A House Divided – During the months leading up to the Civil War, Maryland stood as a house divided. Although it was a slaveholding state, Maryland did not secede. The majority of the population living north and west of Baltimore held loyalties to the Union, while most citizens living on larger farms in the southern and eastern areas of the state were sympathetic to the Confederacy.
On April 19, 1861.
Just five days after the Union surrendered Fort Sumter, South Carolina, tensions in Baltimore exploded in violence.
President Lincoln had ordered Federal troops to move to Washington, D.C.
To defend the capital.
Baltimore’s Confederate sympathizers attacked Massachusetts soldiers en route along the Pratt Street waterfront.
The war’s first casualties fell in Baltimore’s streets. The Baltimore: A House Divided Civil War Trail is a one-and-a-half mile walking tour that traces the steps of the Massachusetts regiment and the events that led to bloodshed. Order or view Civil War trail maps
Civil War and the Maryland General Assembly, Maryland State Archives The General Assembly Moves to Frederick, 1861 In early 1861, Maryland was walking a tightrope between the Union and the Confederacy. In addition to being physically between the two sides, Maryland depended equally on the North and the South for its economy.
Although Maryland had always leaned toward the south culturally, sympathies in the state were as much pro-Union as they were pro-Confederate.
Reflecting that division and the feeling of many Marylanders that they just wanted to be left alone, the state government would not declare for either side.
For the Federal Government, however, there was no question about which side Maryland had to take.
If she seceded, Washington D.C. would be surrounded by hostile states, effectively cut off from the rest of the Union. The situation came to a head on April 19, 1861, when the soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Volunteers, moving through Baltimore on the way to Washington, were attacked by a pro-Southern mob.
When the mob started shooting at the regiment, the soldiers returned fire, and when the smoke had cleared, four soldiers and twelve civilians had been killed. To avoid further riots, it was decided to send troops through the Naval Academy at Annapolis. To ensure the safety of the troops and the loyalty of the state government, the Federal Government sent General Benjamin F.
Butler to Annapolis to secure the city on April 22. That same day, decided to call a special session of the General Assembly to discuss the crisis. At that time, the General Assembly met biannually, but popular outcry was so strong that the governor felt it necessary to call together the Assembly during an off year.
However, he probably felt that anti-Union sentiment would run high in a city that had just been occupied by Northern troops, so Governor Hicks decided to convene the Legislature in Frederick, Maryland, a strongly pro-Union city. The General Assembly first met in the Frederick County Courthouse on April 26.
However, it was quickly found that the courthouse was too small, and so, on the second day, the Assembly moved to the meeting hall belonging to the German Reformed Church. On April 30, the weekly Frederick Herald reported: “The Legislature seems comfortable and well provided for in their new halls in the German Reformed Building.
The Senate occupies the Red Men’s Hall, third story – the House, the hall in the second story. These halls have been tastefully and appropriately fitted up for their purposes.” The main topic of discussion in those tastefully appointed halls was, of course, the question of whether or not to secede from the Union.
As the General Assembly met throughout the long summer, a bill and a resolution were introduced calling for secession. Both failed because the legislators said that they did not have the authority to secede from the Union. Even many of the pro-Southern delegates and senators did not support the bills.
At the same time, however, the legislators refused to reopen rail links to the Northern States, for fear the they would be used for military purposes and also by pro-Union agitators bent on revenge for the Baltimore riots. One of the few things the General Assembly did agree upon was a resolution sent to President Lincoln protesting the Union occupation of Maryland.
It seems that the General Assembly was primarily interested in preserving Maryland’s neutrality, for they neither wanted to secede from the Union, nor to allow Union troops to cross its territory in order to attack the Confederacy. On August 7, the General Assembly adjourned, intending to meet again on September 17.
However, on that day Federal troops and Baltimore police officers arrived in Frederick with orders to arrest the pro-Confederate members of the General Assembly.
Thus, the special session in Frederick ended, as did Frederick’s summer as the state capital, as Maryland found itself inexorably drawn further and further into the heart of the bloodiest war in American history.
By 1863, the barracks at the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John’s College had become badly overcrowded, since Annapolis had become the most important depot for paroled prisoners on the coast. As a result, a larger facility named was built outside of Annapolis.
At these facilities, Union prisoners paroled from Confederate prisons could get a bath, a shave, fresh clothing, and in some cases badly needed medical attention.
The soldiers would then stay at Camp Parole until they could be either sent home or rejoin their regiments.
This is the only known photograph of the Parole barracks and it includes a portrait of the band in front of the camp headquarters.
Bibliography Brugger, Robert J. Maryland: A Middle Temperament, 1694-1980, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1988. Maryland State Archives. MARYLAND STATE ARCHIVES (Maryland Guide Files) “Frederick City”, Papenfuse, Edward C. et al. Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State,
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1976.
Radoff, Morris L.
The County Courthouses and Records of Maryland, Part One: The Courthouses,
Annapolis: The Hall of Records Commission, State of Maryland; 1960.
Warren, Mame and Marion E.
Everybody Works But John Paul Jones: A Portrait of the U.S.
Naval Academy, 1845-1915,
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press; 1981. Whitmore, Nancy F. and Timothy L. Cannon. Frederick: A Pictorial History, Norfolk: The Donning Co.; 1981 Williams, T.J.C. and Folger McKinsey. History of Frederick County, Maryland, Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1910 reprinted 1967.
Did the Confederates want Maryland?
To secede or not to secede – Despite some popular support for the cause of the Confederate States of America, Maryland did not secede during the Civil War. However, a number of leading citizens, including physician and slaveholder Richard Sprigg Steuart, placed considerable pressure on Governor Hicks to summon the state Legislature to vote on secession, following Hicks to Annapolis with a number of fellow citizens: to insist on his issuing his proclamation for the Legislature to convene, believing that this body (and not himself and his party) should decide the fate of our state.if the Governor and his party continued to refuse this demand that it would be necessary to depose him.
Responding to pressure, on April 22 Governor Hicks finally announced that the state legislature would meet in a special session in Frederick, a strongly pro-Union town, rather than the state capital of Annapolis,
The Maryland General Assembly convened in Frederick and unanimously adopted a measure stating that they would not commit the state to secession, explaining that they had “no constitutional authority to take such action,” whatever their own personal feelings might have been.
On April 29, the Legislature voted decisively 53–13 against secession, though they also voted not to reopen rail links with the North, and they requested that Lincoln remove Union troops from Maryland. At this time the legislature seems to have wanted to avoid involvement in a war against its southern neighbors.
Was Frederick Md Union or Confederate?
He was recruited into the Confederate Army on May 8, 1861, at Harpers Ferry. Believing the state would secede, he fought under the Maryland flag.
Was Maryland considered a southern state?
