugly way to die. And slow reservoir dogs.
Have you seen that with with tim Roth that's no good. Yeah,
and um, twenty four soldiers and an unknown number of
(22:13):
civilians according to a report from NPS dot gov. 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 you know, one guy obviously
(22:34):
lost his thumb. That's a tremendous bummer. But there may
have been people who were just slightly wounded, you know. Yeah,
there's no real record of like how many people just
had to hobble off to get you know, triaged, right,
And there may have been people who were rendered useless
in the war effort. But that is the riot in
(23:04):
a nutshell. Why are we talking about this riot? Why
are we talking about the six Massachusetts Infantry, this change
of trains? Uh, We're talking about it because one of
the people who died was the friend of a journalist
(23:25):
and poet named James Ryder Randall, also a resident of Baltimore, Maryland,
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, was such a
huge part of this divide. It was originally just a poem.
(23:46):
It became a song when it was set to music
to the tune of the German O Tannenbaum or uh
Laura enter Heredius by Jenny Carey, who was the sister
of Hetty care And we had a we had a
cool note from our powal Christopher who says that heavy
Carey could be quote sort of kind of considered the
(24:09):
Confederate Betsy Ross because she designed the Confederate flag. Yeah uh,
and also was married to a guy whose last name
was Pegram. That's weird. Yeah. And you notice Casey is
never in the same room when we mentioned that guy. Yeah,
well that's the first time. Yeah. But technically that means
he's never been in the same room. Well, technically he's
never in the same room because we're in the shipping
container and he's out in the real world. We're in
(24:30):
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 is Maryland, My Maryland. Yeah,
is the equivalent of a dis 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.
(24:53):
Northern Scum is clearly referring to the Union for the
invading Horde, right right, right. And Randall himself wrote this
as a protest poem, but did not originally plan for
it to become a state song. He was also known
(25:13):
as the poet Laureate of the Lost Cause. That's like
that sounds like a very backhanded compliment. It feels very
emo to me. It's like the album name for an
unreleased Right Eyes track. I like it. So this song
remains a protest song. It's not the official state song
yet and and we'll we'll get to when that happens.
(25:36):
But Maryland is not all the sudden cowed by the
Union just because this one riot occurred. Right As a
matter of fact, they doubled down, I believe. Yeah, it
didn't beat them down right away, but the the effects
were pretty um definitive. The governor and the mayor and
(25:57):
that we talked about earlier called out for militia for
is to come in and keep the peace in the streets.
And then a little later in June sixty one, Maryland
did in fact vote to secede from the Union. But
by that time, essentially because of their actions in this riot,
(26:17):
Maryland wasn't was occupied by Union forces. 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 quell tensions, Lincoln himself had promised that
they wouldn't do that. And then that's exactly what they did. Yeah,
(26:39):
can can you fill in the gaps there for me
a little bit? I was kind of having a hard
time wrapping my head around what happened. It looks like, um,
they had these militia forces. Um, they were trying to
keep the peace. But there was a threat made against
a fort a Union fort. Yeah, Fort McHenry. So Fort
Fort McHenry. In the aftermath of the riot becomes incredibly important. Uh,
(27:06):
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, there's 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
(27:26):
send any more troops through our town. This is bad
for everybody. It's a lose lose and uh he said
a couple of different conflicting things. It was at a
peace delegation, speaking at a y m c A meeting.
True story, and uh he said that you know, no
matter what people say about it, Union soldiers were neither
(27:47):
birds to fly over Maryland nor moles to burrow under it.
So Hicks, the governor authorized the mayor to send the militia,
you know, into the militias to disable the railroad bridges
into the city. He said he didn't do it. But
the stories differ, and Fort McHenry in this in this
(28:11):
crazy will they won't they debate over putting Union soldiers
in their Fort McHenry becomes the place for the Union
forces to detain people. There's a newspaper editor who gets detained. Uh,
there is a man who was supposed to be a
Maryland Militias state soldier was detained, and the legal system
(28:36):
is getting involved, and Fort mckenry becomes this sort of
center for the Union forces and quite controversial. Yes, And
the reason that the occupation of Maryland really kicked off
was that the Fort 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
(28:59):
general but layer of the same unit of troops that
had come into Baltimore in the first place during the riot. Yeah,
he kind of knew based on previous events that there
were a secessionists in the ranks of these militiamen and
agreed to accept their assistance. But didn't really want them
(29:20):
to get too close. Didn't want did they get too close.
