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CLASSIC: Maryland’s State Song was a Diss Track · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, welcome to a classic Ridiculous History episode. Folks, we
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: love all kinds of I don't know they call us
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: silly for this, but we love stuff like state birds
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and you know, state statements.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: State craft whatever.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Now I've actually only just recently kind of become less
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: terrified of birds, so I'm learning all about state birds
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: these days. But state songs are funny, right, Yeah, It's
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: not even something I knew that every state had.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Every state apparently has a song, and it may not
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: be the ones that you think of when you think
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of that state. In this classic episode, we are exploring
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: something that surprised the heck out of.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Both of us.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: The state of Maryland has a weird, weird banker for
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: their official.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Song, Oh Maryland, My Maryland, making references to things like
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: northern sky and calling out a war with their ops.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: There's some there's there's some firebars of this tune. We're
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: gonna jump into the story of Maryland state song right now.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Hello, Hello, Hello, and thank you for tuning in. We're
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: going to begin today's episode with a bit of song.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: A goodie, I.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Hear the Distant Thunder hum, then by Marylyn the online
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: bugle fife and drums man.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Marilyn. She is not dead, nor.
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: Deaf nor dumb.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Huzzas the Northern's Come, she burns you comshoe Come, Marilyn,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: my ma, what you just heard? Friends and Neighbors is
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: an excerpt from one of the most famous songs in
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Maryland's history. Hello, I'm Ben.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm Noah? And what was it that gave it away?
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Was it the O'maryland O Maryland?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we only played a part of that song,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: but trust us that that sick hook comes in to
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: play multiple times.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Well, it starts off, you know, innocently enough as a nice, rollicking,
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: if derivative tune.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: What's that tune? Ben, I can't quite put my finger
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we both know it's otanam vaguely holiday centric.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I was being coined. But right starts off
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: innocently enough lyrically. And then the part we play things
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: take a bit of a turn, don't they better?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: They do? And we also hope this amuses our estranged
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Pegrim, whom we promise is still out
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and about but will come in from the cold, very soon, Noel,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: should we should we read that last verse for anyone
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: who didn't get it?
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean those big, booming, you know, swingle
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: singer type voices could have obscured some meaning there.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So they're saying, I hear the distant thunder hum Maryland,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the old line bugle Fife and drum Maryland. So far,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: so good. Fine, Yeah, she is not dead, nor deaf
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: nor dumb. Huzzah. She spurns the northern scum. Oh wait
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: what she breathes, she burns. She'll come, She'll come, Maryland,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: my Maryland.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Oh man, they're really into Maryland. I'm sorry, the northern scum.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, in eat my friend, the northern scum. You see,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the song that was for a long time the state
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: song of Maryland turned out to be belligerent to other
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: states in the fair Union.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Of the US. But Ben, why would they do that.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad. I'm so glad that we asked this
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: question today, because it's one of those historical, I don't know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: historical footnotes that everyone would just accept as normal. Let's
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: face it, many people here in the US don't pay
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: that much attention to the song of a particular state.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think ours is Georgia on my mind, right,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: And that's sort of rare to have something of a
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: modern song, like what you would consider a pop type
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: song as your state song. Typically there are more classic
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: folky type songs, right.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: M hm.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: And as you said, they're also occasionally plagiarized in terms
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of melody.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's only so many melodies, there are.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Only so many notes to go around. And the lyrics
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: to this song, which you can find in full with
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit of Google foo or which we might
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: post on ridiculous historians when this episode comes out.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: I'm more into google kwando myself.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're a Google kwando. So it's all about the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: uh what is that the grapple?
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sweep sweep the leg I don't know about any
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: of this stuff, man, I'm just just spitball in here.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: But there is a little passage in the tune that
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: really makes us think. And this is what kind of
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: got us to dig into a little bit more background here.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: and be the battle queen of your Maryland, my Maryland.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Kind of this personification of Maryland as being some sort
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: of badass avenging warrior.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Right, and what's this?
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: What's this?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: What are these gore flecked streets of Baltimore? Difference here?