As defined by the U.S. federal government, it includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Is Maryland south of the Mason-Dixon Line?
Are we Northern? Southern? Yes.
B
rian Witte, an Associated Press writer, recently revived an old debate that’s been going on since Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, when the Army of Northern Virginia stacked its arms, parked its artillery and furled its flags for the last time at Appomattox Court House, Va.
The bloody Civil War had at long last come to an end with a handshake in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house.
It was the first time the two opposing generals, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, had met since their days as young Army officers serving in Mexico during the Mexican War. “Though Marylanders live just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, their attitudes and even their accents straddle that border,” Witte wrote.
These days, leaders feel they have more in common with states to the north.
In one sign of the shift, lawmakers successfully petitioned to move from the Southern Region of the Council of State Governments to the Eastern Region, where they’ll be able to trade ideas with fellow officials from Pennsylvania, New York, and other states they consider more like-minded,” he wrote.
State lawmakers such as Sen. Catherine E. Pugh, a Baltimore Democrat, told Witte, “I just don’t think we’re as Southern as people used to think” while Robert J. Brugger, author of “Maryland, a Middle Temperament 1634-1980,” who is regional book editor for the Johns Hopkins Press, said, “It’s still too bad, inasmuch as Maryland really is North and South.
About every decade or so, that old chestnut of whether we’re residents of the Frostbelt or Sunbelt is dragged out of mothballs, and after the winter that just ended, folks might feel it’s the former.
But wait.
The searing heat and humidity of the coming Maryland summer is surely lurking in the furnace room of hell, and when it arrives, it can be just as horrifically uncomfortable as that found in such latitudes as Charleston’s Catfish Row or along the Mississippi Delta.
But regional distinctions and diversity are more than just simply weather-related. They’re about attitudes. Ethnicity. Social customs. Food. Business outlook. Regional interests. Geographic diversity. Maryland is in many ways three states in one – all below the Mason-Dixon line, to be sure.
Residents of far off Western Maryland, closer to Pittsburgh than Baltimore, tend to follow those professional sports teams.
I remember being at Deep Creek Lake in the early 1980s trying to find a Baltimore newspaper and instead being confronted with stacks of Pittsburgh papers.
The Eastern Shore looks to the South, while the central part of the state looks every which way on the compass, it seems.
And just because we find ourselves below the Mason-Dixon line doesn’t make us Southern. It was the 1861 arrival of Gen. Benjamin F. “Beast” Butler that “effectively squelched the strong popular movement designed to sweep Maryland into the Lost Cause of the Confederate States of America,” wrote Gerald W.
Johnson, the Baltimore historian, author and essayist, in a 1978 article in The Baltimore Sun. And when the Civil War ended, its “immediate effect was to reduce Baltimore for 40 years to something closely resembling the Biblical Abomination of Desolation by the utter destruction of this city’s most profitable trading area, the Southeastern states from Virginia to Florida, and along the Gulf Coast to New Orleans,” wrote Johnson.
The rise of the modern South in the 20th century with its industries, railroads, universities and burgeoning financial centers like Richmond, Va., Charlotte and Winston-Salem, N.C., and Atlanta helped reduce the South’s dependence on Yankee manufactured goods and capital.
The Old South was transformed from its old economic base and dependence on cotton and tobacco that was shipped to Northern factories to be turned into saleable goods.
I remember visiting Charleston.S.C., with an old newspaper colleague and friend about 10 years ago, and at dinner one night, I decided to order a Manhattan cocktail.
“You can’t do that in Charleston. Why that’s heresy,” he said, sounding a little like Rhett Butler.
When the waitress came to our table to take our cocktail order, I told her I was about to commit a major sin, according to my friend, against the South and particularly Charleston, by ordering a Manhattan.
In an exquisite and lovely Low Country drawl, and without any apparent deliberation, she replied, “That’s all right, Mistuh, the Yankees own Chahhhhlstinn.”
“Baltimore once was
clearly
a Southern city – with all of the pride of the South and all its prejudices,” wrote Carl Schoettler, an Evening Sun reporter, in 1977.
“But sometime after World War II the Southern-ness of Baltimore began thinning out like the quality of rye whiskey. Baltimore was becoming more and more like any other city on the Eastern seaboard.
North
–
eastern, at that,” he wrote.
It was Schoettler’s conviction that the Old South lingered on in Baltimore in the “hallowed Virginia accents of the remotest upper classes, in the collard greens at Lexington Market and in the memories of the ladies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.”
In 2005, Frank R. Shivers Jr., a Bolton Hill author and historian, repeated for Style Magazine what John F. Kennedy said about Washington and implied the same could be said of Baltimore: “Washington is a town of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.” In 1956, a Tennessee woman wrote to the State Department of Information asking whether Maryland was a Northern or Southern state.
The department told her to draw her own conclusion based on the following (which was reprinted in The Baltimore Sun at the time): 1.
Maryland lies south of the Mason and Dixon Line.” 2.
Only eleven states in the country produce maple syrup; Maryland is the southernmost state that produces this product.” 3.
“Almost all Southern states have cypress swamps. Maryland has the northernmost cypress swamp.” 4. “Many Northern and Southern states produce tobacco; so does Maryland.” 5. “Virginia pines grow in most Southern states; hemlock trees grow in most Northern states; Maryland produces both.” 6.
The mockingbird is considered a Southern bird; there are many in Maryland.’ 7.
Fried chicken is considered a Southern delicacy; Maryland fried chicken is world famous.” 8.
During the War Between the States, sometimes called the Civil War, Maryland had troops in both the Union and Confederate armies.” 9.
“Maryland’s 175th Infantry is authorized to carry the Confederate flag.” 10. “Maryland belongs to the Southern Governor’s Conference.” 11. “Maryland belongs to both the Northern and Southern Regional Park Conference.” 12. “Maryland belongs to the Federal Government’s Eastern Coastal Migratory Bird Flyway.” 13.
At Gettysburg, there are monuments to the Maryland Regiment, U.S.A, and the Maryland Regiment, C.S.A.” 14.
At Antietam battlefield, sometimes called Sharpsburg, there is a monument to the memory of the men of Maryland ‘who died here for their convictions.’ ” The department added at the end: “Most Marylanders find it difficult to answer the question.
Some consider themselves Southerners; others as Northerners. Perhaps the truth lives between the extremes.” : Are we Northern? Southern? Yes.
Why is Maryland not a southern state?
October 26, 2021 / 1:36 PM / CBS Baltimore BALTIMORE, Md. (WJZ) – Is Maryland more northern or southern? The answer to that question depends on whom you ask, but most Marylanders say it’s northern. That’s according to the results of a new Goucher College poll, which shows 65% of residents consider Maryland a northern state, more than double the 27% who view it as a southern state.