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 m
gunfire upon them. And again we find ourselves in an untenable,
unsustainable situation, a city largely divided and separate from in
(29:44):
many ways the aims of the federal government. However, as
you can tell, despite the precarious nature of the state,
city and federal government relationship, ultimately many of the very
very extremely pro Confederate Baltimoreans and civil leaders they leave town,
(30:08):
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 only about twenty thousand end up fighting for the Confederacy. Yeah,
that's one thing that we didn't really talk about. A
lot of places I read there were there was kind
(30:30):
of a split in Maryland because it was below the
Mason Dixon line, so it was can 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 and the being sort of a hub
for trade. But it was a little more divided than
maybe initially seemed to be the case. Yeah, many places
were pretty divided and not ideologically homogeneous. Because here's the thing,
(30:54):
who who Who's going to take to the streets and
you know, put themselves life and limb and harm away.
It's not the casual racists, you know, it's the 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, right right. And here's one fact that
(31:15):
many people may miss when we hear the story, because
of course the riot is the huge, big tent item, right.
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
(31:36):
actions on the part of the US president. On that day,
twenty seven state legislatures, that is, one third of the
General Assembly were arrested and jailed by the Feds because Lincoln,
you see, had suspended habeas corpus and habeas corpus being
like rules of engagement kind of stuff. Habeas corpus is
(31:58):
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
throw you in jail, sort of like how we do
(32:19):
with you know, Guantanamo Bay and stuff. 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
(32:40):
anti war movements. Not demenstion the fact that they were
already under Union control. 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. Um.
(33:03):
And there's a really great quote in this article from
NPR Maryland gets closer to retiring state song that calls
Northerners scum. That kind of sums up Maryland's position in
the war in general. From their state archives, it described
it as walking a tight road between the Union and
the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between the two sides,
(33:25):
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 now let's use are fast
forward buttons just a bit. The song, which exists for
decades afterwards as a very popular protest song in some circles,
(33:45):
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 approved a bill that would strip Maryland, My Maryland,
(34:05):
of its designation as the official state song and rebrands
this pro Confederate anthem as an historical tune. Yeah. Kind
of a demotion, I guess, 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.
(34:26):
You know, from Georgia, we got a lot of that
going yeah, yeah, yeah, and some still remain today because,
to paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not over. It's it's
not even the past yet, you know. And interesting point there,
no uh nine, That was the same year Gone with
(34:47):
the Wind was released. So I wonder if culturally there
was an impetus to tap into that romanticized picture of
Antibell himself. Yeah, it's funny. In a place of Athens, Georgia,
you may know from place in the music industry with
r M and the bf T twos and all that.
I lived there for a while and there are a
few Confederate monuments there, and somebody, uh it being kind
(35:09):
of a hipstory college town, some clever, clever devil put
up a sign on one of the monuments saying second place. Um,
you know, I'm telling that the Confederates they lost the war,
So why do we need monuments people? Some people say
it's heritage. It did it's it's you know, memorializing our
history rather than these negative ideas. Um. You know, there's
(35:32):
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, right. And
there's also a lot of interesting stuff we won't have
time for today regarding the plagiarization of melodies in state songs,
(35:53):
the weird in between status that a lot of state
songs occupy. Like there there are other state songs that
have use the melody of O tan embomb right. 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
(36:19):
as Maryland moves this song from an official status to
slightly less prestigious historical status, we have to ask ourselves
how many of these vestiges remain statues. As you said
nod obelisk songs, I mean, hopefully there's not like a
racist state bird or something. So we want to hear
(36:43):
from you, whether you are in the US or abroad,
what is a silly official thing about your state or country?
And where did it come from? Yeah? And um, you
know Confederate monuments firm or again? Um and if so,
why or why not exactly? You can write to us
a ridiculous at how stuffworks dot com. You can catch
us on the social media's or we are Ridiculous History
(37:05):
on Facebook and Instagram. You can check out our Facebook group,
the Ridiculous Historians. It was always fun stuff popping off.
