The deeper I get into the history of events in central and
western Maryland, the more I am convinced that the “despot’s
heel” argument really holds little weight. Not only is the state
song out of date, it never really reflected the Civil War era
opinion of the state as a whole. What prompted today’s thought
was my seeing a comment made elsewhere about why Maryland didn’t
jump in as a seceding state. More or less, the argument was that
it was because there were so many Federal troops present that
the legislature couldn’t make the move to secession that they
(maybe I should place emphasis on “they”, knowing how some
legislators in the deeper South made it clear that “they” felt
that they often knew better what to do than the citizens) really
wanted. This was just part of a larger discussion and Maryland
wasn’t THE focus of it all. In regard to the presence of Federal
troops suppressing Maryland’s “will”, I think this is
exaggerated. True, we have the incident in Baltimore with the
boys from Massachusetts on Ap