While the responses seem fairly cut-and-dried, the state’s history is a little bit more complicated.
Maryland actually sits below the Mason-Dixon Line, which divided free states in the north from their slave-owning counterparts in the south during the Civil War era.
For decades, the state’s song was James Ryder Randall’s “Maryland, My Maryland,” which called Abraham Lincoln a “tyrant.” In May, Gov.
Larry Hogan signed into law a bill scrapping the tune, But ultimately, the consensus among residents from all walks of life – regardless of age, gender, race, and political stance – is that Maryland is a northern state. Among other things, the Goucher College poll found most residents support marijuana legalization and they view Gov.
In: Maryland
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Did Maryland support the Confederacy?
A House Divided – During the months leading up to the Civil War, Maryland stood as a house divided. Although it was a slaveholding state, Maryland did not secede. The majority of the population living north and west of Baltimore held loyalties to the Union, while most citizens living on larger farms in the southern and eastern areas of the state were sympathetic to the Confederacy.
On April 19, 1861.
Just five days after the Union surrendered Fort Sumter, South Carolina, tensions in Baltimore exploded in violence.
President Lincoln had ordered Federal troops to move to Washington, D.C.
To defend the capital.
Baltimore’s Confederate sympathizers attacked Massachusetts soldiers en route along the Pratt Street waterfront.
The war’s first casualties fell in Baltimore’s streets. The Baltimore: A House Divided Civil War Trail is a one-and-a-half mile walking tour that traces the steps of the Massachusetts regiment and the events that led to bloodshed. Order or view Civil War trail maps
Why did Lee invade Maryland?
General Robert E. Lee Library of Congress By September 3rd, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia numbered some 70,000 troops, but logistically the army was in possibly the worst condition it would be in during the entire war. Most of the men were poorly fed and clothed, which contributed to long sick lists.
Exhaustion combined with chronically short and poor rations encouraged massive straggling, and the army leaked thousands of stragglers as it moved across Maryland. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis chose to invade Maryland, partly based on the belief that the people of the state would support them.
Maryland was a so-called “Border State”: a slave state that remained in the Union. Subject to Federal occupation and the suspension of habeas corpus, Lee hoped that the people would take this opportunity to rally to the Southern Cause. Unfortunately for Lee, his ragged army received a cooler reception than they had hoped for after crossing the Potomac River and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and marching into Frederick.
Only a few Marylanders joined the Confederate ranks. Eager to strike a meaningful blow, Lee held a council of war on the 9th of September with Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson at the Best Farm, a few miles south of Frederick. There, Lee formulated a plan to divide his army and force the evacuation of Union forces from Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry.
By clearing out the Federals, Lee insured communication and resupply through the Shenandoah Valley. With those goals achieved, he could reconsolidate his army and march further north into Pennsylvania. There, Lee hope he could force a decisive battle with Union Gen.
When did Confederates invade Maryland?
Campaign
Maryland Campaign and Battle of Antietam
Date
Campaign: September 4–20, 1862 ; Battle: September 17, 1862
Location
Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown Ford, Virginia; South Mountain and Sharpsburg, Maryland
Combatants
United States
Confederacy
Was Missouri a Confederate state?
The Confederacy recognized Missouri as its twelfth state, but Missouri did not leave the Union. The Battle of Island Mound, a small skirmish that took place on October 29, 1862 in Bates County, marked the first time Black soldiers saw combat in the Civil War.
Why do people think Maryland is the South?
Online Work Online Etymology Dictionary The Sciolist Slavery in the North Civil War Writing Civil War Causes Economics It’s often said that the American Civil War was entirely and only about slavery. Is there another view? Yankee Canards Was the ante-bellum South a primitive, backwards, illiterate, violent culture? Mulattoes Numbers and significance of the Southern mulatto population Northern Racism De Tocqueville observed that “race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known” Slavery as History How can you make an honest inquiry into American slavery without understanding the mindset of slave-owners? How can you do that without being yourself a racist? Rebel View Early 19th century American politics and political culture as it was seen by many Southerners Lincoln Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest writer in American political history. Writers are great, in part, because of their ability to disguise what they really intend. Lincoln and Race “You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” Thaddeus Stevens The life and times of Pennsylvania’s fiery anti-Southern Congressman Sidelights on Christiana The Christiana Riot of 1851 is sometimes described at the first skirmish of the Civil War 1860 Election Even if all the Democrats had united behind one candidate, the Northern regional ticket would have won Secession The wire-pulling over the Morrill tariff bill in 1860 showed the party of the abolitionists cynically using a legitimate government mechanism to gain power in a presidential election. Legal Issues Secession was legal under the Constitution, based on its ratification by the states in 1787 and 1788 Cornerstone Speech Alexander Stephens “Cornerstone Speech” in context. Upper South “States rights” is dismissed as a red herring argument, yet the Upper South states seem to have left the Union for this reason. What Cost Union? Lincoln saved the union, but at a terrible cost to America’s democracy and culture of freedom. CONFEDERATE WAR Up from History The evolving historical view of the American Civil War. Soldiers and War Responding to the slander against Southern military effort. Why the South Lost Was Northern victory inevitable? War Effort The South put forth a tremendous effort for independence. The Southern Press Journalism and Southern civil liberties. Desertion An examination of the myth of massive Southern desertion. A Closer Look Desertion by the numbers; case studies North and South. Ella Lonn The original study of desertion in the Civil War. Conscription Southern conscription was the first attempt to create a modern military system. Draft of 1862 An overlooked draft in the North that was underway almost simultaneously with the first rebel conscription. Albert B. Moore An important source for the “South against the South” thesis. Maryland The Lincoln Administration’s crackdown on Maryland. Occupied Maryland A sampling of federal documents dealing with martial law in Maryland. Maryland Peace Party A pamphlet from the anti-government forces in Maryland. Habeas Corpus The suspension of Habeas Corpus in the North by the Lincoln administration during the war. Copperhead A Northern newspaper editor fights the administration after it closes down his press in response to anti-government articles. “Keystone Confederates” Some Pennsylvanians fought for the South during the Civil War. AFTER THE WAR Southern Populists “You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars you both.” Coatesville Lynching Zach Walker was burned alive by a white mob in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. York Riots A little-known but violent 1960s race riot in York, Pennsylvania. New South Slavery, racism, and segregation were national experiences. New Lost Cause A native-born Southern white woman worked with native-born Southerners, black and white, with a shared sense of decency, to accomplishing the work of desegregation in Mississippi. Flag dispute From 1879 to 1956, the Georgia state flag was essentially the “Stars and Bars.” If you were going to link any state flag with slavery, that would be the one. Jonathan Kozol “So two-tenths of 1 percent marks the difference between legally enforced apartheid in the South 50 years ago, and socially and economically enforced apartheid in New York today” BIBLIOGRAPHY sources consulted