Oh oh, and let me check, let me check. We're
almost there as we're going into the studio today. Uh,
we're on pins and needles, or at least I was
to see when we get our one thousand member of
(37:27):
Ridiculous Historians. And right now as we're closing, we're at man,
were so close. It's fine. We were texting about this,
uh this all day. But if you're all day all,
if you're already on this group, we we appreciate it.
And uh, I'm I'm especially enjoyed all the hilarious memes
(37:50):
and dives into history and the fantastic stories we're reading.
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 um some psychedelic drugs.
(38:11):
No spoilers. Tune in and we'll talk to you very soon.
See you then,
Hello, Hello, Hello, and thank you for tuning in. We're
going to begin today's episode with a bit of song. Goody,
I hear the distant thunder, hum Carlyn by Marylyn, the
online beutl Fighte and drum Marylyn by Marylyn. She is
(00:45):
not dead, nor deaf nor dumb Hussah. She's burns when
Mordern's come, she'd read she burns, she come, she come, Marylyn,
my marrow. What you just heard, Friends and Neighbors is
an excerpt from one of the most famous songs in
(01:08):
Maryland's history. Hello, I'm Ben, Oh, I'm no. And what
was it that gave it away? Was it the oh Maryland,
Oh Maryland? Yeah, and we only played a part of
that song, but trust us that that sick hook comes
in to play multiple times. Well, it starts off, you know,
innocently enough as a nice rollicking h if derivative tune.
(01:29):
What's that tune? Ben, I can't quite put my finger
on it. I'm pretty sure we both know it's a
tanabo vaguely holiday cent trick. Yeah, okay, I was being coined.
But right starts off innocently enough lyrically speaking, And then
the part we play things take a bit of a turn,
don't they ben they do, And we also hope this
(01:49):
amuses our estranged super producer, Casey Pegram, who we promise
is still out and about but will come in from
the cold very soon. Nol. Should we should we read
that last verse for anyone who didn't get it? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean those those big, booming, you know, swingle singer
type voices could have obscured some meaning there. So they're saying,
(02:14):
I hear the distant thunder hum Maryland, the old line bugle,
Fife and drum Maryland. So far, so good. Fine, 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, My Maryland. Man, they're really
(02:37):
into Maryland. I'm sorry, the northern scum. Yes, yes, indeed,
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 of the US. But man, why would they
(02:59):
do that. 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
(03:21):
a particular state. 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 they're more classic folky
type songs, right, And as you said, they're also occasionally
(03:43):
plagiarized in terms of melody. Well, you know, there's only
so many melodies, there are 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 food,
or which we might post on ridiculous historians when this
episode comes out. I'm more into google kwondo myself. Yeah,
you're a Google kwondo. So it's all about the uh
(04:04):
what is that? The grapple? Yeah, sweep sweep the lke.
I don't know about any of this stuff, and I
just just spit ball on here. But there here's 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
(04:26):
battle queen of your Maryland, my Maryland. Kind of this
personification of Maryland as being some sort of badass avenging warrior. Right,
and what's this? Uh? What's this? What are these gore
flexed streets of Baltimore reference here? Right? And right before
we get to that, just want to establish what I
was saying. We will go ahead, I'll do it. We'll
(04:49):
post these lyrics and full because you really should read
along with them if you can uh to to see this.
There's a lot of illusion and reference in this and
your app slutely ritinal. There's something more to the story
here when we see this personification of Maryland as a
(05:10):
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? A real life event indeed, um,
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.
(05:33):
I think it's like got the same sensibilities and historical leanings.
As it turns out not the case. 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,
(05:53):
Maryland was considered a Southern state, very much so, both
geographically and culturally ideologically 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. So then
let's get back to those gore speckled streets of Baltimore,
(06:14):
which is pretty dope to rhyme Gore and Baltimore. Yes,
let us travel there. The gore soaked streets in question
are themselves in Baltimore, specifically a street called Pratt Street
p R A T. T. On April nineteenth and eighteen
sixty one, on Pratt Street in Baltimore, there was a
(06:39):
conflict that led to a riot or what some would
call a massacre, between two ideologically opposed groups in the city.
