Why I am a northerner- a post in progress

When my family moved from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to Maryland my mother Sylvia said "That is as far south as I'm willing to go."  I never asked (at age 8) what that meant, or why she was averse to living in the south, but the message was still clear. We are of a different breed, so different a culture that there is a line that cannot be crossed.

Indeed at that time in 1963, the area of Virginia around Washington still had a southern atmosphere, more rural than suburban, with architecture that shown of a agricultural time i.e. plantation time. Visiting Mt. Vernon was a benign excursion to another time and culture with little awareness of the practice of owning slaves even by such iconic heroes as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
How lovely and quaint were the herb gardens and the view from the mansion.

My family is from another era and part of the globe-Eastern Europe, so the notion of having great-relatives choosing sides in this great war is not something I have had to think about. But the very idea of slavery is abhorent, and imagining how anyone could conceive of and defend capturing human beings and dragging them by boat in chains from their nations, their families, their culture and language is one that I cannot see choosing in any era.

I learn through  my readings that many northerners were not anti slavery, but pro North. They were concerned not so much with human slavery as with industrial protection and economics. So to be a northerner at that time meant for some to be only slightly more enlightened than not. It was as brave an act then to be an outspoken abolitionist in the north as it was to be for civil rights in the south in the 20th Century.

So to be from Maryland was confusing. As it should be. Here was a  divided state , a slave state even after Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation. It is where the state song adopted some 70 years later,  sung so enthusiastically by us school children in 5th grade is actually an anti northern  song, And where Montgomery County seemed like an island of progressive wealth surrounded by backwards southern ideals even in 1964.  I used to tell the story that when George McGovern, a progressive anti war candidate ran for president, that every county in Maryland except Montgomery County voted for George Wallace, the rascist governor of Alabama. That story is grossly incorrect by 4 years, as George Wallace ran against Nixon and Humphreys in 1968 not in 1972 against McGovern. The story is totally false, but the underlying pride is evident. We were not the bigots.

Despite the mythical story, Wallace's influence in the late 20th Century according to a notation in Wikipedia was so  strong that "First Nixon, then Ronald Reagan, and finally George Herbert Walker Bush successfully adopted toned-down versions of Wallace's anti-busing, anti-federal government platform to pry low- and middle-income whites from the Democratic New Deal coalition". Dan Carter, a professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta added: "George Wallace laid the foundation for the dominance of the Republican Party in American society through the manipulation of racial and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the master teacher, and Richard Nixon and the Republican leadership that followed were his students."

I've lived in Seattle and Ohio as an adult, spent 10 months in Israel where I still have family, and travelled to many countries in Europe. I've lived in Philadelphia for 24 years, one brother has lived in California for more than 25 years, and the other lived overseas and lives in the Maryland suburbs. So, it is hard to say that we have a loyalty to a cause other than being an American.  But I still have my mother's voice in my ears that "Maryland is as far south as I am willing to live."

When Lincoln stood in the line of fire

Ft Stevens 1 and Monocacy prologue

Starting a blog post like this after a 2 days of living history, conversations at 2 connected but vastly different landscapes and narratives is a feat that ‘gives me pause’. Pause to consider the many personal stories that are arrayed on each battlefield as well as the implications of the carnage and heroism that all of these ‘sacred’ places bring to mind. Though my relatives came well after the civil war, as an avowed northerner  without history or personal family stories related to these battles, I find that being a listening post and witness is a role that is satisfying.

Ft. Stevens #1

Walking onto the small corner field that is the remnant and replica of the Ft. Stevens battlefield, I see a man dressed in khaki vest, floppy canvas hat, both covered with buttons and ribbons. He walks past me and in an instant of curiosity I ask him my, by now, standard question “What is your relationship to this event?”  He turns to face me with eager and upright attention to answer proudly ‘My uncle (great uncle?) fought at Monocacy.”

 He continues telling me that while attending the Monocacy events during the week he was asked to read some of the names of the fallen during the formal commemoration. And there was his relatives name on the list. “I got to read my relatives name,” he poured out to me almost shaking, and I, almost in tears. In fact, he told me the story two times over as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “So I had to come down here today to see where the battle ended”.

The reconstructed Ft is small lot on the corner of Piney Branch Road and 13^th Street near Georgia Ave. These are all streets and intersections that I have crossed 100s of times in my life on the way to sites in the heart of Washington only a few miles down the road. Yet, "Who knew?" (not the first or last time I will say these words) and also, why didn’t anyone ever tell us these things when we were in school?:

• That the capital was nearly breached, which could have led to a very different outcome to the war (Lincoln being defeated, a treaty with the South on their terms, foreign powers recognizing the south)

• That Lincoln was in the line of fire and his surgeon who sat 3 feet away was shot .

• That sharpshooters were in trees where the current Walter Reed hospital stands a mile away

• That Washington was the most heavily fortified city in the world at the time, yet had only the “Invalid Corps’ and mustered clerks and other office workers to defend the city.

• And that just up the road 40 miles north was a significant battle that set the stage for the skirmish at Ft. Stevens