MARYLAND, WHOSE MARYLAND? When I insist that Maryland is a “Southern” state, my Georgia-born girlfriend only smiles and gives me that patronizing “poor, deluded man” look. But, though it may not be considered so in Georgia or Alabama, Maryland is a “southern” state by virtue of being below the Mason-Dixon Line and having a large slave population – 87,189 according to the 1860 census. We’re accustomed to thinking in terms of “states,” for obvious reasons, but thinking on that scale doesn’t allow an accurate picture on the level of communities, families, individuals. It’s possible to speak in broad terms of four regions in Maryland, which renders its behavior more comprehensible.1. Southern Maryland, the nucleus of the colony, founded as a refuge for English Catholics (the counties are mostly named for saints) was, in 1860, a declining region of slave-labor-reliant tobacco plantations with a stagnant economy and a drooping population.2. The Eastern Shore (birthplace of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman) was so isolated from the rest of the state that it sometimes talked of breaking off and uniting with Delaware. The convoluted coastline of that drowned river valley made a natural haven for smuggling and bred a generally defiant sort of local culture. It had been settled upward from the mouth of the bay in the 17th century, and was united by ethnic and economic ties with Tidewater Virginia. The number of slaves there had been declining, as the economy diversified from tobacco into fruit-growing, and the free black population was large and economically important. Legislative attempts to restrict the economic freedom of blacks in Maryland were thwarted by slave-owning Eastern Shore men, who knew the importance of black freemen to their region. I should mention that my ancestors were among the Eastern Shore slaveowners who set their chattels free in the period 1790-1840, though the results were not happy.3. The western end of the state, the Catoctin Mountain valleys and rolling farmland, had been settled by people who had arrived there through Pennsylvania, largely of German ancestry, and it retains its cultural affinity to the North. There were few slaves here.4. In the middle of it all was Baltimore, which was the fourth largest city in America in 1860 (behind New York and Brooklyn, which were separate entities then, and Philadelphia) with 212,418 inhabitants. Its industry surpassed that of any other Southern city. Its port shipped coal from the western counties and textiles from the city’s mills as well as tobacco and grain. A visitor who had arrived in 1860 later recalled that “Baltimore had Northern characteristics of finance and commerce which greatly resembled Philadelphia, New York or Boston, but culturally and socially Baltimore had Southern ties which were most evident.” It reminds me of John F. Kennedy’s quip about Washington, D.C.: “A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” The city in 1860 had 52,000 foreign-born residents – 28 percent of the total white population. It had been a hotbed of Know-Nothingism in the 1850s. It had 25,000 free blacks as well as 2,218 slaves. For various reasons, Lincoln was not a serious candidate in Maryland in the 1860 election. He got only 1,211 votes statewide, though I don’t know whether there was any one county where, as someone has suggested, he got no votes. It is possible, and if there was such a county, Charles is a good candidate. Instead, the contest was between Bell and Breckenridge, or, as it was commonly expressed in the newspapers of the day, “Bell and Union, Breckenridge and Disunion.” The discredited state of the Know-Nothing movement in Baltimore seems to have been the deciding factor, however, and it cost Bell (who was not sufficiently distant from it) the Baltimore vote. Breckenridge carried the state, but his margin was less than 1 percent. In the crisis after Lincoln’s election and the S.C. secession, Maryland tried to steer a neutral course. Despite widespread Southern sympathy, the state had a “latent unionism,” in the words of one historian. It also faced the prospect of being the principal battlefield, if war was to come. It was an off-year for the legislature, and the governor was a wiley character named Thomas H. Hicks, a slaveowner from the Eastern Shore who had at one time or another belonged to every major party in the state. He pursued a policy of “masterly inactivity” in declining to call a special session of the legislature. Between the election and the Sumter attack, state committees called for a convention of border states, actively supported the Crittenden Compromise (which would have restored the Union with a constitutional guarantee of slavery) and sent delegates to the Washington peace conference in February, 1861. On April 19, the first large contingents of Union soldiers (about 2,000) entered Baltimore by train, on their way to protect Washington, D.C. They had to change stations from the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore line to the B&O, which entailed marching from President Street to Camden Street, and along the way the 6th Mass. regiment was attacked by a secessionist mob that was a mix of “wharf rats” who would fight anyone, for any reason, and some of the leading citizens of the city. In the gunfight that followed the Massachusetts troop lost 42 killed and wounded and 12 citizens lay dead and scores were injured. That’s where the song comes in. James Ryder Randall, a Baltimore native then teaching in Louisiana, read about the incident in the New Orleans “Delta” newspaper, and saw in the list of wounded citizens the name of his old college roommate Francis X. Ward (Georgetown ’59), a prominent lawyer who had led the citizens’ charge on the regiment. In his indignation, Randall hastily penned a poem about the subjugation of his home state, which was published in a Louisiana newspaper a few days later, soon set to music, and, as “Maryland, My Maryland” became a favorite rallying tune for pro-Southerners in the state. It is rather inflammatory, as a state song (the “Northern scum” line, especially), but I don’t find anything particularly racist in it. Perhaps someone else can. I The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! II Hark to an exiled son’s appeal, Maryland! My mother State! to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life or death, for woe or weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird they beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! III Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll’s sacred trust, Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,- And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland! My Maryland! IV Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray, With Watson’s blood at Monterey, With fearless Lowe and dashing May, Maryland! My Maryland! V Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come to thine own anointed throng, Stalking with Liberty along, And sing thy dauntless slogan song, Maryland! My Maryland! VI Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain- Sic semper! ’tis the proud refrain That baffles minions back amain, Maryland! Arise in majesty again, Maryland! My Maryland! VII I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek, From hill to fill, from creek to creek, Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland! My Maryland! VIII Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the shot, the blade, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the Soul, Maryland! My Maryland! IX I hear the distant thunder-hum, Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb- Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come! Maryland! My Maryland! George W. Brown, Baltimore’s mayor, was a non-partisan reform politician who had run against the corrupt Know-Nothing organization and fought mob rule in the city. He denounced disunion and personally stood at the head of the Northern troops as they marched through the furious crowd of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, risking his life to preserve order. Of Maryland, he wrote after the war: “Her sympathies were divided between the North and the South, with a decided preponderance on the Southern side.” Lincoln’s