Baltimore II: A City at War With an Empire

Why Baltimore expected the attack

The blockade chapter explains why Baltimore's privateers made the port a conspicuous target. After Washington burned, an attack could also destroy ships and yards, punish a hostile population, and extend the political effect of the Chesapeake expedition.

The city also had geography that favored preparation. The harbor narrowed behind Fort McHenry and supporting positions. An army approaching from the Patapsco peninsula had to move along roads toward higher ground east of town. Defenders could therefore build layers instead of relying on one fort or one militia line.

Major General Samuel Smith coordinated the defense with long experience in politics, commerce, and the Revolution. Brigadier General John Stricker commanded the militia force sent toward North Point. Major George Armistead commanded Fort McHenry. Their commands overlapped within a civic mobilization involving committees, trades, neighborhoods, businesses, and thousands of laborers.

The preparation did not erase Baltimore's division. Federalists, Republicans, immigrants, free Black residents, enslaved workers, privateer investors, laborers, and merchants participated under different obligations and memories. Two years after the jail murder, unity was a wartime arrangement rather than a recovered innocence.

Evidence for this sectionBattle for Baltimore CityPrivateers Make Their MarkThe War of 1812 in Baltimore

Making the city difficult to reach

Hampstead Hill became the center of the land defense. Earthworks, artillery, infantry positions, and roads were arranged to meet an army advancing from the southeast. Trees and fields were altered for visibility and obstruction. The line contained militia and regular units backed by a much larger concentration than the defenders at Bladensburg.

Fort McHenry guarded the water approach with a star fort, water battery, guns, magazines, barracks, and trained garrison. Forts Covington and Babcock, Lazaretto Battery, barges, and sunken vessels extended the harbor system. A ship that passed one position would not yet possess the city.

Labor built the defense. Surviving records do not always distinguish voluntary work, hired labor, militia duty, and compulsion. Free and enslaved Black workers participated alongside white laborers. Women supplied clothing, food, nursing, household management, and other support that military returns recorded inconsistently. The visible earthworks rested on a social order whose participants did not receive equal civic standing. Preparation continued while reports from Washington arrived. By September, the city had rehearsed alarm and accepted that the British expedition might be next.

Evidence for this sectionBattle for Baltimore CityBattle of North PointA View of the Bombardment of Fort McHenry

North Point

British troops landed at North Point on September 12 under Robert Ross, with Rear Admiral George Cockburn accompanying the advance. Stricker placed his brigade across the peninsula and sent skirmishers forward. His task was to delay and damage the expedition without allowing his force to be trapped away from Baltimore's main defenses.

Ross rode forward and was shot during the skirmishing. The evidence does not securely identify the individual who fired the fatal shot, despite local claims attached to named riflemen. Ross's death transferred command to Colonel Arthur Brooke and interrupted the expedition without ending it.

The main lines met in the afternoon. British regulars pressed Stricker's position; part of the American line gave way, while other units held and fired in order. Stricker withdrew toward Baltimore with much of his brigade intact. Casualties on both sides and hours spent deploying had imposed delay.

At the tactical level, the British held the field. At the defensive level, Stricker had performed the function assigned to him. The distinction matters because calling North Point merely a defeat treats an orderly delaying action as if its only possible purpose had been destruction of the invading army.

Brooke camped before the Baltimore lines rather than assaulting immediately. He now faced fortifications occupied by thousands of defenders and needed the navy to create another opening.

Evidence for this sectionBattle of North PointBattle for Baltimore CityBaltimore and North Point

Bomb ships beyond the fort's reply

The naval bombardment began on September 13. British bomb vessels carried mortars designed to throw explosive shells in high arcs. A rocket ship fired Congreve rockets. The vessels generally remained beyond effective range of most guns at Fort McHenry, producing an unequal exchange in which the fort endured more than it answered.

Rain, low clouds, smoke, darkness, and distance shaped what observers could see. Shells burst overhead or buried themselves before exploding. Buildings were damaged and several defenders killed or wounded, but the magazine and main works survived. Armistead rotated men, maintained cover where possible, and waited for closer targets that rarely remained within range.

One wounded defender had enlisted in the 38th United States Infantry as William Williams. He was Frederick Hall, born enslaved in Prince George's County, who used the alias after escaping and joining the army in 1814. A cannonball took his leg during the bombardment. The American Battlefield Trust biography says he died in a Baltimore hospital in November 1814. The National Park Service biography instead says he continued to muster after the bombardment, entered the 10th District General Military Hospital with tuberculosis on October 25, and died there on March 19, 1815. The institutional accounts therefore do not support presenting one death date as settled here. His service record shows one route a Black man used to claim freedom within an army defending a slaveholding republic; the record does not disclose every motive behind that choice.

The bombardment lasted roughly twenty-five hours with changes in intensity. It was not continuous illumination and not a precise attempt to strike one flag. British gunners aimed at a fortification and the harbor passage it protected. Later images give every shell a clean curve; the garrison heard intervals, impacts, failed fuses, alarms, and reports from posts it could not always see. Armistead's official report emphasized ammunition, casualties, damage, and conduct. The morning flag became the more durable summary because it converted survival into one visible answer.

Evidence for this sectionThe Bombardment of Fort McHenryFrederick HallWilliam WilliamsThe Chesapeake Campaigns, 1813–15A View of the Bombardment of Fort McHenry

The movement in the dark

During the night, British boats moved toward the Ferry Branch with troops intended to threaten the harbor defenses from another direction. Diversionary rockets and shelling accompanied the attempt. Navigation in darkness and rain complicated coordination.