That's right, um, honest, Abe, 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,
(07:02):
because I guess, and I can only assume it means
because he divided the country. Oh yep. Yeah, So that's
what happened, right. You had like the 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
(07:24):
for a rallying of troops to protect the capital in Washington,
d C. After the bombarding of Fort Sumter in um
is it Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, I believe right, Yes,
that's correct. Yeah, and which apparently wasn't of particular um
military strategic value to the North, but it became this
(07:45):
kind of symbol of Union forces that to the point
where it was symbolically, I suppose, attacked by Confederate forces.
And that is when the Civil War really kicked off. Yeah,
the first shots of the war. That occurs in the
first Battle of Fort Sumter on April twelfth, eighteen sixty one.
(08:08):
And so Lincoln, as we said, needs to protect d C.
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 of these
troops were brought through a major transportation hub at the time,
Baltimore City. But there was a problem because in Maryland
(08:32):
there were tons and tons of people who, even if
they were, you know, generally anti war, they were sympathetic
with the Confederate side 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,
(08:55):
or even the idea that they would be there to
prevent them from succeeding if they wanted to, and to
you know, try to hold them at gunpoint in the Union, right. Yeah,
And that's that's a fact that we can't gloss over
because you can imagine how easily people could perceive it
(09:16):
that way. It even if it is not intended to
be a show of force, it comes across as one
and there's there's no way around it. This leads to
simmering unsustainable tension because there were two sides. There were
people who were out and out Confederate sympathizers saying we
(09:38):
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 states to the south or southern neighbors. Whether or
not we agree with their aims right and and whether
or not this gentleman Baltimore mayor George W. Brown Down
(10:00):
personally agree with those aims isn't clear from what I've read.
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
a blank him, and it went as such, the people
are exasperated the highest degree by the passage of troops,
(10:22):
and the citizens are universally decided in the opinion that
no more should be ordered to come. Um. 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 had already been a
(10:42):
trickle of forces going through, because, as we said, there
was this railroad hub. They had to switch lines to
Camden Station, which was a mile and a half west
of the P W and B 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
(11:04):
streets during previous passing through of these forces, and the
mayor was really trying his best to keep these tensions
at a summer rather than boiling over to keep an
increasingly fragile peace. Unfortunately, his efforts, as well intentioned as
they were, were in vain, and as Union troops came
(11:28):
through Baltimore on their way south in April of eighteen
sixty one, they were attacked by mobs and Union troops
as well as Baltimore residents civilians. Mind you were killed
in these riots. Yeah, this gets super hairy, super quick.
(11:50):
There's another story to 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 um
of a Lincoln kind of sheepishly peeking out of a
(12:11):
box car as though he were, you know, a thief
in the night kind of. So yeah, he Um Lincoln
had only one, i think something in the neighborhood of
three percent of the vote in Baltimore during the election,
So not not a well liked guy. But similarly to
the Lincoln story, at first, no one knew that there
were troops on this train that was coming through. It
(12:32):
looked like any other um freight train, right. The arrival
of the soldiers was largely not registered by the civilians,
the people just walking around 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,
(12:54):
not good at all, And the residents and the local
community leaders aps lutely publicly disliked the new administration of
the Union. And when they found out that the soldiers,
specifically volunteers from the sixth Massachusetts, I believe when they
found out they were in the city, that they were
(13:18):
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 that It's like
they go four blocks north to blocks south, Like we
have the blocks mapped out, and this short distance is
(13:41):
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 and Tis spate
that there could be trouble, and if trouble occurs, it
(14:04):
will occur in this switch. Did you know that during
that switch they would literally unhook the train cars from
the track and pull them through town. Yeah, that's wild.
So that was happening right with these soldiers, and it
kind of ended up like a you know, wild West
wagon train shootout because even before this crazy decoupling situation happens,
(14:28):
the soldiers were noticed. 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,
(14:48):
to go pear shaped, or appropriate for this episode, for
things to go south. So imagine the tension in the
inside these cars. These guys are sitting ducks. They know
the a 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
(15:14):
are literally trying not to 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, and then more,
and then more and then more. Because workers and residents
of the area start following the line of cars, which
(15:38):
is I believe about seven cars long at this time,
that is correct, And they were pulled by horses down
Pratt Street heading towards this Camden station, and the crowd
gets bigger and bigger and more unruly. People are shouting
jeff Davis, as in Jefferson Davis, who was the president
of the Confederacy. And as this, as this simmer grows
(16:03):
into a roilng boil, all the sudden something snaps. People
start throwing stones at the very last coach, like big
old paving stones. Yeah yeah, and some of them were
armed with pistols. I think someone got their their thumb
blasted off, you know, bleeding out in the streets there.