proclamation calling for militia after Ft. Sumter was received “in Maryland with mingled feelings in which astonishment, dismay and disapprobation were predominant. On all sides it was agreed that the result must be war, or a dissolution of the Union, and I may safely say that a large majority of our people preferred the latter.” “After the President’s proclamation was issued, no doubt a large majority of her people sympathized with the South; but even had that sentiment been far more preponderating, there was an underlying feeling that by a sort of geographical necessity her lot was cast with the North, that the larger and stronger half of the nation would not allow its capital to be quietly disintegrated away by her secession.” The men who tried to lead Maryland into secession were not a solid set of die-hard slavery advocates. Slavery in Maryland was a moribund institution. A meeting in favor of secession, held April 18 in Baltimore’s Taylor Hall, was chaired by T. Parkin Scott, who “was a strong sympathizer with the South,” Brown wrote, “and had the courage of his convictions, but he had been also an opponent of slavery, and I have it from his own lips that years before the war, on a Fourth of July, he had persuaded his mother to liberate all her slaves, although she depended largely on their services for her support. And yet he lived and died a poor man.” The federal government felt sufficiently unsure of Maryland’s allegiance that it issued an April 27, 1861, order for the arrest and detention of anyone between Washington and Philadelphia who was suspected of subversive deeds or utterances, with its notorious suspension of habeas corpus. This led to the Merryman case, and the Supreme Court’s failure to get the authorities to enforce its rejection of the administration’s move. Hicks then called the legislature in the northwest part of the state, where unionism was strongest. Though the legislature did not vote to secede, it approved a resolution calling for “the peaceful and immediate recognition of the independence of the Confederate States,” which Maryland “hereby gives her cordial consent thereunto, as a member of the Union.” The legislature also denounced “the present military occupation of Maryland” as a “flagrant violation of the Constitution.” When Roger Brook Taney, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, dared to stand up to Lincoln over the arbitrary imprisonment of Maryland citizens, Lincoln wrote out standing orders for Taney’s arrest, although they were never served. But when the Maryland legislature lodged a sharp protest with Congress, Seward ordered a lightning raid across the state that jailed 31 legislators, the marshal of the Baltimore City Police Force and the Board of Police Commissioners, Mayor Brown, a former Maryland governor, members of the House of Delegates from Baltimore City and County, the 4th District congressman, a state senator and newspaper editors (including Francis Scott Key’s grandson). Ft. McHenry (of “Star Spangled Banner” fame) had a darker chapter in these days as the “Baltimore Bastille.” Many of those arrested by federal officials were never charged with crimes and never received trials. In the fall, Lincoln arrested allegedly disloyal members of the state legislature (Sept.12-17, 1861), to prevent them from attending a meeting that could have voted on secession. But Maryland was not really safely in the Union until the November state elections. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested known Democrats and any disunionist who attempted to vote. The special three-day furlough granted to Maryland troops in the Union army, so they could go home and vote, further rigged the election. The result, not surprisingly, was a solidly pro-Union legislature. The next year, state judges instructed grand jurors to inquire into the elections, but the judges were arrested and thrown into military prisons. Maryland rewrote its constitution to outlaw slavery in 1864, and put it to popular vote on Oct.13 of that year. It passed, but just barely, with 30,174 in favor of the change and 29,799 opposed. As for military records, the most reliable figures seem to be 60,000 Maryland men in all branches of the Union military, and 25,000 as an upper limit for Marylanders fighting for the South. Exiles organized a “Maryland Line” for the Confederacy, consisting of one infantry regiment, one infantry battalion, two cavalry battalions and four battalions of artillery. A great many Marylanders, however, were dispersed among other Southern units, especially those of Virginia (Co.H, 7th Va.; Co.B., 9th Va.; Co.G., 13th Va.; Co.B., 21st Va.; Co. E, 30th Va.; Co. E, 44th Va., and so forth). Kevin Conley Ruffner’s “Maryland’s Blue & Gray” lists 23 Confederate unites, other than the Maryland Line, in which Marylanders fought in significant numbers. There was no official recruiting of Southern regiments in Maryland, of course, and the infrastructure of bounties and relief, so essential in a long war, was unavailable to Maryland men who fought on the side of the South. It may also matter, when considering the enlistment figures, that Union Maryland troops were often raised with the express intention of being kept within the state, as home guards. A sense of unreliability tainted the Northern Maryland regiments. The general in charge of the prison camp at Annapolis wrote to the War Department requesting a regiment for guard duty there, but added that he would “prefer to have from a free state, or at least not a Maryland regiment, which might be likely to sympathize with deserters and affiliate with the people around them.” And in 1864 a colonel complained that the Maryland troops guarding the lower Potomac were “too lenient toward blockade runners and secessionists who keep good liquor.” Occupied Maryland Maryland documents 1. It is surprising to me how rarely this is mentioned. I’ve only seen it twice: in Frederick S. Calhoun’s official history, “The Lawmen: United States Marshals and Their Deputies” (Penguin, 1991, pp.102-104) and Harold M. Hyman, “A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution” (Knopf, 1973, p.84). Their sources are two different manuscript collections, which makes the claim that much more reliable.
“When misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.” -Lionel Trilling
Do Maryland people have Southern accents?
Maryland still has regional accents, not necessarily Southern. People in the Southern States consider Maryland’s accent t
Who supported the north in the Civil War?
United States of America
1861–1865
Flag (1861-1863) Seal
Map of the division of the states in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Northern free states loyal to the United States Southern slave states which seceded and formed the Confederacy Southern slave states which remained in the Union ( border states ) and West Virginia U.S. territories, with the exception of the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma )
Status
Rump state
Capital
Washington D.C.
Common languages
English
Dutch
German
Indigenous American languages
Various other minor languages
Religion
Majority: Protestantism Minority: Catholicism Judaism Native American religions
Government
Federal presidential constitutional republic
President
• 1861–1865
Abraham Lincoln
• 1865
Andrew Johnson
Speaker of the House
• 1861–1863
Galusha A. Grow
• 1863–1865
Schuyler Colfax
Chief Justice
• 1861–1864
Roger B. Taney
• 1864–1865
Salmon P. Chase
Legislature
United States Congress
• Upper House
Senate
• Lower House
House of Representatives
Historical era
American Civil War
• Southern states declared secession
1860–1861
• Abraham Lincoln inauguration
March 4, 1861
• Battle of Fort Sumter
April 12–13, 1861
• Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863
• Savannah campaign
1864
• New York City draft riots
July 13–16, 1863
• Appomattox campaign
March 1865
• Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
April 14, 1865
• Ceasefire Agreement of the Confederacy
April 9–November 6 1865
Currency
United States Dollar
Today part of
United States
During the American Civil War, the Union, also known as the North, referred to the United States led by President Abraham Lincoln, It was opposed by the secessionist Confederate States of America (CSA), informally called “the Confederacy” or ” the South,” The Union is named after its declared goal of preserving the United States as a constitutional union.
