“Dulici et decorum est pro Patria mori”

On Baltimore County's historic Patapsco Neck along the Old North Point Road at the intersection of Old Battle Grove Road stands the second oldest known military monument in Maryland and the third oldest known in the United States. It is one of Maryland's least visited War of 1812 sites – the Aquila Randall Monument.

On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’sĚýFirst Mechanical VolunteersĚýformed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on site that day. The monument’s construction was directed by Lt. Thomas Towson, a stone masonĚý“who aimed at simplicity and neatness.” With a final application of whitewash it was dedicated to honor Private Aquila Randall a member who was killed in a skirmish just before the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814. The company was joined by other 5^thMaryland Regiment officers at the monument while Captain Howard delivered a modest appropriate address:

“….I can picture to myself the sensation of those who in far distant days will contemplate this monument…and the melancholy event which has caused our assemblage at this spot…This monument which we are now erecting, will stand as a solemn expression of the feeling of us all…But I regret that the spot, which is made classic by the effusion of blood, the sport where the long line stood un-appalled by the system and advances of an experienced and disciplined foe, has been suffered to remain unnoticed. It is here where her citizens stood arrayed soldier’s garb, that honors to a soldier’s memory should have been paid. To mark the spot be then our care.…”

The inscriptions on the monument read:

• [West face] –ĚýHow beautiful is death, when earned by virtue.
• [East face] –ĚýSACRED TO THE MEMORY OF AQUILA RANDALL, Who Died, in bravely defending his Country and his home, On the memorable 12^thĚýof September, 1814,Aged 24 years.
• [North face] –ĚýTHE FIRST MECHANICAL VOLUNTEERS, Commanded by Capt. B.C. Howard, in the 5^thĚýRegiment, M.M. HAVE ERECTED THIS MONUMENT, As a tribute of their respect for THE MEMORY OF THEIR GALLANT BROTHER IN ARMS.
• [South face] –ĚýIn the skirmish which occurred at this spot between the advanced party under Major RICH’D K. HEATH of the 5^thĚýReg.’ M.M. and the front of the British column, Major General ROSS, the commander of the British force, received his mortal wound.Ěý

, Maryland in the War of 1812, March 24, 2011.

S. North Point Road and Old Battle Grove Road, Dundalk, MD 21222

On the morning of September 12, 1814, five thousand British troops landed outside of Baltimore and marched on the city of Baltimore with a plan to capture the city. Major General Robert Ross, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who had burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol just a few weeks before, led the advance. However, within hours Ross was dead after being shot by an American – perhaps Daniel Wells and Henry G. McComas although their claim on the deed is now considered unlikely. Following the Battle of North Point, the British forces realized the strength of the defenses at Hampstead Hill, now located within Patterson Park, and returned to the site of their landing to head south towards New Orleans.

In 1896, the federal government took over the British landing site and completed construction on a coastal artillery fortifications to defend Baltimore from naval attack in 1901. In 1900, Secretary of War Elihu Root named the site Fort Howard after John Eager Howard, a Baltimore native and Revolutonary War veteran who is buried alongside veterans of the War of 1812 at Old St. Paul's Cemetery.

In 1902, five of the six coastal artillery batteries were named for men who witnessed the War of 1812 including Lt. Levi Clagget who died at Fort McHenry, Col. Davis Harris who commanded a regiment of artillery, Brig. Gen. John Stricker who commanded the 3rd brigade Maryland Militia, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson who served as Captain of Volunteer Artillery at Fort McHenry, and, of course, Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. A sixth battery was named for Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, a U.S. Army doctor who died in Cuba in 1900 while conducting research on yellow fever. Known as the "Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate," Fort Howard was manned by the 21st, 40th, 103rd, and 140th Companies of the Coast Artillery Corps but remained quiet throughout WWI and up until the fort shut down in 1926.

Fort Howard was transferred to the Veterans Administration which built a hospital on the grounds in 1943. Today the coastal batteries are incorporated into Fort Howard Park and, while covered in ivy and masked by bushes, endure as a reminder of the importance of the spot from the War of 1812 and on.

9500 North Point Road, Fort Howard, Maryland 21052

Overlooking the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill stands the statue of Major General Samuel Smith (1752-1839). Smith's life as a Revolutionary War officer, merchant, ship-owner, and U.S. Senator earned him the experience and fortitude in the momentous crises before to successfully command Baltimore during the War of 1812 and its darkest hour: the British attack on Washington and Baltimore in 1814.

The statue, funded by the city's 1914 centennial celebration of the Battle of Baltimore, is the design of sculptor Hans Schuler (1874-1951) who studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The statue was first erected at Wyman Park Dell at North Charles and 29th Streets in 1917 and dedicated on July 4, 1918.

