Maine legislators recently approved a new state ballad, a task one would expect to be simple and drama-free.
Alas, in the year 2019, it’s not so easy. Some Republican state lawmakers in the northeastern state were concerned that the ballad chosen cast too negative of a light on the Confederacy, according to a new report from the Maine Beacon.
The song, titled “The Ballad of the 20th Maine,” tells the story of a Maine infantry regiment that fought in the Civil War, and unsurprisingly, has a pro-Union message. Two Republicans found this inappropriate.
“I find it a little bit, we are united states, we are not Union, we are united states. And I find it just a little bit – I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean – to say that we’re any better than the South was,” Republican state Rep. Frances Head said last month while discussing the song, per the Maine Beacon.
Republican state Rep. Roger Reed expressed similar hesitations.
“I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the civil war period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in,” Reed said, according to the Beacon. “Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.”
