Baltimore

Baltimore is where the American Revolution survived its most desperate winter. In December 1776, with the Continental Army in full retreat across New Jersey and Washington's forces dwindling by desertions and expired enlistments, the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia for Baltimore. The city on the Patapsco served as the national capital for two months — a period that coincided almost exactly with the darkest weeks of the war. From Baltimore, in the days after Washington's Christmas crossing of the Delaware, Congress granted Washington the emergency powers he needed to reconstitute the army. The nation's survival as a functioning political enterprise was partly decided in a rented house on Baltimore's Liberty Street.

The Congress had reason to fear. The British occupied New York and were advancing across New Jersey. Philadelphia seemed likely to fall. Baltimore provided distance and a defensible position behind the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland legislature offered its support. The city's merchants, many of whom had already converted their vessels to privateering, had a direct financial stake in the war's continuation.

That privateering economy is the part of Baltimore's Revolutionary history most accounts underplay. The Chesapeake Bay was one of the most productive privateering theaters in North America. Baltimore merchants equipped dozens of vessels under letters of marque that preyed on British commercial shipping from the Bay through the Caribbean and into the English Channel. The wealth generated by these operations helped finance the war effort in ways that neither Continental currency nor congressional requisitions could reliably accomplish. Baltimore grew faster during the Revolution than almost any other American city precisely because the war was profitable for the men who had the ships and the willingness to use them.

The fort that would become Fort McHenry was not yet built in 1776. It grew from Revolutionary War earthworks into a proper masonry fortification by 1803 — named for James McHenry, Washington's aide-de-camp and later Secretary of War. Its defining moment came in September 1814, when a British fleet bombarded it for twenty-five hours without forcing the harbor entrance. Francis Scott Key, a Maryland lawyer watching from a British truce vessel, wrote the poem — "Defence of Fort McHenry," set to an English drinking song — that became the national anthem. The fort held. The flag flew. Baltimore did not fall.

The Maryland Line soldiers who formed the core of Baltimore's military contribution were already legendary before any of this: the 400 Marylanders who charged British forces repeatedly at Long Island in August 1776, covering Washington's retreat at the cost of 250 casualties, were called by Washington himself the bravest fellows he had ever seen. Their sacrifice bought the Revolution the hours it needed to survive.