Posted on 08/03/2017 2:54:15 PM PDT by Viking2002
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — During a social media campaign to derail HBO’s planned modern-day Southern slavery drama, one Twitter user’s posts about the history of the Maryland flag got a lot of attention.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that the Maryland flag is half confederate,” @benjancewicz wrote, using the hashtag #NoConfederate.
And, he’s kind of right.
Yes, even though Maryland was a Union state, the flag — which is featured on the state’s license plate and is a popular adornment for clothing and accessories — does contain some Confederate symbolism.
The flag’s older history is tied to George Calvert, an English politician and colonizer who more or less founded the Maryland colony, although he died just weeks before the charter for the state was approved in 1632. The settlement of the area was left to his firstborn son Cecil and his second son Leonard Calvert was the first colonial governor of the province.
“George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, adopted a coat of arms that included a shield with alternating quadrants featuring the yellow-and-black colors of his paternal family and the red-and-white colors of his maternal family, the Crosslands,” state archives say.
“When the General Assembly in 1904 adopted a banner of this design as the state flag, a link was forged between modern-day Maryland and the very earliest chapter of the proprietorship of the Calvert family.”
But the red and white part of the flag, known as the Crossland arms, was also the design flown by Marylanders who sympathized with the South in the Civil War, according to state records.
“During the war, Maryland-born Confederate soldiers used both the red-and-white colors and the cross bottony design from the Crossland quadrants of the Calvert coat of arms as a unique way of identifying their place of birth,” the records say. “Pins in the cross bottony shape were worn on uniforms, and the headquarters flag of the Maryland-born Confederate general Bradley T. Johnson was a red cross bottony on a white field.”
During the slow process of reconciliation after the Civil War ended in Union victory in 1865, a “flag incorporating alternating quadrants of the Calvert and Crossland colors began appearing at public events” in the state.
The origins of the flag including both designs is not known, but state records say it was being flown by October 1880.
In 1888, the flag was carried by Maryland National Guard troops escorting Governor Elihu E. Jackson at the dedication ceremonies for the Maryland monument at the Gettysburg Battlefield.
The next year, the Fifth Regiment, Maryland National Guard, adopted the flag as its regimental color, becoming the first organization to adopt it officially.
And, as previously mentioned, it was declared the official state flag by the General Assembly in 1904.
Read more about the history of the state flag HERE, and tell us what you think of it.
*Ping*
Wow — Maryland of all places. I’m used to them trashing us “uneducated, racist” southerners, but now they’ve moving to New England. Nobody’s safe!!
Being Maryland, they’ll probably capitulate to the whiners and revisionists....
Watch out Georgia...
I hope they don’t learn what the stars in the Confederate Battle Flag and the US Flag represent.
Funny, I did a search first and came up with nothing.
Search is hit or miss here.
Just had some amusing comments in the other thread.
Glad Drudge picked it up !
Maryland isn’t New England. It’s a mid-Atlantic state - I was born and raised there. Delmarva peninsula. Technically, it’s considered a ‘southern’ state because it’s south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Western Maryland (AKA ‘Almost’ Maryland, where I’m from) and pretty much all of the counties from the Eastern Shore to Ocean City are red counties. It’s that I-95 blue strip running from Baltimore to DC that tilts the state liberal.
The governor himself designed our new “Confederate Sympathizer” license plates.
New England?
Maryland is a long way from New England.
People here love their flag. I don’t see this going very far.
Maryland does not have the coolest flag - South Carolina does!
Yes, too bad it’s now associated with terminally stupid progressive politics including what I think is the first state in the union to tax rain...besides all the riots and gang shootings.
I once had to drive through a couple of different points in WV, had my gun on me and kind of got turned around and accidentally drove through MD for about 10 minutes. Crazy to think I’d be in serious legal trouble if I got caught. I know it’s not the Western MD folks fault, but still - Maryland is just a horrible, crap hole of a state with few redeeming qualities.
>> Maryland of all places <<
Up until the recent explosion of the Washington DC suburbs, the five counties of southern Maryland were almost as “southern” as Alabama or Mississippi. And many of the old-timers in that region still speak with southern accents.
So don’t be too surprised, because if you went there, you might feel right at home!
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