Every state except New Jersey has designated at least one official state song. Some states have chosen popular songs. Maryland adopted  the popular Civil War song “Maryland, My Maryland” in 1939.

Along with Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware, Maryland was one of the so-called Border States. They never seceded from the Union, but many of their citizens would have preferred joining the Confederacy.

One of them, a former resident of Baltimore living in Louisiana, wrote “Maryland, My Maryland” in rage about news from home. It seems an odd choice for an official state song nearly 80 years later.

Some in Maryland have been trying to rescind it for decades. They seem on the verge of success. [In March 2021, they succeeded.]

Consequences of Maryland’s geography

The District of Columbia occupied land donated to the federal government by Maryland and Virginia. As controversy over slavery divided the nation, Virginia joined the states that seceded from the Union. It reclaimed its contribution to the District of Columbia at the same time.

Like Virginia, Maryland was a slave state. Its agriculture depended on the same kinds of plantations so important in Confederate states. Baltimore, however, had a large population of free blacks. Many of its residents supported abolishing slavery.

It would be easy to assume that Maryland had two political factions: one that favored slavery and secession and one that opposed both. In fact, it had at least three political factions. Many of its slave-holders staunchly favored remaining in the Union.

Maryland’s unique geography made it a prize for both sides. After all, if Maryland seceded, the Union capital of Washington, DC would be totally surrounded by the Confederacy. Maryland citizens included partisans on both sides. Each side assumed that it alone represented the people of Maryland. These divisions especially tore at Baltimore, the principal city.

Governor Thomas Halliday Hicks, a slave owner, did his best to stave off war and keep Maryland from choosing sides. It couldn’t work.

A riot in Baltimore

At 10:30 in the morning on April 19, 1861, a train from Philadelphia carrying the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment arrived at the President Street Station in Baltimore. To get to Washington, they needed to transfer to the Camden station. Confederate sympathizers lined the streets. Therefore, the regiment walked between the two stations carrying loaded guns.

The Confederate sympathizers greeted the Union troops by yelling, waving Confederate flags, and, eventually, throwing rocks. It took a police escort to help the soldiers push through them. Someone fired a shot and the soldiers responded by shooting into the crowd. Aided by the mayor of Baltimore, the police formed a barricade between the soldiers and the mob. The soldiers finally arrived at Camden Station, and their train pulled out at 12:45 in the afternoon.

The riot shocked the nation. Governor Hicks, still trying to preserve the peace, won a promise from President Lincoln that Federal troops passing through Maryland would avoid Baltimore. Then he persuaded the Assembly to declare that it lacked the constitutional power to decide between the two factions. After that Hicks sent a delegation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis to express hope for reconciliation and peace.

Meanwhile, President Lincoln sent General Benjamin Butler to secure Maryland’s other major cities. Following supplemental orders from Union Commander in Chief Winfield Scott, Butler took control of Baltimore as well. Then he arranged for the election of a new legislature that would exclude Confederate sympathizers. The pro-Southern faction may have been driven from the streets and the government, but they would not be silenced.

Maryland, My Maryland—a poem in protest against the Union’s actions

James Ryder Randall, a Baltimore native, was living in Louisiana when he heard about events in Baltimore, including the death of one of his friends in the riot. Outraged, he wrote a nine-verse poem called “Maryland, My Maryland.” A week later, The Sunday Delta, a New Orleans newspaper, published it. Fitted to the tune of “Oh Tannenbaum,” it became extremely popular among Confederate sympathizers in Maryland  and beyond.

The first verse refers to the Union in general and probably Lincoln in particular as a despot.  The despot has come to the temple door with a torch. That is, Maryland is the door to the sacred and righteous Confederacy. Then it calls on Maryland to avenge the blood in the streets of Baltimore.

In the second verse, Randall referred to himself as an exiled son and appeals to the state to listen to his call to arms.

