Maryland, My Maryland

I enjoy studying maps. I especially enjoy maps of the ‘what-if’ scenarios if certain courses in history played out differently, but also the constant debate regarding cultural borders within the US. I frequently analyze the border of the cultural South, as I have cause to believe the South is shrinking faster than most would want to accept. This turf war is not a linear front in all cases. Transplants and migration of all types, notably in all urban areas, are tipping the scales for these regions into the ‘not-fully South’ category. Some transplants embrace the South, some do not.

I like to analyze where the cultural South exists regarding the linear front of Northern Virginia and Maryland – a sub region of the Upper South that used to be the cultural South definitively. An area that brought us Lee, Mason, Washington, Madison, Carroll, Paca, and many other founding fathers and independence leaders.

Volumes could be written as to when exactly Northern Virginia (NOVA) and Maryland ceased being an obvious sub-region of the South. A consensus lies around the 1940s1960s when Washington, DC became a destination city for an ever-growing government and secondary private economy. The northern-urban sprawl of central Maryland can be summarized well by Wendell Berry, “Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.” It was this ultimate labor conquest, whether for government or its local economic impact, that moved Maryland in most Americans’ minds from the South to that of regional ambiguity. Maryland is the South to a Northerner, the North to a Southerner. Those closer to the state view it as a transition zone comprising both cultures. The debate rages.

However, there are, or at least were, still recent holdouts of the older South in NOVA and

Maryland. My wife’s grandfather, Papa Jim as he was called, was one of the last “Southern” Marylanders that I know. He had the culinary tastes of a Southerner, as well as the other more important cultural traits such as respect of tradition, firm faith, and distrust of authority. His family was from the South since the founding of Jamestown and very early South and North Carolina. He was a descendant of two North Carolina colonial governors.

He lived the latter portion of his life on a beautiful piece of rural land in Anne Arundel County where the sunsets were unbeatable and there was nothing finer than smoking a cigar overlooking the perfectly manicured horse fields. Smoking cigars on the property was rather appropriate as so much of that area used to be tobacco farms – a farming practice that is still being held in some regions of southern Maryland.

Papa Jim had a habit of chewing cigars though. He smoked them occasionally but preferred chewing on them. His preferred brand for this was Dutch Masters. My mother-in-law had the pleasure of throwing away his chewed up Dutch Masters when he would leave them on the kitchen counter whenever he visited my in-law’s house. Whether this was intentional or he forgot to throw the chewed cigars away, as he was a relatively well-mannered man, is another debate.

Papa Jim used to own a portion of the Goodwood estate land in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. The original barn was on Papa Jim’s portion of land, while the Goodwood house was on a differently owned land. Goodwood was a 1799 home built by George Calvert and owned by Charles Henry Carter, a nephew and first cousin to Robert E, Lee. Lee wrote a few lines about the beauty of Goodwood and his pleasure in visiting the estate in his letters.

I visited this land several times and cannot confirm or deny if I visited the sadly dilapidated Goodwood house on one occasion. I’ll fondly remember watching the overweight, mid 80year-old Papa Jim struggling to climb over a fence to show me the outside of the house. My father-in-law would have kicked my you-know-what if I ‘let’ Papa Jim risk injury to show me the house. Papa Jim was an unmovable force. If he wanted to show you property, as he was 3rd generation realtor and developer, he was going to drive you to the property and show you.

You could tell before being subdivided and worn down that the Goodwood estate must have been spectacular. And given its role in the Calvert, Carter, and Lee family lives – it was an unquestionably Southern estate. Papa Jim drove me around southern and central Maryland to see all sorts of historic estates and houses. Some of these excursions could be considered trespassing, in other cases he knew the owner and saw no need to ask for permission to drive around their property. God forbid an old house or land became public and he wanted to visit it during off hours. I’ll also fondly remember a preventable verbal altercation that arose involving the phrase “I pay taxes for this place to exist” and “I’ll come when I please”. I witnessed this in the passenger seat of his old SUV. A rather large mid-80year-old makes a great figure for getting their way.

In an interesting story that also shows how our Civil War history is not that long ago, Papa

Jim spent some years researching post-Civil War subdivided plantation properties in Virginia and Maryland. These properties were subdivided willingly, or mandated to subdivide by the Freedman’s Bureau, for former slaves to farm or live on. By the 1940s and 1950s following the large migration of African Americans from rural areas into northern cities, the descendants of these former slaves abandoned their lands and forgot about them. Papa Jim would be contacted by land developers or neighboring property owners seeking to bring these subdivided properties into their farms or developments. He would research who was titled to these smaller properties and find where the current living descendants lived in Richmond, DC, or Baltimore. He would then broker the sale of these forgotten properties for the buyer and the descendants of whoever owned these properties last. He might have also bought some of the smaller properties himself then sold them independently.

In Richmond this business was doing so well that word got around that Papa Jim was known to carry large amounts of cash, as these deals were conducted in cash only. If I recall correctly, I believe the Richmond police notified Papa Jim that he was known in the community accordingly and to be careful. Papa Jim was scheduled to meet a new potential seller in an apartment complex in Richmond in the 1970s. He walked up the stairs to the apartment and knocked on the door. As the door was opening by the female seller, he saw the outline of two men somewhat hiding inside, one holding a shotgun behind the door. Papa Jim flew down the stairs and got to his car before anything consequential could happen. After this he ceased this subdivided land brokering side of his business focusing on real estate and development exclusively.

As an aside, regarding accent, Papa Jim had what I would consider a tidewater Virginia style accent, which still exists today. Some of the people living in North Carolina, where I live, who are from Virginia have the same accent. Papa Jim’s accent was very similar to the accent Robert Duvall portrays as Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals.