“Union” is used in the U.S. Constitution to refer to the founding formation of the people, and to the states in union. In the context of the Civil War, it has also often been used as a synonym for “the northern states loyal to the United States government;” in this meaning, the Union consisted of 20 free states and five border states,
The Union Army was a new formation comprising mostly state units, together with units from the regular U.S. Army, The border states were essential as a supply base for the Union invasion of the Confederacy, and Lincoln realized he could not win the war without control of them, especially Maryland, which lay north of the national capital of Washington, D.C.
The Northeast and upper Midwest provided the industrial resources for a mechanized war producing large quantities of munitions and supplies, as well as financing for the war. The Northeast and Midwest provided soldiers, food, horses, financial support, and training camps. Army hospitals were set up across the Union.
Most Northern states had Republican governors who energetically supported the war effort and suppressed anti-war subversion, particularly that that arose in 1863–64. The Democratic Party strongly supported the war at the beginning in 1861, but by 1862, was split between the War Democrats and the anti-war element known as Peace Democrats, led by the extremist ” Copperheads “.
The Democrats made major electoral gains in 1862 in state elections, most notably in New York. They lost ground in 1863, especially in Ohio. In 1864, the Republicans campaigned under the National Union Party banner, which attracted many War Democrats and soldiers and scored a landslide victory for Lincoln and his entire ticket against Democratic candidate George B.
McClellan, The war years were quite prosperous except where serious fighting and guerrilla warfare ravaged the countryside. Prosperity was stimulated by heavy government spending and the creation of an entirely new national banking system. The Union states invested a great deal of money and effort in organizing psychological and social support for soldiers’ wives, widows, and orphans, and for the soldiers themselves.
Why do people think Maryland is the South?
Online Work Online Etymology Dictionary The Sciolist Slavery in the North Civil War Writing Civil War Causes Economics It’s often said that the American Civil War was entirely and only about slavery. Is there another view? Yankee Canards Was the ante-bellum South a primitive, backwards, illiterate, violent culture? Mulattoes Numbers and significance of the Southern mulatto population Northern Racism De Tocqueville observed that “race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known” Slavery as History How can you make an honest inquiry into American slavery without understanding the mindset of slave-owners? How can you do that without being yourself a racist? Rebel View Early 19th century American politics and political culture as it was seen by many Southerners Lincoln Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the greatest writer in American political history. Writers are great, in part, because of their ability to disguise what they really intend. Lincoln and Race “You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” Thaddeus Stevens The life and times of Pennsylvania’s fiery anti-Southern Congressman Sidelights on Christiana The Christiana Riot of 1851 is sometimes described at the first skirmish of the Civil War 1860 Election Even if all the Democrats had united behind one candidate, the Northern regional ticket would have won Secession The wire-pulling over the Morrill tariff bill in 1860 showed the party of the abolitionists cynically using a legitimate government mechanism to gain power in a presidential election. Legal Issues Secession was legal under the Constitution, based on its ratification by the states in 1787 and 1788 Cornerstone Speech Alexander Stephens “Cornerstone Speech” in context. Upper South “States rights” is dismissed as a red herring argument, yet the Upper South states seem to have left the Union for this reason. What Cost Union? Lincoln saved the union, but at a terrible cost to America’s democracy and culture of freedom. CONFEDERATE WAR Up from History The evolving historical view of the American Civil War. Soldiers and War Responding to the slander against Southern military effort. Why the South Lost Was Northern victory inevitable? War Effort The South put forth a tremendous effort for independence. The Southern Press Journalism and Southern civil liberties. Desertion An examination of the myth of massive Southern desertion. A Closer Look Desertion by the numbers; case studies North and South. Ella Lonn The original study of desertion in the Civil War. Conscription Southern conscription was the first attempt to create a modern military system. Draft of 1862 An overlooked draft in the North that was underway almost simultaneously with the first rebel conscription. Albert B. Moore An important source for the “South against the South” thesis. Maryland The Lincoln Administration’s crackdown on Maryland. Occupied Maryland A sampling of federal documents dealing with martial law in Maryland. Maryland Peace Party A pamphlet from the anti-government forces in Maryland. Habeas Corpus The suspension of Habeas Corpus in the North by the Lincoln administration during the war. Copperhead A Northern newspaper editor fights the administration after it closes down his press in response to anti-government articles. “Keystone Confederates” Some Pennsylvanians fought for the South during the Civil War. AFTER THE WAR Southern Populists “You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars you both.” Coatesville Lynching Zach Walker was burned alive by a white mob in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. York Riots A little-known but violent 1960s race riot in York, Pennsylvania. New South Slavery, racism, and segregation were national experiences. New Lost Cause A native-born Southern white woman worked with native-born Southerners, black and white, with a shared sense of decency, to accomplishing the work of desegregation in Mississippi. Flag dispute From 1879 to 1956, the Georgia state flag was essentially the “Stars and Bars.” If you were going to link any state flag with slavery, that would be the one. Jonathan Kozol “So two-tenths of 1 percent marks the difference between legally enforced apartheid in the South 50 years ago, and socially and economically enforced apartheid in New York today” BIBLIOGRAPHY sources consulted
MARYLAND, WHOSE MARYLAND? When I insist that Maryland is a “Southern” state, my Georgia-born girlfriend only smiles and gives me that patronizing “poor, deluded man” look. But, though it may not be considered so in Georgia or Alabama, Maryland is a “southern” state by virtue of being below the Mason-Dixon Line and having a large slave population – 87,189 according to the 1860 census. We’re accustomed to thinking in terms of “states,” for obvious reasons, but thinking on that scale doesn’t allow an accurate picture on the level of communities, families, individuals. It’s possible to speak in broad terms of four regions in Maryland, which renders its behavior more comprehensible.1. Southern Maryland, the nucleus of the colony, founded as a refuge for English Catholics (the counties are mostly named for saints) was, in 1860, a declining region of slave-labor-reliant tobacco plantations with a stagnant economy and a drooping population.2. The Eastern Shore (birthplace of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman) was so isolated from the rest of the state that it sometimes talked of breaking off and uniting with Delaware. The convoluted coastline of that drowned river valley made a natural haven for smuggling and bred a generally defiant sort of local culture. It had been settled upward from the mouth of the bay in the 17th century, and was united by ethnic and economic ties with Tidewater Virginia. The number of slaves there had been declining, as the economy diversified from tobacco into fruit-growing, and the free black population was large and economically important. Legislative attempts to restrict the economic freedom of blacks in Maryland were thwarted by slave-owning Eastern Shore men, who knew the importance of black freemen to their region. I should mention that my ancestors were among the Eastern Shore slaveowners who set their chattels free in the period 1790-1840, though the results were not happy.3. The western end of