Latest / Ridiculous History / Maryland’s State Song was a Diss Track

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

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