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: And right? Before we get to that, I just want
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to establish what I was saying. We will go ahead,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I'll do it. We'll post these lyrics in full, because
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: you really should read along with them if you can
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: to see this. There's a lot of illusion and reference
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: in this. And you're absolutely right, Noal, there's something more
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: to the story here when we see this personification of
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Maryland as a heroic protector of downtrodden people, and it
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: traces back to a real life event, isn't that correct?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: One that occurred in eighteen sixty one?
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: A real life event indeed, And it's something it really
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: drew attention to, something that I was unaware of. I
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: think Maryland and I think northern I think Maryland is
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: right next to New York. I think it's got the
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: same sensibilities and historical leanings.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: As it turns out, not the case.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, that's a mid Atlantic state. But during the
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: time of the Civil War and for a lot of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: time during the formation of what would later become recognized
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: as the modern US. Sure, Maryland was considered a Southern
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: state very much so, both geographically and culturally. Yeah, ideologically
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: as well, right, yes, because Maryland, you see, had a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: lot of tobacco and as a result, they were a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: slave state for some time.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: So then let's get back to those gore speckled streets
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: of Baltimore, which is pretty dope to rhyme Gore and Baltimore.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, let us travel there. The gore soaked streets in
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: question are themselves in Baltimore, specifically a street called Pratt
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Street Pratt. On April nineteenth and eighteen sixty one, on
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Pratt Street in Baltimore, there was a conflict that led
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to a riot or what some would call a massacre,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: between two ideologically opposed groups in the city.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: That's right, honest. Abe.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Lincoln, the president you might have heard of him, was
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: not the most popular guy. He actually had a nickname
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: that I only just recently discovered, the rail splitter. You
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: know about this, Yeah, I guess, I guess I can only.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Assume it means because he divided the country.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: Oh yep, that yeah, So that's what happened, right, You had,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: like the Union versus the Confederacy. Confederacy being the pro
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: slave states that wanted to secede from the Union, and
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: then you had the primarily northern Union states and the
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: Union army. Lincoln called for a rallying of troops to
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: protect the capital in Washington, d C. After the bombarding
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: of Fort Sumter in is it Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina,
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: I believe right, Yes, that's correct, Yeah, and which apparently
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: wasn't of particular military strategic value to the North, but
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: it became this kind of symbol of Union forces that
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: to the point where it was symbolically, I suppose, attacked
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: by Confederate forces, and that is when the Civil War
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: really kicked off.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the first shots of the war. That occurs in
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the first Battle of Fort Sumter on April twelfth, eighteen
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: sixty one. And so Lincoln, as we said, needs to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: protect DC and he orders a ton of troops to
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: go to the capitol and prepare for war with the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Southern states who are seceding from the Union. A lot
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of these troops were brought through a major transportation hub
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: at the time, Baltimore City. But there was a problem
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: because in Maryland there were tons and tons of people who,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: even if they were, you know, generally anti war, they
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: were sympathetic with the Confederate side.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: To secession, to this idea they should be allowed to
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: do that if they so chose, and they really resented
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: this notion of Union troops passing through their city. They
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: saw it as intimidation in some form or even the
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: idea that they would be there to prevent them from
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: seceding if they wanted to, and to you know, try
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: to hold them at gunpoint in the Union, right.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's a fact that we can't gloss
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: over because you can imagine how easily people could perceive
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: it that way. Even if it is not intended to
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: be a show of force, it comes across as one
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and there's no way around it. This leads to simmering,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: unsustainable tension because there were two sides. There were people
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: who were out and out Confederate sympathizers saying we should
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: join with what we see as the good cause, the
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: right to secede, and then there were other people who
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: were saying, we object to waging a war against our
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: states to the south or southern neighbors, whether or not
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: we agree with their aims right.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: And whether or not this gentleman Baltimore Mayor, George W. Brown,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: personally agreed with those aims isn't clear from.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: What I've read.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: But what he knew was that it wasn't going to
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: go particularly well if these Union soldiers marched through his city,
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: and so he actually wrote a letter of warning to
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: ab link him, and it went as such, the people