The third verse names two Revolutionary War heroes from Maryland: Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence. John Eager Howard was a distinguished military officer. Randall implies, therefore, that the Confederacy faced the same peril that Carroll and Howard overcame before.

The fourth verse goes on to invoke more names. Samuel Ringgold left his seat in Congress to serve as a brigadier general in the Maryland militia during the War of 1812. Col. William H. Watson died at Monterrey during the Mexican War. Former Governor Enoch Louis Lowe was a staunch supporter of the Confederacy. Charles A. May led a cavalry charge in the Mexican War. (And, ironically, he resigned his commission on April 20, 1861 and moved to New York!)

The poem continues in this vein for nine verses. Suffering war, it says, is better “than the crucifixion of the soul.” Surely Maryland “spurns the Northern scum.”

Maryland, My Maryland set to music

It didn’t take long for Randall’s poem to be set to music. The Library of Congress sheet music collection has about 20 different editions. Most of them use the tune most commonly known as “Oh Tannenbaum,” or in English, “Oh Christmas Tree.”

The earliest publication seems to be that of Miller & Beacham of Baltimore. Its cover says, “Written by A Baltimorean in Louisiana,  Music Adapted & Arranged by C. E.” The Library of Congress has two copies of that one.

One has handwritten annotations on the cover that identify the “Baltimorean in Louisiana” as Mr. James Randall and C.E. as Rozier Dulany. It was published “at the request of Miss Rebecca Lloyd Nicholson. . . “

With this copy, the Library of Congress has a newspaper clipping from the Baltimore Sun (March 15, 1908) that further explains how that edition came to be published. Miss Nicholson and other young ladies used to gather together to sew clothes for Confederate soldiers.

Rozier Dulany frequently visited. One morning, he brought Randall’s poem, read it, and suggested setting it to music. One of the girls sat down at the piano and opened the Yale song book she noticed there. She tried a number of tunes, and when she got to “Laurigar Horatius,” the tune the Germans used for “O Tannenbaum,” Dulany declared it suitable.

He balked at the suggestion, though, that he seek a publisher for it. He didn’t want to end up in a federal prison. Miss Nicholson agreed to do it. They selected the initials C. E. to identify the arranger because Dulany didn’t want his initials used. Nicholson received six copies from the publisher, and the one at the Library of Congress with the handwritten annotations is one of them.

Pro-Union editions

Carl Mahr and A.F. Gibson both supplied original tunes. The firm of George Willig, also of Baltimore, published both of them.

The edition by Hopwood & Crew appeared in London in 1861, dedicated to “Confederate exiles in Europe.” That shows the song’s immediate appeal far beyond Baltimore.

Publishers in both the Union and the Confederacy routinely published even the most partisan of the other side’s Civil War songs. Quickly, in 1861, Lee & Walker of Philadelphia issued a version with new words by Septimus Winner. Here’s the first verse:

The rebel horde is on thy shore, Maryland, my Maryland!
Arise and drive them from thy door, Maryland, my Maryland!
Revenge the foe thou must abhor
Who seeks thy fall, Oh Baltimore
Drive back the tyrant, peace restore, Maryland, my Maryland!

In 1862, Miller & Beacham, publishers of the original version, published a version with Union words by Joseph Merrefield (“The Starry Flag Waves O’er Thy Shore, Maryland! My Maryland!”). If that seems ironic, publishers in the border states routinely published music for both sides of the conflict.

The Cincinnati firm of A.C. Peters & Bro. issued George Barker’s “Our Flag’s the Flag of Washington (Maryland! My Maryland!)” in 1863.

Protests against Maryland, My Maryland

A black writer protests in 1863

Along with other southern states, Maryland had outlawed publication of any material that could incite its black residents to rebel. But after the war raged for a while, some young blacks organized Baltimore’s first black-owned, black-edited newspaper, the Lyceum Observer. Its very first issue in 1863 featured an article by William Matthews critical of “Maryland, My Maryland” on the front page.

