Defenders Day (Maryland)
[1] It commemorates the successful defense of the city of Baltimore on September 12-13-14, 1814 from an invading British force during the War of 1812, an event which led to the writing of the words of a poem, which when set to music a few days later, became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner", which in 1931 was designated as the national anthem of the United States.
In September 1814, following the burning of Washington three weeks earlier, a British military force of King's Army commanded by Major General Robert Ross, (1766-1814), landed at North Point (near present-day Fort Howard, Maryland) on the Patapsco Neck peninsula in southeastern Baltimore County and began an advance on the city from the southeast.
They were met almost immediately by advance scouts and skirmishers ahead of a detachment from the Baltimore City Third Brigade of the Maryland state militia commanded by Brigadier General John Stricker, (1759-1825), commencing the Battle of North Point.
After the bloodying and stalwart defense of six regiments, the Americans slowly withdrew back towards town, with the resulting halt of the larger British force to lick their wounds and tend to casualties overnight.
This also allowed Baltimore to further organize its eastern dug-in fortifications on Loudenschlager's, Potter's Hills (modern site of Patterson Park) and harbor defenses against a later bombardment and attempted naval barge invasion.
It was during this conflict, the Battle of Baltimore, that Fort McHenry was shelled by the British Royal Navy's revolutionary newly constructed bomb and mortar ketches warships.
Key composed the words of a four stanza poem entitled "The Defence of Fort McHenry" to what later became "The Star-Spangled Banner", when set a few days later to a musical tune popular with an old English gentlemen's society from the 18th century.
It gained increasing popularity over the next 117 years, accepted by American armed forces bands by the 1890s and eventually proclaimed the national anthem of the United States by act of Congress, signed by the President, Herbert Hoover in 1931.
Initially, the commemoration of Defenders Day was divided between the two sites; one focusing on the Battle of North Point and the other on "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the bombardment of Fort McHenry.
In the third phase the parochial nationalism and nativism of the pre-Civil War militia disappeared since those groups had moved to South Carolina or later Virginia to enlist and join individually or the Maryland southerner regiments in the Confederate States Army.
An unusually hot September and dress parade heavy wool uniforms produced a significant loss due to heat stroke, resulting in a one-year break in the program.
Thousands of people visited the coffins during the three days leading up to September 12, the anniversary of the Battle of North Point, when the official cornerstone for the memorial was laid.
On that day, the bodies of Wells and McComas were paraded to Ashland Square, (near the intersection of North Gay, Monument, and Aisquith Streets in East Baltimore), the site of interment, and placed below the obelisk's foundation in ceremonial fashion.
As documented in The Baltimore Sun, in articles written in September 1860, the Secession Crisis prior to the November 1860 election caused a change in the Defenders' Day program.
The plot was discovered, an anti-secessionist militia unit (elements of the 53rd Maryland) rowed in the darkness from Fells Point to the fort the night before Defenders' Day.
[6] The result was a non-violent standoff that was resolved when the secessionist militia marched back to its neighborhood and the conflict was over, to be repeated in the later Secession Crisis that followed the presidential election of 1860, the crisis reached its highest point after the armed 6th Massachusetts Regiment and unarmed "Washington Brigade" and musical band of Philadelphia of their respective state militias were attacked by a southern secessionist armed mob of thousands along President, Pratt and Howard Streets as they first moved along in horse-pulled railroad cars, then marched between the President Street Station of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad on the east side of downtown to the Camden Street Station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on the southwest side to continue on the rail line to get to Washington, D.C. to defend the national capital from recently seceded Virginia on Friday, April 19, 1861.
The post-Civil War nativism peaked just after the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and then slowly faded with the growing popularity of the "Star-Spangled Banner" as the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy unofficially adopted the song to be played at all military functions in the 1890s.
The largest celebration was held on the fabled and elaborate "National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial Celebration" for the one hundredth anniversary for a week in September 1914, which included memorial monuments, statuary and bronze plaques erected, pageants, exhibits, parades, fireworks with reenacting of the shelling of Fort McHenry and the legendary dressing of thousands of school children in red-white-blue colors for a "Living Flag" display.
Even Baltimore's then-mayor, Martin O'Malley, donned an elaborate fancily decorated War of 1812 officers uniform as a colonel of the Fort McHenry Guard to participate in Defenders' Day reenactments in 2003, which he repeated as Governor of Maryland during 200th Anniversary events in 2014, in addition to composing Irish-style musical ballads about the "Battle of Baltimore" and the War of 1812 performed by his Irish music band "O'Malley's March"!.