In 1953, the Recreation and Parks Department moved the sculpture to "Sam Smith Park" at the corner of Pratt and Light Streets, the future waterfront site of the 1980 Rouse Company Harborplace project. In 1970, with the Inner Harbor renewal project underway, the statue moved again to the present site on Federal Hill, where in 1814 a gun battery had been erected and the citizens of Baltimore witnessed the fiery bombardment of Fort McHenry.

The inscriptions on the monument read:

MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH, 1752-1839 / UNDER HIS COMMAND THE ATTACK OF THE BRITISH UPON BALTIMORE BY LAND AND SEA SEPTEMBER 12-14, / 1814 WAS REPULSED. MEMBER OF CONGRESS FORTY SUCCESIVE YEARS, / PRESIDENT U.S. SENATE, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, MAYOR OF BALTIMORE. /HERO OF BOTH WARS FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE – LONG ISLAND – WHITE / PLAINS – BRANDYWINE – DEFENDER OF FORT MIFFLIN – VALLEY FORCE – / MONMOUTH – BALTIMORE. /

ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL STAR-SPANGLED BANNER CENTENNIAL

Federal Hill Park, 300 Warren Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21230

Monument to the Boy Heroes of North Point

Baltimoreans celebrated the two young sharpshooters credited with killing British General Robert Ross in the 1850s with this monument, their final resting place.

Daniel Wells and Henry Gough McComas gained fame as the "boy heroes" of the Battle of Baltimore. Though the historical record may offer slim evidence to confirm their role during the battle, Baltimoreans have celebrated the legend of Wells and McComas for over 150 years.

The young men, aged nineteen and eighteen, served as privates in Captain Edward Aisquith's Sharpshooters of the 1st Rifle Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the Battle of North Point. Wells, an Annapolis native, and McComas had enlisted in Baltimore, where they both worked as apprentices in the city's leather industry. Their battalion first encountered Ross at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 14, just three weeks before the Battle of Baltimore. Although evidence verifying this claim is scant, Wells and McComas have been credited with firing the shots which killed beloved British commander General Robert Ross. Whether or not it was Wells and McComas or other American sharpshooters, this act certainly dealt a heavy blow to the British in their attempt to capture Baltimore. They could not confirm or deny the story themselves since Wells and McComas were found dead after the Battle—two of the twenty-four Americans killed at North Point.

It wasn't until some forty years after the battle that Wells and McComas gained local celebrity status. During the 1850s, two military companies formed the Wells and McComas Monument Association and solicited subscriptions from citizens to erect a monument in their honor. The group had the boys' bodies exhumed from their vault in Baltimore's legendary Green Mount Cemetery. They laid in state at the Maryland Institute building at Market Place, where thousands of Baltimoreans came to pay their respects. The Sun described the ceremonial catafalque, a platform on which the two coffins rested, as having "a marked degree of good taste" draped in black.

To commemorate Defenders' Day in 1858, Baltimoreans carried the coffins in a procession to their current grave site in Old Town's Ashland Square. An unnamed Baltimorean composed an original song to mark the occasion: , sung to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner. These two local sons were painted in a romantic, dramatic fashion: "'Twas McCOMAS and WELLS - so Fame the fact tells; / This heroic deed their fame evermore swells, / As martyrs of liberty! - And we now raise / A monument high, to continue their praise." In addition to this song, famed playwright Clifton W. Tayleure published a play,, performed at the Holliday Street Theatre.

Their remains lay at Ashland Square for fifteen years before the monument was completed. The simple twenty-one-foot tall obelisk, made of Baltimore County marble, cost a total of $3,500. The City Council ultimately provided most of the funding.

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647 Aisquith Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

The Key Monument on Eutaw Place is a grand reminder of how Baltimoreans have kept the memory of the Battle of Baltimore and the War of 1812 alive over two hundred years. Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer and slaveholder who was on board the British vessel HMS Tonnant during the evening of September 13 and morning September 14, 1814, as part of a delegation to try to negotiate the release of prisoners. Key was stuck on board the British vessel to helplessly watch as the British Navy shelled Fort McHenry and Baltimore throughout the night.

At dawn, Key saw the Stars and Stripes still flying over the fort. That morning, the unsuccessful British allowed Key to return to shore, and on the return trip, he wrote a poem describing his experience the night before. The poem was quickly published in two Baltimore papers on September 20, 1814, and days later the owner of a Baltimore music store, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store, put the words and music together in print under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Before his death in 1907, Baltimore resident Charles Marburg gave $25,000 to his brother Theodore to commission a monument to his favorite poet, Francis Scott Key. Theodore selected French sculptor Marius Jean Antonin Mercie known for monumental sculptures of Robert E. Lee (1890) in Richmond, Virginia, and General Lafayette (1891) in the District of Columbia. The Key Monument was added to Eutaw Place in 1911.