As a non-Marylander who lived in the DC region for four years, I’m partial to Maryland and have hopes for its continued Southern culture there. I was married in Annapolis in St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, where the church has a brass eagle lectern dedicated to Captain James Iredell Waddell (a well-known North Carolinian) of the CSS Shenandoah, the ship that circumnavigated the globe and didn’t surrender until November 1865. I’ve seen Confederate flags displayed on multiple middle- and upper-class houses in Anne Arundel County in the mid-2010s. I can extrapolate the prominence of the flag in the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland counties based on the not-exactly-Southern county of Anne Arundel. Papa Jim would likely declare Maryland to be part of the South, or at least his region.

Everything I mentioned above exists in the modern era. In the pre-1960s past, Maryland was absolutely considered the South in every regard. Leonard Calvert settled the 4th English colony in the New World at St. Mary’s City in 1634 arriving on the ship Ark and Dove. Maryland was a Chesapeake colony close in culture and economy to Jamestown, although Maryland had much greater religious freedom.

When reading about the Revolutionary War, a common theme in every theater of war is some display of bravery and heroism by one or several Maryland Regiments: The Battle of Brooklyn’s Immortal 400 (where Maryland gets its name the Old Line State), Camden, Guilford Courthouse, Eutaw Springs – to name a few. Davy Crockett’s mother’s side of the family was from Maryland. Maryland lies south of the Mason Dixon line. The Star-Spangled Banner came into life because of the brave defense of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, whose garrison commander was Confederate General Lewis Armistead’s uncle Major George Armistead.

Maryland produced only a couple infantry and cavalry regiments and artillery batteries for the Confederacy, but that was also largely due to the Eastern Shore and capitol region being taken over by the Federals quickly during the onset of the rebellion. Fearing secession, Lincoln arrested many of the Maryland legislature and hindered efforts for Maryland to hold the vote to secede, as he feared Maryland would. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in April 1861 following the Baltimore Riots.

As a result of such interference and obstacles, Maryland was ‘unable’ to vote for secession. Lincoln’s inaugural arrival to DC was stressful because he knew the region of Maryland, and their sentiment, that he was to travel through from Philadelphia.

Modern historians make several references to the number of Marylanders who fought for the Union to show that Maryland was not as pro-secession as claimed. However, there are also claims that these Union Maryland regiments were largely made up of recent immigrants and Pennsylvanians. The Union 3rd and 5th Maryland regiments come to mind. The 5th Maryland was all-German. This makes deciphering the actual pro v anti-secession sentiment difficult to generalize.

At best Maryland was split with the central, southern, and Eastern Shore counties likely pro-secession, and the western and northern counties likely pro-union – more like Appalachian western Virginia and East Tennessee at the time. Stonewall Jackson made good use of the 1st Maryland Regiment CSA in the Valley Campaign. And yet Lee didn’t attract as many Marylanders to his ranks as he had hoped for in his Maryland Campaign. The Facebook page Maryland is a Southern State posts interesting Maryland Civil War and Southern history from time to time.

Back to modern times, Maryland has its own distinct food ways with its use of crabs, crab boils, steamed crabs, crab soup, manner in which to eat crabs, annoyance at anyone mentioning eating crabs from any other state, dismissal of any non-Marylander’s crabcakes, etc. There may be a noticeable lack of sweet tea and less prevalence of BBQ restaurants, as the northern diner culture is more prevalent on that front, but that’s because today Maryland is a transition zone between the two regions. Maryland does have Pit Beef as a unique BBQ style though.

Amalgamating the hundreds of blogs, articles, posts, and self-created maps online, the consensus is that today the Eastern Shore and southern counties of Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert are part of the South. They tend to hold political and cultural views more in line with the South at large.

The accent in those regions, as I’ve heard, may not immediately come across as Southern as we know it today, but it is not Northern. It is likely a forgotten cousin of the Southern dialect spectrum. Or, as I consider some of Maryland’s accents like the Baltimore accent, a transition between coastal Virginia and Philadelphia accents. The people of Maryland around Annapolis reject being called Northerners. There’s even a slight disdain for making this accusation even if the resident is clearly a cultural Northerner (I’ve been the receiving end of this disdain).

All this to be said, I write this to shape Southern views and attitudes toward Maryland. It was once not a cultural transition zone, and the people there still rather dislike the notion of being a transition zone. The DC Capital region of Maryland, like NOVA, at this trajectory is lost to the Boston-Washington megalopolis and its culture. Western Maryland is Appalachia. The Eastern Shore and southern counties are remnants of the Old South with the transition zone of NOVA separating it from central Virginia.

The Northern Neck of Virginia not yet part of the DC metro area but I fear the sprawl encroaches. Maryland, outside its major cities in my humble opinion, is a beautiful place. I still consider Western Maryland to be one of the most scenic regions of the country. I could go on but my delineations here suffice.

Maryland and NOVA would still be undeniable regions of the South if that famous deal made in the ‘room where it happened’ (Compromise of 1790), moving the capital from Philadelphia to the new District of Columbia, didn’t happen. Yet this cultural loss is mostly due to transplants and the ever-growing Leviathan’s need for labor.

If only Jefferson and Madison could predict the implication of how one metro region could split a region in two, and greatly tilting their beloved Virginia into a rather binary politicalgeographic line, maybe some other deal with Hamilton would have been struck and Philadelphia would have remained the capital. Otherwise, I am unaware of or uncreative enough in devising ways to bring Maryland, or more parts of it, back into the cultural Southern realm.

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.

Matthew Conard

Matt Conard holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and a master's from North Carolina State University. He is a husband and father working in technology and is a self published author of the book Knights of Lebanon. Among other things he was a US Army officer, and is now becoming drawn into the Southern agrarian ideology - as it is the furthest thing from his known world despite living in a rural county in North Carolina.

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