Maryland’s Anti-Lincoln, Anti-statist State Song

No list of anti-statist music would be complete without the Maryland state song, composed by Maryland native James Ryder Randall while teaching at Poydras College in Louisiana on April 23, 1861. Outraged over Lincoln’s military invasion of Maryland, whick included the killing of civilians and the military arrest of the mayor of Baltimore, a congressman, anti-Lincoln newspaper editors, and much of the state legislature (in violation of the constitutional requirement that the states have a republican form of government), Randall composed the anti-Lincoln song “Maryland, My Maryland!” sung to the tune of the German folk song, “O Tannenbaum.” Here are some of the lyrics:

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at they temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore
Maryland! My Maryland!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dear Mother! burst thy 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 again,
Maryland, My Maryland!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I hear the distant thunder-hum
Maryland!
The Old Lines’ bugle, fife and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb,
Hazza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! She burns! She’ll come!
She’ll come!
Maryland, My Maryland!

Thanks to the success of government schooling in creating a society of morons, the vast majority of Marylanders have no idea that the “despot” whose heel was “on thy shore” is Abraham Lincoln.

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5:37 pm on September 29, 2003