(16:26):
People were getting hit. So all of the cars except
for two got to where they needed to go. But
these uh, these mobsters I'm gonna call them, we're doing
stuff like they were throwing obstacles in the road like
anvils and sand and and and just I mean they
were ready, I guess right, this is crazy. And so
(16:46):
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,
so it didn't seem like it. Yeah, there was nobody
standing by moving anchors away from the road. In fact,
there was a there was a businessman named Charles Pendergast
(17:07):
who supplied people with crowbars and pick axes 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 we should mention, had
rails to make it easier for the horses to pull
the cars. Exactly. So let's just clarify real quick. So
(17:29):
this first onslaught on these troops came while they were
still in the cars. They were trying their damn just
not to make eye contact with the zombie weirdos. That
were outside that you mentioned earlier. Um, But then of
course they unleashed hell on these cars, started literally firing
upon them and throwing paving stones, like I said, through it,
(17:51):
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 of shoot up and away a volley of
shots through the windows, meaning to disperse the crowd, not
(18:12):
to hurt, not not that directly to kill, uh. And
that was enough to to get them a little bit
more freedom where they could they could kind of proceed
for a second, for a minute, because after after not
much time had passed, this began to turn into a
full on gun battle, and the rails were successfully pulled
(18:35):
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 something incredibly dangerous. A
last resort, over two hundred of them have to get
out of the cars in gunfire and walk they're unlucky
(18:59):
keisters to the train station and they they formed a
sort of a phalanx like a formation um and in
the hopes that they could keep these riders at bay.
I do want to read a pretty cool quote from
this article on history net Um about this particular event
called Baltimore Riot of eighteen sixty one. In this car um,
the major gives kind of a pep talk where he
(19:22):
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, Um,
just don't look at them, don't 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. Do
(19:42):
not fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select any man
whom you may see aiming at you, and be sure
you drop him. So don't hurt anyone who is just
standing with the crowd protests, I guess. But if someone
is aiming to do of possibly fatal damage, take him out.
So now this has come to pass. This was earlier.
(20:03):
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. And now
the the s has 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.
(20:24):
A Spanish guy there 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 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
(20:48):
situation is turned terrible, very very quickly. The columns are
moving forward, trying to get to the station. They are
surround did on all sides by this howling mob of
people shouting racial epithets of a very specific time that
(21:08):
and threatening their lives. We're going to kill you before
they call them white inwards. I'm just gonna put that
out there that I had never heard that one before.
That's that's outrageous. It goes to show, like again my
notion of the ideology of Baltimore way off, Ben did
not know about any of this stuff. Um and so yeah,
the soldiers fired back, the riders fired on the soldiers.
(21:31):
Stray bullets are flying everywhere, paving stones are hitting people
in the face. It is an absolute ship show, my friend. Um.
And they did finally make it to Camden Station. Um,
but not without some casualties. And these casualties would be
considered some of the first of the Civil War, or
somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to eleven of these
(21:51):
assembled lunatic riders. UM. A bystander who was a child,
I believe, who caught like a ship. Um, cabin boy
who caught a bullet in the gut, a stray bullet,
which is an ugly way to die. And slow reservoir dogs.
Have you seen that with with tim Roth that's no good. Yeah,
and um, twenty four soldiers and an unknown number of
(22:13):
civilians according to a report from NPS dot gov. 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 you know, one guy obviously
(22:34):
lost his thumb. That's a tremendous bummer. But there may
have been people who were just slightly wounded, you know. Yeah,
there's no real record of like how many people just
had to hobble off to get you know, triaged, right,
And there may have been people who were rendered useless
in the war effort. But that is the riot in
(23:04):
a nutshell. Why are we talking about this riot? Why
are we talking about the six Massachusetts Infantry, this change
of trains? Uh, We're talking about it because one of
the people who died was the friend of a journalist
(23:25):
and poet named James Ryder Randall, also a resident of Baltimore, Maryland,
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, was such a
huge part of this divide. It was originally just a poem.