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: are exasperated to the highest degree by the passage of troops,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: and the citizens are universally decided in the opinion that
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: no more should be ordered to come. The authorities did
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: their best to protect both strangers and citizens and to
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: prevent a collision. But in vain does my solemn duty
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: to inform you that it is not possible for more
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: soldiers to pass through Baltimore unless they fight their way
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: at every step. So there a been a trickle of
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: forces going through because, as we said, there was this
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: railroad hub. They had to switch lines to Camden Station,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: which was a mile and a half west of the
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: PWNB depot, where they would get off and march through
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: the city to the other line and then make their
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: way directly to Washington, d C. So there had clearly
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: already been some tensions in the streets during previous passings
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: through of these forces, and the mayor was really trying
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: his best to keep these tensions at a simmer rather
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: than boiling over.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: To keep an increasingly fragile peace. Unfortunately, his efforts, as
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: well intentioned as they were, were in vain, and as
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Union troops came through Baltimore on their way south in
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: April of eighteen sixty one, they were attacked by mobs
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and Union troops as well as Baltimore residents civilians. Mind
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: you were killed in these riots.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this gets super hairy, super quick. There's another story too,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: involving travel on this line. Lincoln himself had to pass
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: through this area under cover of night because of the
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: Union sympathizers there and fear that there would be an
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: attempt on his life. So there was actually like a
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: political cartoon that was circulating of a Lincoln kind of
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: sheepishly peeking out of a box car as though he were,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: you know, a thief in the night kind of. So, yeah,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Lincoln had only won i think something in the neighborhood
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: of three percent of the vote in Baltimore during the election,
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: so not a well liked guy. But similarly to the
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Lincoln story, at first, no one knew that there were
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: troops on this train that was coming through. It looked
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: like any other freight train, right.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: The arrival of the soldiers was largely not registered by
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the civilians. The people just wan round in Baltimore. But
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: rumors started spreading very quickly. And again, as you said,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: there was that what three percent approval rating you mentioned,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: not so good, not good at all, And the residents
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and the local community leaders absolutely publicly disliked the new
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: administration of the Union. And when they found out that
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: these soldiers, specifically volunteers from the sixth Massachusetts, I believe
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: when they found out they were in the city, that
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: they were about to make the transfer to Camden. They
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: were doing this in daylight, and there was a relatively
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: short distance for them, right it was. Let's see, it's
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: like they go four blocks north, two blocks south, like
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: we have the blocks mapped out, and this short distance
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: is where everything hits the fan. Historically speaking, because the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Baltimoreans are already very sensitive, these rumors are becoming increasingly
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: believable to the average citizen. Railroad officials already anticipate that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: there could be trouble, and if trouble occurs, it will
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: occur in this switch.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Did you know that during that switch, they would literally
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: unhook the train cars from the track and pull them
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: through town with horse horses. Yeah, that's wild. So that
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: was happening right with these soldiers, and it kind of
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: ended up like a you know, a Wild West wagon
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: train shootout because even before this crazy decoupling situation happens,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: the soldiers were noticed.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the soldiers were noticed, and the soldiers themselves from
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts were prepared because the commander, Colonel Edward Jones, had
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: received these warnings from railroad officials, so they were ready
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: for a situation to go sideways, to go pear shaped,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: or appropriate for this episode, for things to go south.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: So imagine the tension in the inside these cars. These
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: guys are sitting ducks. They know their commander knows that
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: if something is going to go wrong, it's going to
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: go wrong in this fateful passage between railroad stations. So
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: inside the cars, the soldiers are literally trying not to
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: look out of the windows because just like the beginning
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: maybe of a zombie film. You mentioned Wild West. To me,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: it feels like a zombie thing where you see one
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: straggler approach right, and then more and then more and
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: then more because workers and residents of the area start
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: following the line of cars, which is I believe about
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: seven cars long at this time.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: That is correct, And they were pulled by horses down
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Pratt Street heading towards this canden station, and the crowd gets.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Bigger and bigger and more unruly. People are shouting jeff Davis,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: as in Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And as this, as this simmer grows into a roiling boil,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: all the sudden something snaps. People start throwing stones at
