Old South Survives Yet in A City Gone North

By Carl Schoettler

The Southern Crescent still stops here once a day on its route south to Culpeper and Danville, to Greensboro and Gastonia, to Spartanburg and Clemson, to Gainesville and Atlanta.

And the Southern Seafood Company still moves fish out of a whitefront building on Market place.

And there’s still a Southern Antiques shop on South Charles street, and a Southern Beef Company on South Monroe street, and a Southern Belle Manufacturing Company on Southwestern boulevard.

And the Southern Baptist Church is still on Chester street.

And Ben Southern still lives on Trappe road.

And the Southern States Cooperative, Inc., still has seed, feed and grain divisions in Locust Point.

And the Southern Zine and Supply Company is still on Rectory lane.

And Southern Comfort still solaces Baltimoreans who like the taste of roses in their bourbon.

But the Southern Hotel is gone and with it the great barmen of the Hunt Room and the best mint julep this side of the finish line at Churchill Downs. And nowadays if you want to toast the lost cause with a julep you’d better grow your own mint.

The South has risen again as far as Washington with the Carter administration. But it’s hard to tell if this Southern Renaissance is yeasty enough to reach Baltimore.

After all, as one displaced Georgian says, cornbread don’t rise.

Baltimore once was clearly a Southern city-with all of the pride of the South and and all its prejudices. The Mason-Dixon Line is, after all, still 40 miles further north.

The South sent its cotton here to be milled, its sons to be educated, its money to be invested. In Atlanta, they even thought of the Orioles as the Southern big league team.

But sometime after World War II the Southern-ness of Baltimore began thinning out like the quality of rye whisky. Baltimore was becoming more and more like any other city on the Eastern Seaboard. North-eastern, at that.

And now it seems the South survives here mostly in the hallowed Virginia accents of the remotest upper classes, in the collard greens at Lexington Market and in the memories of the ladies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The United Daughters are the guardians of the Confederate Room at the Maryland Historical Society. And in the Confederate Room the Old South seems as close as the torn battle jacket of Col. Richard Snowden Andrews, which was ripped open, along with Colonel Andrews, by a Union ball at Cedar Mountain August 9, 1862.

It all seems only a moment ago to Miss Mary Ringgold Trippe, a devoted United Daughter. Her grandfather wore the gray uniform of Company A, 1st Maryland Infantry. The uniform is in a case here. Her grandfather lives in Miss Trippe’s memories along with the other 20,000 Marylanders who fought for the South.

And Miss Trippe talks about August 9, 1862, as if it were the day before yesterday.

The ragged jacket reminds her that Colonel Andrews told the doctor who came to attend him: “You can’t do anything for me.”

“It was a challenge,” she says. “The surgeon put him back to together, and he lived to fight another day.”

Her grandfather was Lt. Andrew Cross Trippe, C.S.A., who went South with Capt. William H. Murray, the commander of Company A, 1st Maryland Infantry, C.S.A.

“I have my grandfather’s veteran’s coat,” Miss Trippe says. “He was a major general then. He was commander of the Maryland Line United Confederate Veterans for the last 20 years of his life.

“My grandfather was wounded in the collarbone at Gettysburg. He lay three days in 90-degree heat. He saw all of them die. And he wouldn’t let them cut his arm off. He went around for the rest of his life with his right arm shorter than his left. You can see it in his uniform.”

Captain Murray died in the charge of the Maryland Infantry at Culp’s Hill on the third day of Gettysburg. An engraving of Captain Murray leading the charge-with the sword given him by the ladies of Baltimore upraised-is on the north wall of the Confederate Room.

“They were surrounded, you know,” Miss Trippe says. “And how they got out, I’ll never know. It was a holocaust. Captain Murray was killed. Very few of them ever got out alive.”

Her grandfather came home and started a long political career. Being a Rebel never hurt anybody in Maryland politics. Andrew Trippe was a city councilman by 1867. And he went on to become speaker of the House of Delegates.

He marched at the head of the Confederate veterans when they dedicated the monument to the Southern soldiers and sailors on Mount Royal avenue near Lafayette.

“And they were marching up Cathedral street,” Miss Trippe says. “And somebody in a big house opened one of the upper windows and waved a Confederate flag. And they all gave a great rebel yell.”

But Grandaddy Trippe didn’t live to see his young granddaughter unveil the monument to the Confederate Women of Maryland at University parkway and Charles street. He got the money out of the General Assembly to pay for it. But he died a few months before it was dedicated in 1918.

“I was just a child then. Only knee high to a grasshopper and I had my first bouquet of roses. All the flags were waving.”

And by this time, both the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes were waving over this Confederate memorial. It was just a few days before the armistice that ended World War I and both Rebels and Yanks were patriots.

“When the time came, I had my roses on one arm and I pulled the cord and nothing happened. But I didn’t worry about it. I knew everybody there.

“So I pulled again and all the flags fell down and it’s been seen ever since.

“And the next day we took the roses to Grandfather’s grave in Greenmount Cemetery.” The United Daughters flourished in those days. There were still “real” daughters left: women whose fathers were Confederate veterans

“We had more of them then anyone,” Miss Trippe says. “There are still a few left. We had more than 500 members in this chapter. More than any place in the country.”

Baltimore Chapter No. 8, the first in Maryland and the eighth in the nation, was established in 1895 “by 50 distinguished ladies who had furnished all the aid and comfort to the Southern Cause that was possible in the places where they lived, especially to the sick, wounded and prisoners.”

Over the years the distinguished of the Maryland Division of the U.D.C. have knit afghans for wounded veterans, established a Memorial Book of Remembrance, provided a mannequin for Adm. Franklin Buchanan’s uniform and awarded the Southern Cross of Military Service to lineal descendants in the Spanish-American War, the Phillipine insurrection, World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict.

And they watch over Robert E. Lee’s camp stool and Adm. Raphael Semmes’s cane and Gen. Charles Winder’s saddle and all the uniforms from the old Confederate Soldiers’ Home.

And they polish their memories.

But bright as the memories are, there seem to be fewer and fewer United Daughters to properly cherish them. Chapter 8 is a tiny rearguard of only 30 or so members now.

“Some have retired,” Miss Trippe says. “And some have moved to Florida.”