Steven Johnson, Wikimedia Commons

I suspect that Maryland has always felt the curse of being so close to Virginia, both in geography and demeanor, but always coming off as a bit the lesser. It got started  later, 1630 instead of 1607. It wasn’t quite as English, being a haven for Huguenots and Catholics and other non-Anglicans. For us outsiders looking in it feels more foreign, less so than Louisiana but still, foreign. Baltimore ain’t an Anglo Saxon sort of word. It was settled by more tradesmen and fewer gentlemen. It was more urban, with Baltimore the major Southern City in the 18th Century. Even it’s most famous corpse, Edgar Allan Poe, was raised in Virginia. Virginia produced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. Maryland produced Spiro T. Agnew.

Virginia shows up in the state song, Maryland My Maryland:

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,

Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!

What Maryland seems to have done in the modern world better than just about anybody is produce slightly quirky but immensely influential musicians (and also John Waters, who fits right in): Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Eubie Blake, Frank Zappa, Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Phillip Glass. I really like Mr. Glass.

Sorry.

Maryland, with +6 million residents and about 12,400 square miles, ranks sixth among states in population density. Modern Maryland is an urban state. Modern Marylanders do not identify as Southern, but historically Maryland was a slave state, with 87,000 slaves in 1860. Had Lincoln not suspended habeas corpus, declared martial law, and arrested the Confederate sympathizers in the Maryland Assembly, Maryland would likely have seceded. Not that there’s anything wrong with Mr. Lincoln, notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling against him on the whole habeas thing. About a third of Maryland volunteers in the Civil War fought for the Confederacy. Of course the other two-thirds fought for the Union.

Again, 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!

So Maryland, like Missouri, Kentucky, and Delaware–the other slave states that didn’t secede–was a bit on the cusp. It had always been different than its Southern neighbor. It had 87,000 slaves in 1860, but it also had 84,000 free blacks. However, if you asked Frederick Douglass, another Maryland famous son, whether Maryland was North or South, I’m pretty sure Mr. Douglass would say South, no question. It was in Maryland that Douglass was enslaved. It was from Maryland that Douglass escaped.

What Maryland is now is tougher to say. There are the D.C. bedroom communities: relatively wealthy, educated, urban. There’s agriculture, and there’s the Chesapeake Bay. There’s Baltimore, a city built to hold tens of thousands of stevedores but now coping with container shipping. It takes a lot fewer people to operate a crane. In 2017, Baltimore had the highest per capita murder rate of any city in the nation.

Notwithstanding its troubles, Baltimore is a fun city. Camden Yards is great, and the Astros won when I saw them there. I also had two great dinners in Baltimore, at a classic restaurant, Charleston, and an edgier place, Woodberry Kitchen. I’ve eaten the crab cakes while drinking local beer. We also had some good hipster donuts. If Brooklyn were in the South, it would be Baltimore. And in Maryland, on the Chesapeake, we’ll fish for stripers. I’ve never caught a striper. Don’t get your hopes up.