the state, the Catoctin Mountain valleys and rolling farmland, had been settled by people who had arrived there through Pennsylvania, largely of German ancestry, and it retains its cultural affinity to the North. There were few slaves here.4. In the middle of it all was Baltimore, which was the fourth largest city in America in 1860 (behind New York and Brooklyn, which were separate entities then, and Philadelphia) with 212,418 inhabitants. Its industry surpassed that of any other Southern city. Its port shipped coal from the western counties and textiles from the city’s mills as well as tobacco and grain. A visitor who had arrived in 1860 later recalled that “Baltimore had Northern characteristics of finance and commerce which greatly resembled Philadelphia, New York or Boston, but culturally and socially Baltimore had Southern ties which were most evident.” It reminds me of John F. Kennedy’s quip about Washington, D.C.: “A city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” The city in 1860 had 52,000 foreign-born residents – 28 percent of the total white population. It had been a hotbed of Know-Nothingism in the 1850s. It had 25,000 free blacks as well as 2,218 slaves. For various reasons, Lincoln was not a serious candidate in Maryland in the 1860 election. He got only 1,211 votes statewide, though I don’t know whether there was any one county where, as someone has suggested, he got no votes. It is possible, and if there was such a county, Charles is a good candidate. Instead, the contest was between Bell and Breckenridge, or, as it was commonly expressed in the newspapers of the day, “Bell and Union, Breckenridge and Disunion.” The discredited state of the Know-Nothing movement in Baltimore seems to have been the deciding factor, however, and it cost Bell (who was not sufficiently distant from it) the Baltimore vote. Breckenridge carried the state, but his margin was less than 1 percent. In the crisis after Lincoln’s election and the S.C. secession, Maryland tried to steer a neutral course. Despite widespread Southern sympathy, the state had a “latent unionism,” in the words of one historian. It also faced the prospect of being the principal battlefield, if war was to come. It was an off-year for the legislature, and the governor was a wiley character named Thomas H. Hicks, a slaveowner from the Eastern Shore who had at one time or another belonged to every major party in the state. He pursued a policy of “masterly inactivity” in declining to call a special session of the legislature. Between the election and the Sumter attack, state committees called for a convention of border states, actively supported the Crittenden Compromise (which would have restored the Union with a constitutional guarantee of slavery) and sent delegates to the Washington peace conference in February, 1861. On April 19, the first large contingents of Union soldiers (about 2,000) entered Baltimore by train, on their way to protect Washington, D.C. They had to change stations from the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore line to the B&O, which entailed marching from President Street to Camden Street, and along the way the 6th Mass. regiment was attacked by a secessionist mob that was a mix of “wharf rats” who would fight anyone, for any reason, and some of the leading citizens of the city. In the gunfight that followed the Massachusetts troop lost 42 killed and wounded and 12 citizens lay dead and scores were injured. That’s where the song comes in. James Ryder Randall, a Baltimore native then teaching in Louisiana, read about the incident in the New Orleans “Delta” newspaper, and saw in the list of wounded citizens the name of his old college roommate Francis X. Ward (Georgetown ’59), a prominent lawyer who had led the citizens’ charge on the regiment. In his indignation, Randall hastily penned a poem about the subjugation of his home state, which was published in a Louisiana newspaper a few days later, soon set to music, and, as “Maryland, My Maryland” became a favorite rallying tune for pro-Southerners in the state. It is rather inflammatory, as a state song (the “Northern scum” line, especially), but I don’t find anything particularly racist in it. Perhaps someone else can. I The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! II Hark to an exiled son’s appeal, Maryland! My mother State! to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life or death, for woe or weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird they beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! III Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll’s sacred trust, Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,- And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland! My Maryland! IV Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray, With Watson’s blood at Monterey, With fearless Lowe and dashing May, Maryland! My Maryland! V Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come to thine own anointed throng, Stalking with Liberty along, And sing thy dauntless slogan song, Maryland! My Maryland! VI Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain- Sic semper! ’tis the proud refrain That baffles minions back amain, Maryland! Arise in majesty again, Maryland! My Maryland! VII I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek, From hill to fill, from creek to creek, Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland! My Maryland! VIII Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the shot, the blade, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the Soul, Maryland! My Maryland! IX I hear the distant thunder-hum, Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb- Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come! Maryland! My Maryland! George W. Brown, Baltimore’s mayor, was a non-partisan reform politician who had run against the corrupt Know-Nothing organization and fought mob rule in the city. He denounced disunion and personally stood at the head of the Northern troops as they marched through the furious crowd of Baltimore on April 19, 1861, risking his life to preserve order. Of Maryland, he wrote after the war: “Her sympathies were divided between the North and the South, with a decided preponderance on the Southern side.” Lincoln’s proclamation calling for militia after Ft. Sumter was received “in Maryland with mingled feelings in which astonishment, dismay and disapprobation were predominant. On all sides it was agreed that the result must be war, or a dissolution of the Union, and I may safely say that a large majority of our people preferred the latter.” “After the President’s proclamation was issued, no doubt a large majority of her people sympathized with the South; but even had that sentiment been far more preponderating, there was an underlying feeling that by a sort of geographical necessity her lot was cast with the North, that the larger and stronger half of the nation would not allow its capital to be quietly disintegrated away by her secession.” The men who tried to lead Maryland into secession were not a solid set of die-hard slavery advocates. Slavery in Maryland was a moribund institution. A meeting in favor of secession, held April 18 in Baltimore’s Taylor Hall, was chaired by T. Parkin Scott, who “was a strong sympathizer with the South,” Brown wrote, “and had the courage of his convictions, but he had been also an opponent of slavery, and I have it from his own lips that years before the war, on a Fourth of July, he had persuaded his mother to liberate all her slaves, although she depended largely on their services for her support. And yet he lived and died a poor man.” The federal government felt sufficiently unsure of Maryland’s allegiance that it issued an April 27, 1861, order for the arrest and detention of anyone between Washington and Philadelphia who was suspected of subversive deeds or utterances, with its notorious suspension of habeas corpus. This led to the Merryman case, and the Supreme Court’s failure to get the authorities to enforce its rejection of the administration’s move. Hicks then called the legislature in the northwest part of the state, where unionism was strongest. Though the legislature did not vote to secede, it approved a resolution calling for “the peaceful and immediate recognition of the independence of the Confederate States,” which Maryland “hereby gives her cordial consent thereunto, as a member of the Union.” The legislature also denounced “the present military occupation of Maryland” as a “flagrant violation of the Constitution.” When Roger Brook Taney, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, dared to stand up to Lincoln over the arbitrary imprisonment of Maryland citizens, Lincoln wrote out standing orders for Taney’s arrest, although they were never served. But when the Maryland legislature lodged a sharp protest with Congress, Seward ordered a lightning raid across the state that jailed 31 legislators, the marshal of the Baltimore City Police Force and the Board of Police Commissioners, Mayor Brown, a former Maryland governor, members of the House of Delegates from Baltimore City and County, the 4th District congressman, a state senator and newspaper editors (including Francis Scott Key’s grandson). Ft. McHenry (of “Star Spangled Banner” fame) had a darker chapter in these days as the “Baltimore Bastille.” Many of those arrested by federal officials were never charged with crimes and never received trials. In the fall, Lincoln arrested allegedly disloyal members of the state legislature (Sept.12-17, 1861), to prevent them from attending a meeting that could have voted on secession. But Maryland was not really safely in the Union until the November state elections. