A few weeks ago, I took advantage of a rare weekend off and made some trips to historical sites in the region.
First off, I am pleased to report that I have accepted a position as a seasonal visitor use assistant with the National Park Service at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine (in Baltimore, MD) and Hampton National Historic Site (in Towson, MD). I applied for the job back in January, but thanks to the government hiring freeze, did not have a interview until April. I accepted the job a few weeks later, but then had to wait a number of weeks until my background check was finalized. My report date is June 25th and I'm absolutely thrilled to be back with the NPS (having previously worked at the Yorktown Battlefield back in 2011-2012 and at NPS headquarters in 2015). More to come on the new job...
Since accepting the post, I've taken up some casual research on the War of 1812 and the Chesapeake campaign in particular. When I needed some recommendations for books to check out, I asked my friend Ed Seufert, a Baltimore native and experienced War of 1812 Royal Marine reenactor. In addition to directing me toward some great monographs, Ed also offered to take me on a tour of the land side of the attack on Baltimore - especially the Battle of North Point. While the peninsula on which General Robert Ross and his British troops landed in September 1814 was largely open farmland, the growth of the greater Baltimore, and especially the shipyard at Sparrow's Point over the last two hundred years has resulted in much of the ground that was fought over has been overtaken by industrial and suburban sprawl. Nevertheless, we were to work our way through the modern structures and make some sense of what happened as the British ground forces advanced on the city.
We started at the tip of North Point in what is now part of Fort Howard park. This military installation was built in the late nineteenth century to protect the entryway into Baltimore (essentially doing what Fort McHenry had done, just further out and on a much larger scale). Though much of the former base is currently owned by the VA, some of the old artillery batteries are still available. We walked down to the tip of the peninsula to get something akin to the view of Baltimore that the British soldiers and marines got the morning of September 12, 1814. Leaving Fort Howard, we continued to a nearby soccer field just off the base. On the other side of the pitch we found ourselves at the beach where the British horses and artillery pieces were brought ashore.
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| The beach on the southern shore of North Point, where General Ross landed his horses and guns |
The next part the tour involved a lot of driving past sites that were either not open or have been lost to time. One of these was Todd's Inheritance, a private home used as an observation post but later burned by the British. Though rebuilt, it is only open a few days a year. We also tried to go see the battle exhibit at the North Point State Park visitor center, but it was not open yet and both Ed and I were a bit stretched for time that day, so we pressed on.
Following the advance of Ross's army up the North Point Road (which has not changed its course since the battle), we drove past the sites of the Gorsuch and Shaw houses as well as the spot where a mortally wounded Ross allegedly died we drew closer to the site of the first real contest between the Americans and British troops. Now the site of a small, suburban neighborhood, this is the area where General Ross was felled by American fire and is marked by a small, solitary obelisk - not to the foreign general, but to Private Aquila Randall, a private in Baltimore's famed 5th Maryland Regiment.
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| The Aquila Randall Monument |
This sharp but brief skirmish led to a somewhat disjointed fighting withdrawal by the Americans to their main line of resistance between the Bear and Bread and Cheese Creeks, where General Stricker had deployed his militiamen of the City Brigade to meet the redcoated invaders. The British troops were eager for a fight and with their new leader, Colonel Arthur Brooke, at the lead, they push on and we followed.
We soon arrived at a pair of twin sites - one old, one new - at the heart of the North Point story. The Battle Acre, the site of the Bouldin farm (which burned during the battle), was dedicated in 1839 and served as the venue for many of the early commemorations of the battle by the people of Baltimore. Meanwhile, the nine-acre North Point State Battlefield located across the street was preserved and developed for the battle's bicentennial and is located along the main American battle line.
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| A wayside at the Battle Acre depicting the battle |
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| A wayside describing the dedication of the Battle Acre on the 25th anniversary of the fighting |
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| The Battle Acre |
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| One of the panels at the State Battlefield |
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| A path leading to the American lines at the State Battlefield |
The main battle did not last long, and cost the British dearly, but confusion reigned among the untested Maryland militia and after some time, fell back (in varying degrees of order) to Baltimore. We followed their route, and that of their pursuers, to the nearby location of the old Methodist Meeting House, where the Americans had camped the night before and where wounded from both sides were tended to after the battle. From the meeting house, we proceeded into Baltimore and finished up on Hampstead Hill (now Patterson Park). This was were the bulk of the American forces had dug in to protect the landward approach into Baltimore, which they did with great effect. It did not take Colonel Brooke and Admiral Cockburn long on September 13 to realize that they lacked both the numbers and guns to overcome the advantages the position gave to the numerically superior American forces. Combined with the failure by the Royal Navy to neutralize Fort McHenry on the 13th and 14th, they called off the advance that day and led their men back down North Point road to the transport ships. We returned to Ed's house for a bit of a debrief and I headed home. It was a great day!
Not wanting to end the history tourism on Saturday, Sunday found Becca (my fiancée) and I driving down to Harper's Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. The town of Harper's Ferry has a rich and diverse history. The site of one of the early republic's two arsenals, it played a crucial role in the development of the American army and its weaponry, provided the Lewis & Clark expedition with its military stores, was the site of the famed raid of the arsenal by the militant abolitionist John Brown and his followers, saw numerous captures (including the largest surrender of American troops until the Philippines in 1942) during the American Civil War, was home to historically black Storer College in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and played host to the second conference of W.E.B. Dubois' Niagara Movement (the forerunner of the NAACP). Mixed with the stunning beauty of the Appalachian Trail and the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, it makes for a fascinating places to visit.
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| The Point - where the Shenandoah and Potomac meet |
Many of the nineteenth-century buildings have been restored and now contain a variety of exhibits, some very well done, some needing a bit of updating, that highlight the various stories that come together to create the history of the town. We also took in an interpretive ranger program that was part weapons demonstration and part town history talk.
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| Our rangers describing some of the weapons produced at the Harper's Ferry arsenal |
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| The arsenal fire house, "John Brown's Fort" - though not in its original location, having been moved to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition in the 1890s and returned to the arsenal grounds |
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| A sign (the skinny vertical one) marking the heights of various floods in the town. The most devastating was in 1936 and crested at 36.5 inches. Six years later, another would top 33.5 inches. |
We had hoped to take in a little more, but it was a terribly hot and humid day and many of the exhibit buildings, lacking air conditioning and fans, were rather uncomfortable to spend more than a few minutes inside. Overall, though, we had a nice visit and Becca has agreed to go back again.
