it is not amiss to note, were
built at Fell’s Point, about a mile and a half across the river
from Fort McHenry, where modern Broadway, a thoroughfare, now has
its terminus.

It was before the outbreak of the War of 1812 that the foundations
of present-day Fort McHenry were laid. In the closing ten years
of the eighteenth century there was much ill feeling against
England and war was declared in rumor many times before the actual
outbreak of hostilities took place. At one of these periods of
apprehension the citizens of Baltimore, at their own expense,
started the erection of a star-shaped fort under the direction of
John J. Rivardi, engineer. In 1794 this erection, not complete but
well started toward completion, passed to the Federal government
and was named Fort McHenry in honor of James McHenry, secretary to
Washington during the Revolution and Secretary of War from 1796 to
1800. The works were completed in 1805 and the formal cession to
the Federal government took place in 1816.

It is hard to over-estimate in the history of the country the
importance of the defence of Fort McHenry and of the engagement
at North Point,--a corollary of this defence,--though Marylanders
themselves have been comparatively indifferent to it until lately.
With that pride of race which is a heritage of the South and the
feeling which that pride engenders that their men will do well as
a matter of course, Marylanders have given this engagement rather
casual attention until very recent years. Indeed, up to the last
decade, it was not unusual to hear Baltimoreans refer to the heroic
defenders of North Point, who checked a force many times more
powerful than their own and inflicted terrible injury in mortally
wounding the assailants’ commanding officer, as the “North Point
racers,” in humorous appreciation of the nimbleness of foot and
ingenuity in evading observation which the men showed when finally
they did break ground and retreated to Baltimore. Yet the times
were critical enough, Heaven knows, and the part that these sam