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested known Democrats and any disunionist who attempted to vote. The special three-day furlough granted to Maryland troops in the Union army, so they could go home and vote, further rigged the election. The result, not surprisingly, was a solidly pro-Union legislature. The next year, state judges instructed grand jurors to inquire into the elections, but the judges were arrested and thrown into military prisons. Maryland rewrote its constitution to outlaw slavery in 1864, and put it to popular vote on Oct.13 of that year. It passed, but just barely, with 30,174 in favor of the change and 29,799 opposed. As for military records, the most reliable figures seem to be 60,000 Maryland men in all branches of the Union military, and 25,000 as an upper limit for Marylanders fighting for the South. Exiles organized a “Maryland Line” for the Confederacy, consisting of one infantry regiment, one infantry battalion, two cavalry battalions and four battalions of artillery. A great many Marylanders, however, were dispersed among other Southern units, especially those of Virginia (Co.H, 7th Va.; Co.B., 9th Va.; Co.G., 13th Va.; Co.B., 21st Va.; Co. E, 30th Va.; Co. E, 44th Va., and so forth). Kevin Conley Ruffner’s “Maryland’s Blue & Gray” lists 23 Confederate unites, other than the Maryland Line, in which Marylanders fought in significant numbers. There was no official recruiting of Southern regiments in Maryland, of course, and the infrastructure of bounties and relief, so essential in a long war, was unavailable to Maryland men who fought on the side of the South. It may also matter, when considering the enlistment figures, that Union Maryland troops were often raised with the express intention of being kept within the state, as home guards. A sense of unreliability tainted the Northern Maryland regiments. The general in charge of the prison camp at Annapolis wrote to the War Department requesting a regiment for guard duty there, but added that he would “prefer to have from a free state, or at least not a Maryland regiment, which might be likely to sympathize with deserters and affiliate with the people around them.” And in 1864 a colonel complained that the Maryland troops guarding the lower Potomac were “too lenient toward blockade runners and secessionists who keep good liquor.” Occupied Maryland Maryland documents 1. It is surprising to me how rarely this is mentioned. I’ve only seen it twice: in Frederick S. Calhoun’s official history, “The Lawmen: United States Marshals and Their Deputies” (Penguin, 1991, pp.102-104) and Harold M. Hyman, “A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution” (Knopf, 1973, p.84). Their sources are two different manuscript collections, which makes the claim that much more reliable.
“When misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.” -Lionel Trilling
Did Delaware fight for the north or South?
Delaware in the Civil War – Slavery had been a divisive issue in Delaware for decades before the American Civil War began. Opposition to slavery in Delaware, imported from Quaker -dominated Pennsylvania, led many slaveowners to free their slaves; half of the state’s black population was free by 1810, and more than 90% were free by 1860.
This trend also led pro-slavery legislators to restrict free black organizations, and the constabulary in Wilmington was accused of harsh enforcement of runaway slave laws while many Delawareans kidnapped free blacks among the large communities throughout the state and sold them to plantations further south.
During the Civil War, Delaware was a slave state that remained in the Union, (Delaware voters voted not to secede on January 3, 1861.) Delaware had been the first state to embrace the Union by ratifying the Constitution, and would be the last to leave it, according to Delaware’s governor at the time. Fort Delaware, circa 1870 by Seth Eastman (1808 – 1875). By 1862, Fort Delaware, a harbor defense facility that was located on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River and had been designed by chief engineer Joseph Gilbert Totten circa 1819, was pressed into service as a prison for Confederate prisoners of war, political prisoners, federal convicts, and privateer officers.
The first prisoners of war (POWs) were confined in the fort’s interior in casemates, empty powder magazines, or one of two small rooms in the sally port. The first general from the Confederate States of America to be housed at the fort was Brig. Gen.J. Johnston Pettigrew, Prison conditions were initially “tolerable,” according to research conducted by students at the University of Delaware,
“In its first year of operation in 1862, the population varied from 3,434 prisoners in July to only 123 later that year due to routine prisoner exchanges between the North and the South.” But by the summer of 1863, following multiple military engagements including July’s Battle of Gettysburg, “the fort’s population had swollen to over 12,000 due to the influx of prisoners from the battles at Vicksburg and Gettysburg,” a change in numbers which soon began to negatively impact the quality of life for POWs.
As realization dawned that more housing would be needed for the increasing number of POWs captured by Union troops, officials at the fort embarked on a construction program in 1862, building barracks for enlisted men which came to be known as the “bull pen.” A 600-bed hospital was also built, as were barracks for the Union soldiers who would be brought in to guard the increasing POW ranks.
The first Confederate prisoner to die at Fort Delaware was Captain L.P. Halloway of the 27th Virginia Infantry, Captured at Winchester, Virginia on March 23, 1862, he died at the fort on April 9. By the end of the war, the fort had held almost 33,000 prisoners, roughly 2,500 of whom died as the conditions continued to deteriorate.
Half of the deaths were reportedly due to an outbreak of variola (smallpox) in 1863. Other causes of death included: diarrhea (315), inflammation of the lungs (243), typhoid fever and/or malaria (215), scurvy (70), pneumonia (61), erysipelas (47), gunshot wounds (7), and drowning (5). In addition, 109 Union soldiers and 40 civilians also died at the fort during the war.
Among the political prisoners held at Fort Delaware was the Rev. Issac W.K. Handy, who had commented in December 1863 that the Civil War had tarnished one of the nation’s most cherished symbols, the American flag. Arrested for comments made during a dinner, he was jailed without trial and, because habeas corpus had been suspended by this time during the war, he was then held at the fort for 15 months.
Two months before the end of the Civil War, on February 8, 1865, Delaware voted to reject the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution and so voted to continue slavery beyond the Civil War.
The gesture proved futile when other states ratified the amendment, which took effect in December 1865 and thereby ended slavery in Delaware.
In a symbolic move, Delaware belatedly ratified the amendment on February 12, 1901 – 35 years after national ratification and 38 years after Lincoln ‘s Emancipation Proclamation, Delaware also rejected the 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment during the Reconstruction Era,
