Baltimore

Baltimore's Revolutionary War Legacy: From Wartime Capital to Star-Spangled City

Baltimore in 1776 was not yet the bustling seaport it would become, but it was already a town of ambition, commerce, and strategic consequence. Situated on the Patapsco River with access to the Chesapeake Bay, the town served as a vital link between the southern colonies and the northern theater of war. Its contributions to the American Revolution were not confined to a single dramatic battle fought on its streets; rather, Baltimore's significance lay in its role as a seat of wartime governance, a proving ground for some of the Continental Army's most distinguished soldiers, and an economic engine that powered the patriot cause through privateering and supply. The story of Baltimore's revolution stretches from the desperate winter of 1776, when the Continental Congress fled to its streets, through the fiery valor of Maryland troops on distant battlefields, to the construction of the very fortification that would, a generation later, inspire the nation's anthem.

Even before the formal break with Britain, Baltimore was emerging as a hotbed of revolutionary activity. On December 3, 1774, a Baltimore merchant named Mordecai Gist organized the Baltimore Independent Cadets, the first independent military company in Maryland. Some sixty young men — merchants, shipbuilders, and freemen — signed articles of incorporation pledging to "form ourselves into a body or company in order to learn the military discipline," each agreeing to provide himself with a uniform, arms, and ammunition at his own expense. Gist's Cadets would later provide the officer corps and leadership nucleus for the famed Maryland Line. In May 1775, George Washington himself passed through Baltimore en route to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Upon his arrival, Washington and the other Virginia and North Carolina delegates were met by three companies of local militia and escorted to the Fountain Inn, Baltimore's most prominent hostelry, located at the corner of Light Street and Baltimore Street. He reviewed four local militia companies drawn up on the town common — an early sign that Baltimore's patriot community was both organized and eager for the coming struggle. By July 1775, seven militia companies were under arms in Baltimore, and in the following year, two all-German companies were formed, reflecting the town's diverse immigrant population.

The revolutionary leadership of the town coalesced around a powerful alliance of merchants and artisans. Samuel Purviance Jr., an Irish-born merchant who had emigrated to Baltimore around 1763 with his brother Robert, served as chairman of the Baltimore Committee of Observation and was perhaps the most prominent local patriot organizer. The Purviance brothers were among the largest contributors of supplies to the Continental forces and maintained active correspondence with the Maryland Committee of Safety regarding provisions of salt, guns, and ammunition. Samuel Purviance was best known — and indeed officially reprimanded — for his bold instigation of the plot to arrest Robert Eden, the royal governor of Maryland, in 1776, an act the Maryland Convention deemed an assumption of unwarranted authority. Alongside the Purviances, a militant organization known as the Baltimore Whig Club, composed of officers of the First Maryland Regiment, mechanics, and merchants, enforced loyalty to the patriot cause with sometimes alarming zeal. The political atmosphere was volatile: even David McMechen, a member of the Whig Club and a soldier in the First Maryland Regiment, wrote in 1776 that he could not "stay in such a violent place" as Baltimore since he had "too many enemies." In March 1777, the printer William Goddard, who had rhetorically battled with the Whig Club, was forcibly dragged from his house by a pro-revolutionary mob and taken to Rusk's Tavern.

The most extraordinary chapter of Baltimore's wartime importance began in December 1776, when the Continental Congress, facing the terrifying advance of British forces through New Jersey, abandoned Philadelphia and reconvened in the three-story brick building belonging to the merchant Henry Fite on Baltimore Street. Originally built as an inn and tavern around 1770 in the Georgian architectural style, the Henry Fite House was located on West Baltimore Street (then known as Market Street), between South Sharp and North Liberty Streets. Congress arrived on December 20, 1776, shaken and uncertain. The cause of independence, declared with such boldness only five months earlier, appeared on the verge of collapse. Washington's army had been driven across the Delaware River, enlistments were expiring, and public morale was crumbling. John Adams, who lodged at Mrs. Ross's boarding house on Market Street, a few doors below the Fountain Inn, recorded in his diary that the Congress sat in "a long Chamber, with two fire Places, two large Closets, and two Doors," and with characteristic New England asperity described Baltimore as "the dirtyest Place in the World."

It was in this atmosphere of acute crisis that the delegates sitting in Baltimore made one of the most consequential decisions of the entire war: on December 27, 1776, Congress granted George Washington extraordinary emergency powers, authorizing him to raise additional troops, appoint officers, commandeer supplies, and take whatever measures were necessary to sustain the war effort. This was, in effect, a temporary dictatorship granted by a legislative body that had been created in opposition to concentrated authority — a measure of how desperate the situation had become and how much trust the delegates placed in their commander-in-chief. Washington, characteristically, used these powers with restraint and returned them when the immediate crisis passed. But the fact remains that Baltimore was the place where American self-governance bent without breaking, where civilian leaders made the painful calculation that survival required extraordinary sacrifice of principle.

