FanPost

A lesson on the Maryland state flag

The design of the flag comes from the shield in the coat of arms of the Calvert family. It was George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, who adopted a coat of arms that included a shield with alternating quadrants featuring the yellow-and-black colors of his paternal family and the red-and-white colors of his maternal family, the Crosslands, in a cross flory (or demi-fleurs-de-lis) design. Calvert sought to establish the first colony where Catholics and Protestants could "prosper together."

Despite the antiquity of its design, the Maryland flag is of post-Civil War origin. Throughout the colonial period, only the yellow-and-black Calvert family colors are mentioned in descriptions of the Maryland flag. After The American War for Independence, the use of the Calvert family colors was discontinued and, while there was no official state flag, by the Civil War, the most common Maryland flag design probably consisted of the great seal of the state on a blue background. These blue banners were flown at least until the late 1890s.

Sealing the deal for the black and gold

In 1854, the General Assembly passed a law calling for a new state seal that created a new Great Seal reintroduced the Calvert family coat of arms. Although, the seal's designers needed until 1876 to get the design right, the 1854 law led to the reappearance of banners in the yellow-and-black Calvert family colors at public events. Despite lacking official sanction, these so called "Maryland" or "Baltimore" colors," quickly became popular with the public as a unique and readily identifiable symbol of Maryland and its long history.

Red and white as a symbol of resistance

The red-and-white Crossland arms gained popularity in quite a different way. Probably because the yellow-and-black "Maryland colors" were popularly identified with a state which, reluctantly or not, remained in the Union, Marylanders who sympathized with the South adopted the red-and-white of the Crossland arms as their colors. Following Lincoln's election in 1861, red and white "secession colors" began appearing across the state as symbols of resistance to the Union.

During the war, Maryland-born Confederate soldiers used both the red-and-white colors and the cross bottony (The cross in the Maryland flag terminates in buttons, and in heraldry is termed a cross bottony.) design from the Crossland quadrants of the Calvert coat of arms as a unique way of identifying their place of birth and the headquarters flag of the Maryland-born Confederate general Bradley T. Johnson was a red cross bottony on a white field.

Healing wounds and coming together

By the end of the Civil War, therefore, both the yellow-and-black Calvert arms and the red-and-white colors and bottony cross design of the Crossland arms were clearly identified with Maryland, although they represented opposing sides in the conflict. Because of this internal bifurcation, Maryland faced a particularly strained reconciliation process.

The current flag made its first known appearance on October 11, 1880 at a parade celebrating the 150th anniversary of Baltimore and by the 1880s, the flag began appearing more regularly at public events. One prominent appearance came when the flag flew in 1888 at the dedication of five monuments to Maryland regiments in the Army of the Potomac on the 25th anniversary of the battle at Gettysburg.

In 1889, the flag gained greater traction and legitimacy when the Fifth Regiment chose it as its regimental color. Formerly the Old Maryland Guard, the Fifth Regiment had largely disbanded in 1861 when most of its men, including its officers, went south to join the Confederate Army. When the Regiment reformed after the Civil War, it was still primarily comprised of Maryland born Confederate soldiers.

However, by the mid to late 1870s, a substantial number of Union soldiers had joined the Fifth which became the state's preeminent military organization. Through it regular participation in public events, the Fifth, now comprised of nearly as many Union soldiers and Confederate ones, demonstrated that not only could former enemy soldiers cohere and work amicably together but that former Confederates could be loyal citizens of the state and the country.

Thus, for Marylanders of the time, the new banner likely reinforced this message. Time was healing the wounds and people from the two sides were working together not only in commerce but militarily as the Fifth Regiment demonstrated. Now the colors they had fought under had come together as well, symbolically representing through this new flag the reunion of all Marylanders.

In 1904 the General Assembly affirmed the popular support shown for a banner composed of alternating Calvert and Crossland quadrants by declaring it the State flag. It flies as a unique symbol of challenges met and loyalties restored, a flag of unity and reconciliation for all the state's citizens.

A final note: The Calvert colors are described as gold and black, and the Crossland colors as red and silver, but in heraldry gold is depicted with yellow and silver with white and now you know why the "gold" of Maryland's flag looks more like yellow than gold.


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