What do you do when your state song calls on citizens to rise up in rebellion against the United States government? That’s the question facing Maryland, which is debating whether to scrap the song “Maryland, My Maryland,” whose first line reads: “The despot’s heel is on thy shore.”

Delegate Karen Lewis Young thinks it’s time for Maryland to change it.

“It was a Civil War battle song for the Confederacy,” Young told me. “It calls Abraham Lincoln a tyrant and a despot, it is the only state song that encourages a group of civilians to rise up and rebel against the Union, it makes a reference to ‘Northern scum,’ and I think it’s divisive. I think that—while it does reflect the division in Maryland at the time of the Civil War—it’s not relevant today.”

Young has introduced a bill that would modify “Maryland, My Maryland” by removing the “divisive” language. It would be replaced with words to a different poem about Maryland by John P. White.

“By keeping the third verse, I believe that constitutes a compromise,” she says.