Among other things, the article listed prominent black Marylanders, including abolitionist Frederick Douglass and a scientist named Benjamin Banneker. Matthews claimed that these men, and not the men Randall celebrated, best represented Maryland’s ideals and future.

It’s fairly easy to see why the poem resonated with Confederate partisans, and why it continued to be popular in the bitterness of their defeat. What is less clear is  how such a topical song could ever become the official state song, which it did in 1939. I  have not been able to find a rationale for the law that established it.

A local businessman protests in 2009 or later

The Maryland State Archives has unidentified newspaper clipping by Baltimore businessman Jack L. Levin. He wrote that he had walked past a school building with an open window and heard the children singing “Maryland, My Maryland.” He remembered that he had had to sing it 70 years earlier. He protested forcing school children to sing “a hateful state song.”

Levin describes Randall’s vicious hatred of the political views of a good portion of his contemporary Marylanders. Then he observes that most school children singing the anthem probably don’t understand the words. He continues,

But some of the more observant children, who have been led to believe that the North won the Civil war and that emancipation of the slaves and saving the Union were not evil events, may be a bit confused. Some are still—even today—required to sing this song glorifying those who fought valiantly for justice . . .

Are they pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes or to the flag of the Confederacy?

How many more generations of peaceful youngsters must be incited to “avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore?”

Isn’t it time for them to learn that “the beaming sword” of the slave owners has rusted, and that thousands of black professionals, business people, scientists, technicians, sheriffs, mayors and government officials in the South signify that the War Between the States is over? . . .

Bids to choose a new state song

When Dylann Roof committed mass murder at a church in Charleston, South Carolina (June 17, 2015), many southerners started to rethink their attituded toward Confederate symbols. After the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (August 11-12, 2017), many southern states began to remove Confederate monuments from state government grounds.

In 2017, Maryland’s removals included a statue of former Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857, which declared that black people could never be US citizens.

Long before Levin’s protest, many people in Maryland were ready to consider the Civil War over and move on from it. Nine bills to replace “Maryland, My Maryland” as the state song have been introduced since 1974. All have failed. The Senate passed bills in 2016 and 2018, but the House of Delegates didn’t agree to either of them.

An attempt this year is likely to succeed. In large part, that’s because Adrienne A. Jones became the first black woman to serve as  Speaker of Maryland’s House of Delegates in April 2019. She has gone so far as to have a plaque removed that honored both Union and Confederate soldiers.

If Maryland turns its back on its state song, it wouldn’t be the first state to do so. Virginia adopted “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” in 1940 and rescinded it for its racist language in 1997.

Opinion is divided in the state. Some want to remove the most offensive verses from Randall’s lyrics and keep the rest. Some want completely new lyrics to fit the familiar tune. Others want a new tune, too. Under some proposals, “Maryland, My Maryland” could be reduced to the status of  a “historical state song” but no longer the official state song.

Of course, plenty of people in Maryland oppose any change and think the effort is merely an exercise in political correctness.

As a military conflict, the Civil War ended in 1865. As a clash of values, it apparently hasn’t ended yet.

Sources:

Civil War sheet music collection / Library of Congress
Demoting “Maryland, My Maryland” ends a struggle begun by black Baltimoreans in 1863 / Martha S. Jones, History News Network. April 1, 2018
Grieving and reconciliation in Baltimore after the American Civil War / Jennifer Prior (M.A. thesis, University of Richmond, 1996)
House of Delegates Speaker Jones: Civil War-themed state song, ‘Maryland, My Maryland,’ needs to go / Pamela Wood and Emily Opilo, Baltimore Sun. June 23, 2020
More join chorus this time for repealing ‘Maryland, My Maryland,’ the state’s pro-Confederate anthem / Mary Carole McCauley, Baltimore Sun. June 25,

Photo credits:
Sheet music covers are from the Library of Congress collection
District of Columbia map. Wikimedia Commons
Baltimore riot. Wikimedia Commons