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the very last coach, like big old paving stones. Yeah,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah yeah. And some of them were armed
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: with pistols. I think someone got their their thumb blasted off,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: you know, bleeding out in the streets there, people were
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: getting hit. So all of the cars except for two,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: got to where they needed to go. But these these
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: mobsters I'm gonna call them, were doing stuff like they
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: were throwing obstacles in the road like anvils and sand
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and just I mean, and they were ready, I guess right,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: this is crazy. And so the cars that were remaining
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that were blocked. The soldiers had to get off. And
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: again we have to emphasize that they had no sympathizers
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: in the crowd on their side.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Sure didn't seem like it.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was nobody standing by moving anchors away from
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the road. Now, in fact, there was a there was
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a businessman named Charles Pendergast who supplied people with crowbars
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and pickaxes and said, you know, and convinced them, not
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: that it took much arm twisting, convinced them to pull
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the rails up from the street because the paved streets
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: we should mention, had rails to make it easier for
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the horses to pull.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: The cars exactly. So let's just clarify real quick.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: So this first onslaught on these troops came while they
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: were still in the cars right right. They were trying
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: their damn just not to make eye contact with the
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: zombie weirdos that were outside that you mentioned earlier. But
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: then of course they unleashed hell on these cars, started
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: literally firing upon them and throwing paving stones, like I said,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: through it and a guy got his thumb blown off.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: And that was when he asked Major Benjamin Watson, who
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: was in this car with him for permission to fire
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: on the crowd, and he granted this permission, and so
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: they were able to kind.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Of shoot up and away a volley of shots yea
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: through the windows ye meaning to disperse the crowd.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Shot yeah, not to hurt, not not directly to kill.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: And that was enough to get them a little bit
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: more freedom where they could they could kind of proceed.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: For a second, for a minute.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because after after not much time had passed, this
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: began to turn into a full on gun battle, and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the rails were successfully pulled from the pavement, so there
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't a way for the horses to continue pulling the cars.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: And this means that the stranded soldiers have to do
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: something incredibly dangerous a last resort, over two hundred of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: them have to get out of the cars in gunfire
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and walk their unlucky keisters to the train station.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: And they formed a sort of a FAILANX like a formation,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: and in the hopes that they could keep these rioters
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: at bay. I do want to read a pretty cool
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: quote from this article on History Net about this particular
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: event called Baltimore Riot of eighteen sixty one. In this car,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: the major gives kind of a pep talk where he
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: says that you will likely be called horrible names. People
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: will throw things at you, people will do anything they
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: can to mess with you, and he uses the term
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: even if they throw stones, bricks, or other missiles at you,
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: just don't look at them, don't pay them any mind.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: But if you're fired upon and any one of you
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: is hit, your officers will order you to fire. Not
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: fire into any promiscuous crowds, but select any man whom
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: you may see aiming at you, and be sure you
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: drop him.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: So don't hurt anyone who is just standing with the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: crowd protest, yes, but if someone is aiming to do
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a possibly fatal damage, take him out.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: So now this has come to pass. This was earlier.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: This was them kind of like preparing for what might happen,
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: gripping their rifles. They were all issued a certain number
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: of rounds in preparation for this hairy journey.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And now the s has.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Hit the f My friend, yes, very much so. And
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: there's a merchant named Richard Fisher. He is doing business
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: with a sea captain from Spain, a Spanish guy. They're
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: watching these riders on the second floor of Fisher's business,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and the sea captain says, you seem much agitated. This
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: is nothing. We frequently have these things in Spain, to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: which Fisher replies, in Spain, this might mean nothing. In America,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it means civil war. And he was correct because this situation,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: as we said, this situation is turned terrible, very very quickly.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: The columns are moving forward, trying to get to the station.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: They are surrounded on all sides by this howling mob
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of people shouting racial epithets of a very specific time
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and threatening their lives. We were going to kill you
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: before we reach the station.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: They call them white inwards. I'm just going to put
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: that out there. I'd never heard that one before. That's outragious.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: This goes to show, like again my notion of the
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: ideology of Baltimore way off. Ben did not know about
