Maryland was really screwed by Lincoln. He had the Maryland legislature arrested before it could hold a vote on secession; he denied Maryland its Constitutional rights for representative government! It is because of Lincoln that the United States, which was created as a union of equal states who had granted limited authority to a federal government, ceased to be such a union and became, instead, just what the Founding Fathers had feared and sought to avoid: A collection of states with limited powers dominated by an all-powerful and all-reaching federal government. Maryland can be seen as the microcosm of what the US became because of Lincoln.
You are the only person I’ve met here who actually “gets” Maryland.
I have had this same argument a million times over in my life.
What was once a -voluntary- union was destroyed by him.
[the Constitutional Congress of 1789 reaffirmed any state’s right to secede because the founding fathers considered the “voluntary” aspect to be *that* important]
Maryland’s role in and opinion of the TWBTS is summed up quite clearly in our “state song”, which few people even bother to learn *all* the lyrics of.
If nothing else, ponder the last verse:
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland, My Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland, My 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!
That was written in 1861...yet not officially made our song until -1939-.
Another poster spoke in jest what is actually truth.
MD *does* still keep “fighting the civil war” every day.
My ancestors never forgot the federal troops stationed at a fort nearby, for the express purpose of keeping them “under control” and they passed those hard feelings down through the generations.
As I said, the entire family [with one exception] switched to Republican during the Reagan years, and then, only after suffering a generation of DemoSocialist tyranny.
The Old Line State is no longer the Free State.
Hasn’t been for 140+ years.
Those of us in W.MD certainly harbor no joy over the thought of a “new Lincoln”.
We’ve already had a bellyful of the old one.