The monument was restored in 1999 after a multi-year fundraising campaign by local residents. In September 2017, the monument was spray painted with the words "Racist Anthem" and splashed with red paint to highlight Key's legacy as a slaveholder. The city quickly restored the monument.

W. Lanvale Street and Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

On August 15, 1814, almost exactly one month before the Battle of Baltimore and the bombing of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812, Rembrandt Peale opened "Peale's Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Paintings" on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore. Designed by noted Baltimore architect Robert Carey Long, the building is the first purpose-built museum in the western hemisphere. Taking after a natural history museum that his father, Charles Wilson Peale, started in Philadelphia in 1786, Rembrandt Peale displayed collections of fossils and other specimens, as well as portraits of many of the country's founding fathers that his family had painted. As the British made plans to attack and the War of 1812 was on the city's threshold, portraits of the Revolutionary War heroes were highly popular, and Peale was able to charge 25 cents for admission. In September of 1814, Baltimore turned back the British invasion on land and sea, providing a critical turning point in the war and likely sparing the city from destruction. The British, after all, had burned the nation's capital just a few miles south after Washington fell the month before. The Peale Museum capitalized on patriotic fervor, and put a number of bombs and shells that were collected from the failed British bombardment on display. In doing this, Peale became the first person to display samples of Britain's firepower, which of course Francis Scott Key immortalized as the bombs bursting in air in the Star Spangled Banner. Some years later, in 1830, Peale's museum was still capitalizing on the War of 1812 when they displayed the original flag that flew over Ft. McHenry, borrowed from a willing Mrs. Louisa Armistead, the widow of Lt. Colonel George Armistead. Lt. Colonel Armistead commanded Ft. McHenry during the war and reportedly ordered an extra large flag to fly at the Fort as a pointed challenge to the British. From its earliest days embracing Baltimore's war effort, the Peale Museum has been intertwined with the city's history. The building served as a museum from 1814 until 1830. It then became the Baltimore City Hall until 1875 when the current city hall building was erected. After 1875, the museum had various uses, including as the Colored School Number 1 for African American children, and then in 1931, it returned to its origins as a museum, becoming the "Municipal Museum of Baltimore." Fittingly, the Municipal Museum focused on Baltimore City history. In 1985, the museum underwent a physical renovation and was reborn as the center of the "City Life Museums." With exhibits on Baltimore's historic gems, such as the H.L. Mencken House and Phoenix Shot Tower, to the rowhouses and front steps that help define working class life in Baltimore, the City Life Museums lasted until 1997 when the enterprise closed. Today, the Peale Museum is empty and awaiting the next chapter in its long and storied service to Baltimore.

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225 N. Holliday Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

Opened in 1786 by Baltimore's First Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Burying Ground is the resting place for many of early Baltimore's most notable citizens, including merchants, mayors, and fifteen generals from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. In 1852, the church that also occupies the property was built on brick piers over some of the tombs, creating what is called the "Baltimore Catacombs."

Although notables such as Sam Smith and James McHenry are buried here (bitter rivals in life, fate brought them cheek to jowl in the graveyard), the most famous eternal resident is Edgar Allan Poe. When he died in 1849, Poe was originally buried in an unmarked grave next to that of his grandfather in the back of Westminster. In 1875, Poe's body was moved to the front of the graveyard with a dedication ceremony that included the American poet Walt Whitman. Adding to the mystery that surrounds Poe and his death, Baltimore lore has it that the re-internment in 1875 got the wrong poor soul into the new grave (probably not true) and that the current monument has Poe's birth date wrong (true).

The church and graveyard are now in the care of the Westminster Preservation Trust, a private, non-profit organization established in 1977. In the early 1980s, the Trust restored the graveyard as well as the former church building, and the church is now available to rent.