During its weeks in Baltimore, Congress transacted other critical business. On December 21, it appointed George Clymer, Robert Morris, and George Walton as an executive committee in Philadelphia to oversee the city's defense. On December 23, Congress authorized its commissioners in Paris to borrow two million pounds sterling from France and arm six vessels of war — a vital step toward securing foreign aid. On December 31, Congress received Washington's announcement of his stunning victory over the Hessian garrison at Trenton, a morale-boosting triumph that came at the war's most critical hour. On January 1, 1777, Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as commissioner to the Court of Spain, extending the diplomatic campaign to secure another European ally. Congress remained in Baltimore until February 27, 1777, when the military situation stabilized enough to permit a return to Philadelphia. The building where they deliberated came to be known as "Old Congress Hall" after the war; it was eventually destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of February 7–8, 1904. Its former site is now occupied by the CFG Bank Arena.

While Congress deliberated in Baltimore, the town itself was being shaped by the revolutionary ferment that had been building for years. Maryland had adopted its Declaration of Rights in November 1776, and the local military apparatus was growing more formidable by the month. Baltimore's most enduring military contribution to the Revolution was the Maryland Line — the collective designation for the Maryland regiments in the Continental Army. In January 1776, the Maryland Convention resolved to raise a battalion for the defense of the province, appointing William Smallwood as its colonel. Three companies from Baltimore and six companies from Annapolis were combined to form the battalion, with many veterans of Gist's Independent Cadets serving as officers and NCOs. Gist himself became the battalion's major. When Smallwood's Regiment departed for the north on July 10, 1776, to join Washington's army before New York, the command of Gist's old company passed to Samuel Smith, a young Baltimorean who would later become a major general, mayor of Baltimore, and United States senator.

The Marylanders' baptism of fire came at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776 — the first large-scale engagement of the war. As the British flanked and overwhelmed the American positions, Lord Stirling and a contingent of Maryland troops under the command of Major Gist — a group that became known to history as the "Maryland 400," though they numbered about 260–270 soldiers — launched a series of desperate charges against a vastly superior British force near the Vechte–Cortelyou House (known as the "Old Stone House"). The fighting near the Old Stone House lasted almost an hour, during which the Marylanders charged and were repulsed, regrouped over their dead and wounded, and charged again with fixed bayonets. When the fighting ended, 256 Marylanders lay dead on the field — over 60 percent of the attacking force. Only a few dozen escaped alive to American lines. According to tradition, Washington watched the unfolding slaughter from the Brooklyn Heights fortifications and exclaimed, "Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose." The sacrifice of the Maryland 400 halted the British offensive for the day and allowed thousands of Americans to escape, likely preventing the capture of Washington and his entire army. The Maryland Line's long service and valor across the war — from Long Island to Camden to Cowpens to Guilford Courthouse — led Washington, according to tradition, to bestow on Maryland the nickname "The Old Line State."

Baltimore's strategic contribution extended to the sea as well. The shipyards at Fells Point, which had been incorporated into Baltimore Town in 1773, were among the most productive on the Chesapeake. Fells Point's deep-water harbor and skilled shipwrights made it a center of both naval construction and privateering. The Continental Navy ordered one of its first frigates, the 28-gun USS Virginia, from shipbuilder George Wells at Fells Point; she was laid down in 1776, launched that August, and commissioned in the spring of 1777 under Captain James Nicholson. Two earlier vessels of the Continental Navy's first fleet — the sloops Hornet and Wasp — had also been obtained in Baltimore. Baltimore was formally designated as one of the home ports for privateers operating under Letters of Marque issued by the Continental Congress, which formalized the commissioning process with an act on March 23, 1776. The town's merchants eagerly embraced privateering as both patriotic duty and commercial opportunity. As the war progressed, Baltimore became a leading entry port for war materials imported from Europe and the West Indies, as well as an exporter of goods to the north and south.

The Chesapeake Bay itself was a contested waterway throughout the war. The bay served as a critical route for communications between Philadelphia and the southern colonies, and both patriot and loyalist privateers operated in its waters, capturing prizes, disrupting supply lines, and throwing the financial stability of Continental forces into periodic turmoil.

Baltimore's physical defenses also took shape during the Revolution. In 1776, alarmed by the appearance of a British ship in the Chesapeake Bay, the citizens of Baltimore raised money by subscription to erect an earthwork fortification on Whetstone Point, the narrow peninsula jutting out between the branches of the Patapsco River. This earthen star fort, known as Fort Whetstone, mounted an eighteen-gun battery and was designed to guard the narrows leading to Baltimore's harbor. Baltimore remained unscathed throughout the Revolutionary War, and the battery was never fired in anger; the defenses were abandoned after the peace. But the site would prove prophetic. In 1794, as tensions between revolutionary France and Great Britain threatened American shipping, Congress authorized the construction of a new series