New and Noteworthy: Maryland, My Maryland, Your Maryland, Our Maryland

Maryland, My Maryland: music and Patriotism During The American Civil War,  James A. Davis, University of Nebraska  Press, 390 pages, 10 photographs, 22 illustrations, bibliographic notes, bibliography, index, $55.00 hardcover

From The Publisher: 

Historians have long treated the patriotic anthems of the American Civil War as colorful, if largely insignificant, side notes. Beneath the surface of these songs, however, is a complex story. “Maryland, My Maryland” was one of the most popular Confederate songs during the American Civil War, yet its story is full of ironies that draw attention to the often painful and contradictory actions and beliefs that were both cause and effect of the war. Most telling of all, it was adopted as one of a handful of Southern anthems even though it celebrated a state that never joined the Confederacy.

In Maryland, My Maryland: Music and Patriotism during the American Civil War James A. Davis illuminates the incongruities underlying this Civil War anthem and what they reveal about patriotism during the war. The geographic specificity of the song’s lyrics allowed the contest between regional and national loyalties to be fought on bandstands as well as battlefields and enabled “Maryland, My Maryland” to contribute to the shift in patriotic allegiance from a specific, localized, and material place to an ambiguous, inclusive, and imagined space. Musical patriotism, it turns out, was easy to perform but hard to define for Civil War–era Americans.

About the author:  James A. Davis is a professor of musicology at the School of Music, State University of New York at Fredonia. He is the author of Music along the Rapidan: Civil War Soldiers, Music, and Community during Winter Quarters, Virginia, 1863–1864 (Nebraska, 2014) and editor of several books, including The Arts and Culture of the American Civil War.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Patriotic Music and the Civil War
1. Maryland and the Coming of War: Bargain Patriotism and the Need for an Anthem
2. Spring 1861: The Pratt Street Riot and the Birth of a Song
3. “Maryland, My Maryland”: Lyrics, Music, and Publication
4. Fall 1861: The Cary Invincibles, Flags, and Symbolic Patriotism
5. Spring 1862: Marylanders, the Military, and Regionalism
6. Summer 1862: Tropes, Class, and the Rise of an Anthem
7. Fall 1862: Antietam and the Battle of Parodies
8. Spring 1863: pows, Civilians, and Military Patriotism
9. Summer 1863: Gettysburg, Slavery, and the Patriotism of Sacrifice
10. Fall 1863: Women, Hospitals, and Diverging Audiences
11. 1864: Monocacy and the Victory of Song over State
12. 1865: Performing Patriotism and Nostalgia after Appomattox
Epilogue: “Maryland, My Maryland” after the War
Notes, Bibliography, Index