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State Senate Passes Bill To Retire State Song

March 16th, 2018 by WCBC Radio

A majority of Maryland senators hope they've found a compromise to handle the state's controversial state song: send it into retirement without erasing all recognition.

The Senate voted 30-13 on Senate Bill 790 to put "Maryland, My Maryland" on historic status and say its sensitive pre-Civil War references to "Northern scum" and a despotic President Abraham Lincoln don't reflect Marylanders' values today. The bill now goes to the House.

While it would no longer be the official state song, the measure doesn't completely jettison it, either. It designates it as a "historical state song."

The song was written in 1861 by James Ryder Randall. It became the state song in 1939. It calls for Maryland to secede from the Union before the Civil War when many Maryland residents sympathized with the Confederacy.

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