So was it, it may be added, of all Southern women. Their love for those who were near to them was intensified and multiplied by the knowledge that they were fighting, as their ancestors had fought, to preserve and maintain such freedom as had been won some eighty years before.
It was moreover a Baltimore woman who gave to the South the one great lyric of the war. Written by James R. Randall, of Maryland, it was, in a moment of inspiration, set to the air of an old college song, and thus was the undying music “married to immortal verse.” Mrs. Hetty Cary Martin kindly consents to tell the story:
“After our bridges were burnt by Baltimore militia to prevent the passage of Northern troops, one of the regiments, formed mainly of young men of social prominence here, was disbanded. The men went South in dead of night with only the clothes they wore.
“It soon became known among our friends that boxes of clothing were to be sent to them from our house. Daily and nightly meetings were held there in defiance of the vigilance of the authorities, whose frequent searchings of the house made it known in the papers as ‘Headquarters of Rebeldom.’ Fingers and machines were ceaselessly at work; subscriptions came freely in. On stormy nights boxes were packed and shipped from the stable in our rear. These were sent directly to Gen. Lee, who told me that he had himself seen to forwarding them to our boys. Danger and daring kept every heart on fire. The girls who worked and the boys who watched for a chance to slip through the lines to Dixie formed a glee club, and their enthusiasm found vent in such patriotic songs as could be written or adapted to suit their needs.
“One evening early in June my sister, Miss Jennie Cary, had charge of the programme, the club ‘meeting at our house. With a young girl’s eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some new and ardent expression of feelings, by this time wrought up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of words and airs; nothing seemed intense enough to suit the occasion. Aroused by her tone of despair I came to the rescue, with the suggestion that she should adapt the words of ‘Maryland, my Maryland,’ which had been constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days before in the Baltimore South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the verses. ‘Lauriger Horatius!’ she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to it.
THE BIRTH OF THE SONG.
“That night, when her voice rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from every throat present without pause or preparation, and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to the crowd assembled beneath our open windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the party.
“A few weeks later it had become impossible to forward the supplies, of which we had still on hand several large trunksful.
“My brother was about to leave for the army and I concluded to risk running the blockade with him, taking my sister also, to furnish more plausible excuse for leaving Baltimore with a very undue amount of luggage.