POEMS OF JAMES RYDER RANDALL
“Maryland, My Maryland,” constitutes the main feature of this publication. The circumstances under which it was penned are thus described by himself:
“In April, 1861, I read in the New Orleans Delta news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore.
“This account greatly excited me. I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there influenced my mind. That night I could not dismiss from my mind what I had read in the paper. About midnight I arose, lit a candle and went to my desk. Some powerful influence seemed to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of ‘My Maryland.’
“I remember that this idea seemed to take shape as music in my brain—some wild air that I can not now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be considered a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect. No one was more surprised that I was as the widespread and instantaneous popularity I had been so strangely stimulated to write.”