Forts Covington and Babcock and nearby batteries opened fire. The British boats withdrew after the effort failed to create a landing that could turn the defenses. This part of the battle receives less attention than Fort McHenry because no single surviving object represents it. Operationally, it helped close the water route Brooke needed.

On land, Brooke reconnoitered the American line. He found extensive works, many defenders, and no evidence that naval action had opened the harbor or forced the fort. An assault might still have succeeded, but its expected cost had increased and the expedition had already lost Ross. The land and water defenses worked as a system. No one position saved Baltimore alone.

Evidence for this sectionThe Bombardment of Fort McHenryBattle for Baltimore CityGeography and Map Collections

The flag as object and signal

A year before the battle, Armistead ordered two flags from Baltimore flagmaker Mary Pickersgill: a large garrison flag and a smaller storm flag. Pickersgill worked with women and girls in her household and family network. Grace Wisher, a thirteen-year-old African American girl bound to Pickersgill as an indentured servant, was part of that work.

The garrison flag measured about thirty by forty-two feet when made. Its wool bunting and cotton stars required space beyond an ordinary workroom, and tradition places part of the assembly on the floor of a nearby brewery. Payment records establish the commission. The exact division of every stitch among workers is not recoverable.

Which flag flew at every hour of the bombardment is less certain than popular narrative suggests. Severe weather made the smaller storm flag practical. The large flag is securely connected to the morning scene and Armistead's desire for a flag visible at a distance. Shell flashes could provide intermittent sight, not an uninterrupted view.

The Smithsonian object has its own later history. Armistead's family kept it, cut pieces as souvenirs, and eventually transferred it to the nation. Conservation preserves a changed textile whose missing areas record commemoration as well as battle.

Evidence for this sectionGrace WisherThe Star-Spangled BannerThe Great Garrison Flag

A witness aboard a truce vessel

Francis Scott Key had joined John Stuart Skinner to seek release of Dr. William Beanes, a Maryland physician detained after the Washington campaign. The Americans went aboard the British fleet under a flag of truce. Because they had learned operational information, they were kept with the fleet until the attack ended.

From a vessel in the Patapsco, Key could see the bombardment at a distance and determine in the morning that an American flag still flew. He drafted words that were printed as 'Defence of Fort M'Henry' and sung to an existing tune. The lyric asked a question before it announced an answer. Its imagery came from uncertain observation across water.

The song spread quickly, but it did not become the national anthem until 1931. Its later status changed how Americans approached the battle, the flag, and Key. Verses less often sung include the politics and racial language of the period and have generated continuing debate. The history of the anthem is not contained within the morning of September 14. That morning, the immediate information was that the fort had not surrendered.

Evidence for this sectionThe Bombardment of Fort McHenryThe Star-Spangled BannerA View of the Bombardment of Fort McHenry

After the shooting

The British ceased the attack and reembarked. Baltimore's defenders had not destroyed the expedition. They had made the approaches costly, denied a harbor penetration, and presented a land position Brooke chose not to assault. Defensive success consisted in the city remaining unavailable on acceptable terms.

The expedition sailed away. Work crews dismantled some temporary arrangements, families returned, damage was assessed, and privateers again had a port.

Casualty and service records distribute the victory less cleanly than later ceremony. A defender might have spent the battle in a trench, at a ferry, moving ammunition, guarding a road, or waiting in reserve. Most performed no act suited to a painting. Their presence made the works credible to Brooke's reconnaissance.

Prisoners and wounded British soldiers remained after withdrawal, while American families sought news from units at North Point and the fort. Medical care continued after the flags came down from alert. Rain and crowded positions had consequences beyond combat wounds.

Evidence for this sectionBattle for Baltimore CityBattle of North PointThe War of 1812 in Baltimore

What became the victory

Celebration joined militia service, private labor, Fort McHenry, North Point, Ross's death, and Key's song into a common victory. That synthesis helped Baltimore replace the political violence of 1812 with a story of collective defense. The earlier history did not disappear. Some of the same institutions and citizens had lived through both tests.

Black Baltimoreans appear in labor records, militia and naval service, households, and the making of the flag, but commemoration long placed white officers and Key at the center. Restoring participation requires specific evidence rather than a general claim that everyone served on equal terms.

The city quickly turned defense into print. Reports, broadsides, Key's lyric, maps, sermons, and anniversary addresses assigned meaning. North Point veterans and Fort McHenry defenders formed distinct commemorative claims that sometimes competed over where the city had been saved.

The British dead at North Point and American defenders were buried in different places and commemorated under different traditions. Ross's body was carried back to the fleet and preserved for burial in Halifax. His absence from the battlefield did not end his role in British memory of the campaign.

Armistead died in 1818. His family retained the great flag as an object linked to his command. Each later cutting, loan, photograph, and conservation decision changed how the cloth could be seen while strengthening its documentary trail.

Grace Wisher's biography remains far less complete. Her indenture and presence in Pickersgill's household establish labor within the flag's making, while later life is difficult to trace. The contrast between an abundantly documented object and a sparsely documented maker is part of the evidence.

Baltimore returned to commerce with its defenses still visible. The earthworks slowly entered the landscape, while the song and flag traveled into national institutions.

Evidence for this sectionBattle for Baltimore CityThe War of 1812 in BaltimoreLegacies of the War of 1812Grace WisherThe Star-Spangled Banner