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: any of this stuff. And so yeah, the soldiers fired back,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: the rioters fired.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: On the soldiers.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Stray bullets are flying everywhere, paving stones are hitting people
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: in the face. It is an absolute ship show, my friend.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: And they did finally make it to Camden Station, but
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: not without some casualties. And these casualties would be considered
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: some of the first of the Civil War. Are somewhere
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: in the neighborhood of eight to eleven of these assembled
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: lunatic riders. A bystander who was a child, I believe,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: who caught like a ship cabin boy who caught a
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: bullet in the gut, a stray.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Bullet, which is an ugly way to die a reservoir dogs.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Have you seen that? With tim Roth? That's no good.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and twenty four soldiers and an unknown number of
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: civilians according to a report from NPS dot gov.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And on the other side, with the soldiers, four died,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: There were four casualties. Thirty six soldiers were in some
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: way wounded, and we don't have the exact accounts of
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the degree of damage they received. So it's about you know,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: one guy obviously lost his thumb. That's a tremendous bummer.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: But there may have been people who were just slightly wounded,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no real record of like how many people
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: just had to hobble off tend to get you know, triaged, right,
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: And there may have been people who were rendered useless.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: In the war effort. But that is the riots in
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a nutshell. Why are we talking about this riot? Why
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: are we talking about the six Massachusetts Infantry, this change
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: of trains. We're talking about it because one of the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: people who died was the friend of a journalist and
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: poet named James Ryder Randall, also a resident of Baltimore, Maryland.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think he originally came from Louisiana, so
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: he was already super entrenched in the idea of owning
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: slaves and that Southern ideology that you know, it was
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: such a huge part of this divide.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It was originally just a poem. It became a song
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: when it was set to music to the tune of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the German O Tannenbaum or Larger Heredius by Jenny Carey,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: who is the sister of Hetty Carrey. And we had
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a cool note from our Powell Christopher who says that
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Hetty Carrey could be quote sort of kind of considered
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the Confederate Betsy.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: Ross Rick because she designed the Confederate flag. Yeah, and
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: also was married to a guy. His last name was Pegrum.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: That's weird.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you noticed Casey is never in the same
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: room when we mentioned that guy.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's the first time.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but technically that means he's never been in the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: same room.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Well, technically he's never in the same room because we're
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: in the shipping container and he's out in the real world.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: We're in a partition of a room. Okay, that's fair,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: but what makes a room. That's a story for a
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: different day. So the song, this Maryland state song.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Is the Maryland My Maryland.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is the sivalent of a disc track today. And
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: we can see through the lyrics that they're clearly you know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the mention of a titan clearly referring to Abraham Lincoln.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Northern scum is clearly referring to the Union, the invading horde,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: right right, right, And Randall himself wrote this as a
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: protest poem, but did not originally plan for it to
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: become a state song. He was also known as the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: poet Laureate of the Lost Cause.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Oh that's that sounds like a very backhanded compliment.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: It feels very emo to me. It's like the album
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: name for an unreleased Bright Eyes track.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So this song remains a protest song. It's not the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: official state song yet, and we'll get to when that happens.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: But Maryland is not all the sudden cowed by the Union.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: In just because this one riot occurred, right as a
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, they doubled down, I believe.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it didn't beat them down right away, but the
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: effects were pretty definitive. The governor and the mayor and
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: that we talked about earlier called out for militia forces
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: to come in and keep the peace in the streets.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: And then a little later in June of eighteen sixty one,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Maryland did in fact vote to secede from the Union.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: But by that time, essentially because of their actions in
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: this riot, Maryland was occupied by Union forces.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is weird because, according to a couple of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: different articles won by Michael Dresser over at the Baltimore Sun,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: originally after the riot to QWEL tensions, Lincoln himself had
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: promised that they wouldn't do that, and then that's exactly
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: what they did.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, can can you fill in the gaps there for
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: me a little bit? I was kind of having a
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: hard I wrapping my head around what happened. It looks
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: like they had these militia forces, they were trying to
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: keep the peace. But there was a threat made against
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: a fort a Union.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Fort, Yeah, Fort McHenry, Sot, Fort McHenry in the aftermath
