A Short Note on John Merryman

 

 

An academic of note recently wrote on a listserv that John Merryman was a “terrorist”.

 

I wrote back as follows:

 

Dear Professor ABC,

[I]n 1861, no one knew where the battlefields would be. I did not write that Maryland was a battlefield, but that some of the state political authorities were seeking to avoid their state “being” a site of [future] battlefields. Many border states had citizens and politicians who wanted to do just that. It was quite rational to do so. Wanting to avoid such an outcome, that is, one’s state being a site of conflict, hardly is on-point with a criminal intent or terrorism.

You are constantly ratcheting up what counts as terrorism and what we know about John Merryman. Do you really believe that Merryman was “attempting to raise troops to fight the US” or even “attempting to raise [any] troops”? If you don’t believe that, why say it? Was the destruction of the bridge to inspire terror and fear amongst civilians? Or just to stop Union troops movements in Maryland? If the latter, that might be a crime, it might be a war crime, it might be treason, but terrorism? Really? I think terrorism is a term better reserved for Quantrill and his raiders, and those like them. Forrest may have been a terrorist, but he is probably better characterized as a war criminal for Fort Pillow. [Your] using the language of “terrorism” for Merryman drains “terrorism” of meaning. As I said, do White or McGinty [who are John Merryman’s recent biographers] use such language?

What we know about Merryman is quite ambiguous. See, e.g., ‘Merryman, John, of Hayfields,’ in 1 The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and District of Columbia 312–313 (Baltimore, National Biographical Publishing Company 1879), <https://tinyurl.com/mtf43mbk> (explaining that shortly before Merryman’s seizure by the U.S. Army, Merryman “was introduced to [U.S.] Major Belger, and offered to render him or the [Union] troops any service required; and if necessary would slaughter his [Merryman’s] cattle to supply the[] [Union troops] with food.”). Do I know if what is reported here is true? No. I don’t. I do know that the [contemporaneous historical] record, as were the times, was quite messy, and although there were some figures who were singularly pure and others singularly evil, many were quite in-between. Merryman was one such figure. If burning a single privately owned bridge is terrorism, then Sherman and all his troops were pirates, along with virtually every other soldier on both sides. Who believes that?

Seth

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘A Short Note on John Merryman,’ New Reform Club (Jan. 12, 2025, 10:49 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-short-note-on-john-merryman.html>;