Is the state of Maryland considered (or was it ever considered) a “southern” state? I think I read it somewhere how many in that state wanted to get out of the union during the civil war…
Geographically, MD is a southern state because it’s south of the Masin-Dixon line. The Line is MD’s northern border BTW. But culturally, MD is spatially fractured. The eastern shore folks on the Delmarva peninsula consider themselves culturally different from the rest of the state. The DC metro area has it’s own non-southern culture which is rather insular in my experience. The western counties have more culture in common with West Virgina since they’re in the Appalachians.
Was definitely considered a Southern state.
As Hypno-Toad notes, it’s below the Mason-Dixon line, which was the symbolic border between the North and South in the antebellum period. Also, Maryland was a slave state right up until the Civil War, although during the war the state never joined the Confederacy. It is often referred to, in historical discussions about the war, as a “border state”—slave states that chose not to secede from the Union.
You are right that plenty of Marylanders supported the Confederacy and opposed the Union during the Civil War. Northern generals and politicians were constantly worried about whether they could keep Maryland from seceding. Here in Baltimore, there was a big riot in 1861 between Confederate sympathizers and Union soldiers, and in response the Union Army set up a fort on Federal Hill, right near downtown, with their cannon pointed at the city in order to prevent further anti-Union riots and to “encourage” Maryland to stick with the Union.
Nowdays, Maryland is often referred to as a Mid-Atlantic state. It’s worth noting that the official, US Census Bureau definition of the Middle Atlantic region is confined only to the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Census Bureau places Maryland in the South Atlantic States region. Despite this official designation, however, Maryland is very often referred to in general conversation and in the media as a Mid-Atlantic state.
As you might expect from a border state, there are parts of Maryland that feel Northern, and parts that feel Southern, both politically and culturally. If you want to read some examples of Maryland’s cultural Southern-ness, i recommend Tony Horwitz’s excellent book, Confederates in the Attic, where he describes attending Civil War battle re-enactments in the Maryland countryside, and where he runs into quite a few locals with a very Southern outlook, at least when it comes to the war itself.
John F. Kennedy apparently once described Washington, D.C., as possessing Southern efficiency and Northern charm; i sometimes think that the same quote could be applied to Baltimore.
This is the Maryland state song.
:eek:
Closer to our own time, it is the state George Wallace was campaigning in when he was shot in 1972. He was in Laurel - these days, as then, a DC suburb. He went on to win the Democratic primary for president in Maryland that year.
Maryland isn’t a northern state, that’s for sure. It is something in between, and has connections to other Southern states that cannot be denied.
Not exactly a hearty welcome.
St. Mary’s County is a hotbed of Confederate flags and “We didn’t have a river to hide behind!”-types. Their newspaper is downright bizarre.
The best source for this is probably The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau (where Garreau does a very thorough analysis of the cultural areas of the U.S.):
Whatever Maryland was once historically, Garreau now considers nearly all of it to be part of the Foundry, which is essentially the Northeast. If you look at the external links section of the Wikipedia entry, there is a link to an official website for the book. Within that website, there are links to the entire book, so if you’re really interested in this subject, you can read the book there.
(The only part of Maryland is that isn’t part of the Foundry is the Eastern Shore. Furthermore, note that all of Northern Virginia, which is what the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. is usually called, is also part of the Foundry.)
The Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area (which is 5/6 of Maryland) is much closer in culture to the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston that it is to even the closer areas of the South (or Dixie, as Garreau calls it), like southern Virginia or northern North Carolina. The Baltimore-Washington area is even more wildly different in culture from the Deep South. For that matter, Baltimore and Washington are closer in culture to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston than they are to, say, Pittsburgh or Cleveland. Pittsburgh and Cleveland, although they are also part of the Foundry, have a little bit of the culture of the Midwest, while the Baltimore-Washington area is clearly an East Coast culture. For good reasons, the Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington areas (including their suburbs) are sometimes referred to as Boswash, because, despite some differences, there are a lot of similarities in the cultures of the cities.
This doesn’t mean that there are some differences between Maryland and the rest of the Foundry, or between Maryland and the rest of Boswash. Every place is slightly different from every other place. As a general rule though, Maryland (except maybe for the Eastern Shore) is a Northern state, not a Southern one.
I wrote:
> This doesn’t mean that there are some differences . . .
I meant:
> This doesn’t mean that there aren’t some differences . . .
I don’t know how much of this I’d go along with, and I don’t know how much of it applies to Maryland, a state which might be small, but is plenty diverse within itself.
I mean, head off to Cumberland, and you’re in an area with a lot of mountains, a culture heavily influenced by the Scots-Irish and the Germans, and a significant number of Steeler fans mixed in among the Ravens and Redskins fans. This part of Maryland most closely resembles West Virginia. It certainly isn’t Annapolis or Baltimore, and it ain’t St. Mary’s County, where there are still tobacco farms.
I think we can draw finer distinctions than Garreau did when we talk about one state only.
I spent most of the first 25 years of my life in Maryland (Gaithersburg, northern 'burbs of DC). Speaking anecdotally, nobody I knew growing up considered him- or herself a Southerner. This held true across all ethnic groups.
However, the I-95 Baltowash corridor is still punctuated with places that are closer to Dixie than they are to Baltimore.
Shoshana writes:
> However, the I-95 Baltowash corridor is still punctuated with places that are
> closer to Dixie than they are to Baltimore.
Name some.
I don’t know if anyone growing up in Arlington around the same time would consider himself a southerner either. But Virginia is much bigger than Northern Virginia, and it is indeed a Southern State.
Maryland has lots of the characteristics of southernness - including influences in its cuisine and a sadly unfortunate Jim Crow legacy. They can’t just be explained away just because of Loco MoCo. 
Mr. Moto writes:
> I mean, head off to Cumberland, and you’re in an area with a lot of mountains,
> a culture heavily influenced by the Scots-Irish and the Germans, and a
> significant number of Steeler fans mixed in among the Ravens and Redskins
> fans. This part of Maryland most closely resembles West Virginia. It certainly
> isn’t Annapolis or Baltimore, and it ain’t St. Mary’s County, where there are still
> tobacco farms.
Let me make one correction to my last post. Garreau considers a couple of southern Maryland counties, including St. Mary’s, to also be part of Dixie. Western Maryland, which includes Cumberland, is similar to the parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio that it is close to. Garreau considers all of those areas to be part of the Foundry. All of these are areas (western Maryland, southeast Pennsylvania, and the northern half of West Virginia) are closer in culture to, say, the rural parts of northwest Ohio than they are to the Deep South. The fact that Garreau considers all of the Foundry to be a single cultural area doesn’t mean that he considers it to be all alike. He’s just saying that they are more similar to each other than they are to other parts of North America.
You DO know we have an edit feature within five minutes of posting, right? 
Mr. Moto writes:
> Maryland has lots of the characteristics of southernness - including influences in
> its cuisine and a sadly unfortunate Jim Crow legacy.
Big deal, they eat crabs. They eat crabs in Philadelphia too. The fact that there once were Jim Crow laws is irrelevant to the present culture. We’re talking about the present culture here, not about history. The Baltimore-Washington area is no more racist at the present time than, say, the Boston area.
I didn’t say it was. I just said there were southern cultural influences in Maryland that persist in southern Maryland and the western areas.
All I said above is that Maryland wasn’t fully a northern state. I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial thing to say, considering all of the above from numerous posters.
Why not just say that it’s a border state, along with present-day Virginia.
My point remains that Maryland is much closer to being a northern state than a southern state.
That’s a matter of opinion, and we’re practically neighbors :).