519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Henry Thompson was born in 1774 in Sheffield, England and came to Baltimore in 1794, where he became a member of the Baltimore Light Dragoons. He was elected captain of this company in 1809, six years after completing a house called "Clifton" in what is now Clifton Park in Baltimore City but back then was Baltimore County. By 1813, Captain Thompson had disbanded the Light Dragoons and formed a mounted company called The First Baltimore Horse Artillery. Brigadier General John Stricker soon enlisted Captain Thompson and his horsemen to act as mounted messengers traveling between Washington and Bladensburg to report on the movements of British troops and ships. The unit also became the personal guard to General Samuel Smith, who commanded the defenses during the Battle of Baltimore and Ft. McHenry in 1814. Henry Thompson contributed much to Baltimore in addition to his War of 1812 service. In 1816, he built and was president of the Baltimore and Harford Turnpike Company, now Harford Road. In 1818, he served on the Poppleton Commission that laid out the street grid in Baltimore that we have today. He was also a director of the Port Deposit Railroad, The Bank of Baltimore, the Merchant's exchange, the Board of Trade, the Baltimore Insurance Company, and, to boot, he was the recording secretary of the Maryland Agricultural Society. Later in life he served as a marshal at the dedication ceremonies of the Washington Monument and Battle Monument, and Grand Marshal of a procession commemorating the death of General Lafayette in 1834. As for Clifton Mansion, Thompson owned the property until 1835. During that time, he hosted a number of notables that include Maryland Governor Charles Ridgely of Hampton, Alexander Brown (considered America's first investment banker), Henry Clay (who early in his political career was a chief agitator for declaring war on Britain in 1812), and General Winfield Scott (who commanded forces in 1812 and later masterminded the Union's military strategy in the Civil War). In 1835, Thompson sold Clifton to a gentleman named Daniel Cobb. Thompson died shortly after, in 1837, and Cobb went broke. After failing to make his mortgage payments, Thompson's heirs reclaimed Clifton. The heirs soon sold the house and grounds to a prosperous and up and coming Baltimore merchant looking for a fine summer estate. That, of course, was Johns Hopkins, and a story for another day.

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2701 St. Lo Drive, Baltimore, MD 21213

Construction on the Battle Monument began on September 12, 1815, a year to the day after Baltimore soundly defeated the British in the War of 1812, and the monument endures as a commemoration of the attack by land at North Point and by sea at Fort McHenry. In addition to serving as the official emblem for the City of Baltimore on the city flag, the work is extraordinary in the history of American monument building for a number of reasons. Architecturally, it is considered to be the first Egyptian structure in the United States with a base, designed by French-born architect Maximilian Godefroy, to look like an Egyptian sarcophagus. The base sits on 18 layers of marble, symbolizing the 18 states that then belonged to the Union. The main column is of Roman design and depicts a fasces: a bundle of rods held together with bands in a symbol of unity. In an age when the United States had few public monuments at and when war memorials focused on generals and commanders, the Battle Monument stood out for its focus on the common soldier recognizing all 39 of the fallen soldiers, regardless of their rank, in a ribbon of names spiraling up the central shaft. Italian sculptor Antonio Capellano created Lady Baltimore — one of the oldest monumental sculptures in the country. She wears a crown of victory on her head and holds a laurel wreath in her raised hand as a symbol of victory over the British. In her lowered hand, she holds a ship's rudder as a testament to Baltimore's nautical role in the war. Both arms are now prosthetics after having been blown off in storms. Both also were created by well-known Baltimore artists. The raised hand with the wreath is the work of Hans Schuler, and the lowered hand with the rudder is by Rueben Kramer. The same year that the monument was adopted as Baltimore's emblem, it also helped give rise to the city's nickname as "The Monumental City." In 1827, President Adams visited Baltimore and stayed at a nearby hotel. The Battle Monument had been completed and work was underway for the nation's first public monument to President Washington in "Howards Woods," soon to become the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. At a dinner with dignitaries and veterans from the war, President Adams gave the final toast of the evening: "Baltimore, the Monumental City: may the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy as the days of her danger have been trying and triumphant!" Baltimore's new monuments made an impression on the President, and enough to spark a name that has lasted nearly 200 years.

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101 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

Fort McHenry's history began in 1776 when the citizens of Baltimore Town feared an attack by British ships. An earthen star fort known as Fort Whetstone was quickly constructed. The fort, like Baltimore, was never attacked during our first conflict with England. In 1793, France declared a war on England that became known as the Napoleonic Wars. In 1794, Congress authorized the construction of a series of coastal forts to protect our maritime frontier. Construction began on Fort McHenry in 1798 and, by 1803, the masonry walls we view today were completed. The fort was named for James McHenry, our second Secretary of War. In 1809, the U.S. Army's first light artillery unit was organized here. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England, in part to "preserve Free Trade & Sailor's Rights." In August 1814, British forces marched on Washington, defeated U.S. forces, and burned the Capitol. Then, on September 13-14, the British attacked Fort McHenry. The failure of the bombardment and sight of the American flag inspired Francis Scott Key to compose "The Star-Spangled Banner."

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2400 E. Fort Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21230