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of the riot becomes incredibly important. Like in July, the
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: very next month, there's a grand jury that's already indicting
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: several people for their role in the riot. After the riot,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: there are still skirmishes occurring between just the local police
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: and citizens and Mayor Brown and Governor Hicks, as you said,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: asked Lincoln to please don't send any more troops through
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: our town. This is bad for everybody. It's a lose lose,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And he said a couple of different conflicting things. It
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: was at a peace delegation who speaking at a YMCA meeting.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: True story, and.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: He said that, you know, no matter what people say
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: about it, Union soldiers were neither birds to fly over
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Maryland nor moles to burrow under it. So Hicks, the
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: governor authorized the mayor to send the militia, you know,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: mentioned the militias to disable the railroad bridges into the city.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: He said he didn't do it. But the stories differ.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: And Fort McHenry in this crazy will they won't they
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: debate over putting Union soldiers in there. Fort McHenry becomes
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: a place for the Union forces to detain people. There's
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: a newspaper editor who gets detained. There is a man
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: who was supposed to be a Maryland Militias state soldier
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: was detained, and the legal system is getting involved, and
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Fort McHenry becomes this sort of center for the Union
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: forces and quite controversial.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: And the reason that the occupation of Maryland really kicked
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: off was that the for mckenry was under attack by
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: some secessionists and one of these militia units was sent
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: to help out with that. And then the commander in charge,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: General Butler, of the same unit of troops that had
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: come into Baltimore in the first place.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: During the riots, exactly.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: He kind of knew, becased on previous events that there
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: were secessionists in the ranks of these militiamen, and agreed
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: to accept their assistance, but didn't really want them to get.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: Too close, right, They want them to get too close,
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: So he said, if they did get any closer than
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: the there was like a chapel, it was a mile
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: and a half from the fort, then they would unleash
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: gunfire upon them.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And again we find ourselves in an untenable, unsustainable situation,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: a city largely divided and separate from in many ways
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the aims of the federal government. However, as you can tell,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: despite the precarious nature of the state, city and federal
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: government relationship, ultimately many of the very very extremely pro
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Confederate Baltimoreans and civil leaders they leave town r they
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: go south and not on a rail because they had
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: already cried up all the rails, and they eventually about
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: sixty thousand Marylanders end up fighting for the Union and
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: only about twenty to twenty five thousand end up fighting
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: for the Confederacy.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Yeahues that's one thing that we didn't really talk about.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: A lot of places I read there were there was
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: kind of a split in Maryland because it was below
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: the Mason Dixon line, so it was they did have
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: this kind of sense of themselves as being more part
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: of the South. They depended on slavery for commerce, with
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: the tobacco and the being sort of a hub for trade.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: But it was a little more divided than maybe initially
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: seemed to be the case.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, many places were pretty divided and not ideologically homogeneous.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Because here's the thing, who's going to take to the
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: streets and you know, put themselves life and limb and
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: harms away.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: It's not the casual racists.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: You know, it's the hardcore ones, the real zealots, the
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: ones that would probably go on to cut bait, leave town,
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: go fight for their cause.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Right right. And here's one fact that many people may
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: miss when we hear the story, because of course the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: riot is the huge, big tent item.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: But later that year, on September seventeenth, eighteen sixty one,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: when the legislature reconvened to discuss the riot, the aftermath
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of the riot, and what could be construed as unconstitutional
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: actions on the part of the US President. On that day,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: twenty seven state lefs legislatures, that is, one third of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the General Assembly were arrested and jailed by the FEDS
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: because Lincoln, you see, had suspended habeas corpus.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: And habeas corpus being like rules of engagement kind of stuff.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Habeas corpus is the way a person can legally report
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: unlawful detention or imprisonment. It's ordering someone to bring a
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: detained person to a court to determine whether it's legal
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to keep them in jail. Got it, So, suspending habeas
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: corpus means we could just.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Throw you in jail. It's sot of like how we
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: do with you know, Guantanamo Bay and stuff.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: History is much more of a circle than a straight line.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: So because they arrested so many people at once, the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: legislative session was canceled and Maryland could not continue debating
