Lessons Learned While Searching for Little Dixie, Kentucky

Last weekend, while visiting in the central highlands of Virginia, I ran into a Yankee, a New Yorker, who made a reference to Maryland being Up North. When I told him that Maryland was east not north of this part of Virginia, he looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. It is bad enough to be thought a Northerner by a Southerner, but it is intolerable to be thought a Northerner by a Northerner.
Back from my trip to Virginia, I was looking for information about Little Dixie, Kentucky when I encountered more ignorance concerning the location –and history—of Maryland at a website called Something About Everything Military. Owned by Hillard E. Johnmeyer, the site offers up information on the War Between the States as it relates to an area in Missouri called Little Dixie, a region which encompasses many counties and roughly falls south of the Mason Dixon Line. Johnmeyer’s webpage is interesting, but I was caught up short when I read this:
“…Although the majority of slaves ultimately came to be used for agricultural labor in the South, Northerners used slaves for their own agricultural production and as household servants in virtually every northern state. While most northern states had finally abolished slavery by the time of the Civil War, it is interesting to note that the Federal government did not require the northern citizens of Delaware or Maryland (or even the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C.) to free their slaves, even after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863! Indeed, Lincoln’s proclamation only “freed” the slaves in the seceded southern states, but did not even mention freeing the slaves of the north.”
A Missourian calling Maryland a Northern state is very strange especially since Missouri is today considered by many to be more Midwestern than Southern, and a Missourian of all people should understand how it feels to have one’s own geography —and history— misrepresented.
There are many parallels between what happened in the Show Me State and what happened in Maryland during the WBTS.
On a website sponsored by the Missouri Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Commander-John Christensen, in presenting “ an historically accurate portrayal of the Southern patriotism exhibited by Missourians during the War for Southern Independence” and “a few facts of history that modern, politically correct, “historians” conveniently leave out,” tells a tale remarkably similar to Maryland’s story.
Christensen states that Missouri’s legislature actually voted to secede in October of 1861 after the people of the state had suffered many outrages at the hands of Yankee invaders:
“On the 10th of May in 1861, one of the most flagrant violations of civil rights ever perpetrated against the citizens of Missouri, occurred in St. Louis. On that date more than 8,000 immigrant troops, under the guise of being “federal volunteers”, captured a small contingent of “Missouri Volunteer Militia”.
When a group of outraged citizens protested this highly illegal action, the mercenaries fired volley after volley into the crowd, killing 28 men, women, and children, and wounding 100 more. Among those killed were a 14 year old girl, and a young mother with a child in her arms. The result of this shocking, tyrannical outrage spurred the Missouri legislature into action, and within hours, a military bill that had been pending for months was passed, creating the ‘Missouri State Guard’…to defend Missouri from invaders from either section...North or South…The federal invaders were relentless in their pursuit of conquest, however, and in June 1861 expelled the legally elected State Government from Jefferson City.”
Maryland also suffered outrages at the hands of the immigrant troops of the North, and her “legally elected State Government” was also expelled by the Yankees. It is heartening to know that other “border” state folks are struggling to tell the truth about their history , about who they really are, and, when I read of that struggle, I am more determined than ever to tell the truth about Maryland. And I haven’t forgotten about Little Dixie, Kentucky. I have had no luck so far, but my research continues. God bless the South… even Missouri.