(23:46):
It became a song when it was set to music
to the tune of the German O Tannenbaum or uh
Laura enter Heredius by Jenny Carey, who was the sister
of Hetty care And we had a we had a
cool note from our powal Christopher who says that heavy
Carey could be quote sort of kind of considered the
(24:09):
Confederate Betsy Ross because she designed the Confederate flag. Yeah uh,
and also was married to a guy whose last name
was Pegram. That's weird. Yeah. And you notice Casey is
never in the same room when we mentioned that guy. Yeah,
well that's the first time. Yeah. But technically that means
he's never been in the same room. Well, technically he's
never in the same room because we're in the shipping
container and he's out in the real world. We're in
(24:30):
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 is Maryland, My Maryland. Yeah,
is the equivalent of a dis 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.
(24:53):
Northern Scum is clearly referring to the Union for the
invading Horde, right right, right. And Randall himself wrote this
as a protest poem, but did not originally plan for
it to become a state song. He was also known
(25:13):
as the poet Laureate of the Lost Cause. That's like
that sounds like a very backhanded compliment. It feels very
emo to me. It's like the album name for an
unreleased Right Eyes track. I like it. So this song
remains a protest song. It's not the official state song
yet and and we'll we'll get to when that happens.
(25:36):
But Maryland is not all the sudden cowed by the
Union just because this one riot occurred. Right As a
matter of fact, they doubled down, I believe. Yeah, it
didn't beat them down right away, but the the effects
were pretty um definitive. The governor and the mayor and
(25:57):
that we talked about earlier called out for militia for
is to come in and keep the peace in the streets.
And then a little later in June sixty one, Maryland
did in fact vote to secede from the Union. But
by that time, essentially because of their actions in this riot,
(26:17):
Maryland wasn't was occupied by Union forces. 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 quell tensions, Lincoln himself had promised that
they wouldn't do that. And then that's exactly what they did. Yeah,
(26:39):
can can you fill in the gaps there for me
a little bit? I was kind of having a hard
time wrapping my head around what happened. It looks like, um,
they had these militia forces. Um, they were trying to
keep the peace. But there was a threat made against
a fort a Union fort. Yeah, Fort McHenry. So Fort
Fort McHenry. In the aftermath of the riot becomes incredibly important. Uh,
(27:06):
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, there's 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
(27:26):
send any more troops through our town. This is bad
for everybody. It's a lose lose and uh he said
a couple of different conflicting things. It was at a
peace delegation, speaking at a y m c A meeting.
True story, and uh he said that you know, no
matter what people say about it, Union soldiers were neither
(27:47):
birds to fly over Maryland nor moles to burrow under it.
So Hicks, the governor authorized the mayor to send the militia,
you know, into the militias to disable the railroad bridges
into the city. He said he didn't do it. But
the stories differ, and Fort McHenry in this in this
(28:11):
crazy will they won't they debate over putting Union soldiers
in their Fort McHenry becomes the place for the Union
forces to detain people. There's a newspaper editor who gets detained. Uh,
there is a man who was supposed to be a
Maryland Militias state soldier was detained, and the legal system
(28:36):
is getting involved, and Fort mckenry becomes this sort of
center for the Union forces and quite controversial. Yes, And
the reason that the occupation of Maryland really kicked off
was that the Fort 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
(28:59):
general but layer of the same unit of troops that
had come into Baltimore in the first place during the riot. Yeah,
he kind of knew based on previous events that there
were a secessionists in the ranks of these militiamen and
agreed to accept their assistance. But didn't really want them
(29:20):
to get too close. Didn't want did they get too close.