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: secession or anti war movements.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not to mention that they were already under Union control.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, But as we said before, a lot of those
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Zealots decided to take off and go fight for the Confederacy.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: One of them, surprise surprise, was the guy who wrote
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: that poem no Way, Yeah, James writer Randall. He took
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: off and went to Georgia. And there's a really great
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: quote in this article from NPR Maryland gets closer to
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: retiring state song that calls Northerners scum. That kind of
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: sums up Maryland's position in the war in general.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: From their state archives.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: It described it as walking a tight rope between the
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: Union and the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: the two sides, Maryland depended equally on the North and
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: the South for its economy. Although Maryland had always leaned
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: towards the South, culturally, sympathies in the state were as
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: much pro Union as they were pro Confederate, and.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Now let's use our fast forward buttons just a bit.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: The Soul, which exists for decades afterwards as a very
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: popular protest song in some circles, becomes the official state
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: song of Maryland in nineteen thirty nine, and remained so
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: until this year. Until just a few months ago, as
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: we record this, in March of twenty eighteen, state senators
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: approved a bill that would strip Maryland, My Maryland, of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: its designation as the official state song and rebrands this
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: pro Confederate anthem as an historical tune.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Kind of a demotion, I guess, yeah, which makes sense
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: in the cultural moment that we're having with racist monuments.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, they're getting covered up, getting pulled down by
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: the people.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: You know. In some Georgia we got a lot of
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: that going.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and some still remain today because, to
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not over. It's not even
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the past yet, you know. And interesting point there, Noel
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, that was the same year Gone
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: with the Wind was released, So I wonder if culturally
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: there was an impetus to tap into that romanticized picture
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: of anti Bell himself.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny in a place Athens, Georgia, you may
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: know from its place in the music industry with rim
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: and the B fifty twos and all that.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: I lived there for a while and there are.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: A few Confederate monuments there, and somebody, it being kind
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: of a hipster college town, some clever, clever devil put
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: up a sign on one of the monuments saying second place.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm buying that the Confederates they lost the war,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: So why do we need monuments people?
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Some people' say it's heritage. It did.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: It's just you know, memorializing our history rather than these
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: negative ideas. You know, there's an argument to be made
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: for that, I suppose, but I think there's probably better
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: ways of doing it than having giant obelisks in the
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: middle of intersections.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Right and there. There's also a lot of interesting stuff
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: we won't have time for today, regarding the plagiarization of
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: melodies in state songs, the weird in between status that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of state songs occupy. Like, there are other
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: state songs that have used the melody of otanimbam right.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: There are other state songs that for a while had
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: derogatory things or at least at the very least implications
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: and illusions inherent in the verse. And at this point,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: as Maryland moves this song from an official status to
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: slightly less prestigious historical status, we have to ask ourselves
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: how many of these vestiges remain statues. As you said,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: nol obelisk songs. I mean, hopefully there's not like a
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: racist state bird or something. So we want to hear
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: from you, whether you are in the US or abroad,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: what is a silly official thing about your state or country?
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And where did it come from?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know Confederate monuments firm and again.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: And if so, why or why not exactly?
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: You can write to us at Ridiculous at houstuffworks dot com.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: You can catch us on the social media, or we
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: are Ridiculous History on Facebook and Instagram. You can check
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: out our Facebook group, the Ridiculous Historians, or there's always
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: fun stuff popping off.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Oh oh oh, and let me check, let me check.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: We're almost there. As we're going into the studio today,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: we were on pins and needles, or at least I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: was to see when we get our one thousandth member
• 38:44
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• 38:50
  Speaker 1: at nine hundred and ninety five.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Man, it is so close. It's fine.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: We were texting about this this all day, but if
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: you're all day all, if you're already on this group,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: we appreciate it, and I'm especially enjoyed all the hilarious
• 39:08
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• 39:11
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• 39:12
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• 39:15
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• 39:18
  Speaker 3: we talk about a particular baseball game, a no hitter
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: in fact, that was done while on some psychedelic drugs.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: No spoilers. Tune in and we'll talk to you very soonous.
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• 39:38
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