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 m
gunfire upon them. And again we find ourselves in an untenable,
unsustainable situation, a city largely divided and separate from in
(29:44):
many ways the aims of the federal government. However, as
you can tell, despite the precarious nature of the state,
city and federal government relationship, ultimately many of the very
very extremely pro Confederate Baltimoreans and civil leaders they leave town,
(30:08):
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 only about twenty thousand end up fighting for the Confederacy. Yeah,
that's one thing that we didn't really talk about. A
lot of places I read there were there was kind
(30:30):
of a split in Maryland because it was below the
Mason Dixon line, so it was can 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 and the being sort of a hub
for trade. But it was a little more divided than
maybe initially seemed to be the case. Yeah, many places
were pretty divided and not ideologically homogeneous. Because here's the thing,
(30:54):
who who Who's going to take to the streets and
you know, put themselves life and limb and harm away.
It's not the casual racists, you know, it's the 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, right right. And here's one fact that
(31:15):
many people may miss when we hear the story, because
of course the riot is the huge, big tent item, right.
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
(31:36):
actions on the part of the US president. On that day,
twenty seven state legislatures, that is, one third of the
General Assembly were arrested and jailed by the Feds because Lincoln,
you see, had suspended habeas corpus and habeas corpus being
like rules of engagement kind of stuff. Habeas corpus is
(31:58):
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
throw you in jail, sort of like how we do
(32:19):
with you know, Guantanamo Bay and stuff. 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
(32:40):
anti war movements. Not demenstion the fact that they were
already under Union control. 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. Um.
(33:03):
And there's a really great quote in this article from
NPR Maryland gets closer to retiring state song that calls
Northerners scum. That kind of sums up Maryland's position in
the war in general. From their state archives, it described
it as walking a tight road between the Union and
the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between the two sides,
(33:25):
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 now let's use are fast
forward buttons just a bit. The song, which exists for
decades afterwards as a very popular protest song in some circles,
(33:45):
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 approved a bill that would strip Maryland, My Maryland,
(34:05):
of its designation as the official state song and rebrands
this pro Confederate anthem as an historical tune. Yeah. Kind
of a demotion, I guess, 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.
(34:26):
You know, from Georgia, we got a lot of that
going yeah, yeah, yeah, and some still remain today because,
to paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not over. It's it's
not even the past yet, you know. And interesting point there,
no uh nine, That was the same year Gone with
(34:47):
the Wind was released. So I wonder if culturally there
was an impetus to tap into that romanticized picture of
Antibell himself. Yeah, it's funny. In a place of Athens, Georgia,
you may know from place in the music industry with
r M and the bf T twos and all that.
I lived there for a while and there are a
few Confederate monuments there, and somebody, uh it being kind
(35:09):
of a hipstory college town, some clever, clever devil put
up a sign on one of the monuments saying second place. Um,
you know, I'm telling that the Confederates they lost the war,
So why do we need monuments people? Some people say
it's heritage. It did it's it's you know, memorializing our
history rather than these negative ideas. Um. You know, there's
(35:32):
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, right. And
there's also a lot of interesting stuff we won't have
time for today regarding the plagiarization of melodies in state songs,
(35:53):
the weird in between status that a lot of state
songs occupy. Like there there are other state songs that
have use the melody of O tan embomb right. 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
(36:19):
as Maryland moves this song from an official status to
slightly less prestigious historical status, we have to ask ourselves
how many of these vestiges remain statues. As you said
nod obelisk songs, I mean, hopefully there's not like a
racist state bird or something. So we want to hear
(36:43):
from you, whether you are in the US or abroad,
what is a silly official thing about your state or country?
And where did it come from? Yeah? And um, you
know Confederate monuments firm or again? Um and if so,
why or why not exactly? You can write to us
a ridiculous at how stuffworks dot com. You can catch
us on the social media's or we are Ridiculous History
(37:05):
on Facebook and Instagram. You can check out our Facebook group,
the Ridiculous Historians. It was always fun stuff popping off.
Oh oh, and let me check, let me check. We're
almost there as we're going into the studio today. Uh,
we're on pins and needles, or at least I was
to see when we get our one thousand member of
(37:27):
Ridiculous Historians. And right now as we're closing, we're at man,
were so close. It's fine. We were texting about this,
uh this all day. But if you're all day all,
if you're already on this group, we we appreciate it.
And uh, I'm I'm especially enjoyed all the hilarious memes
(37:50):
and dives into history and the fantastic stories we're reading.
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 um some psychedelic drugs.
(38:11):
No spoilers. Tune in and we'll talk to you very soon.
See you then,
Ridiculous History News
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Noel Brown
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