To Honor the Heroes

Baltimore successfully resisted the British assault in September 1814 with the help of thousands of volunteer citizen-soldiers. In 1815 the city laid the cornerstone for the Battle Monument in downtown Baltimore, the nation’s first War of 1812 memorial. On the North Point battlefield, the First Mechanical Volunteers dedicated a monument in 1817 to their fallen comrade Aquila Randall, and nearby Battle Acre was dedicated in 1839 for a monument to all the citizen-soldiers. Captain Benjamin C. Howard, dedicating the Aquila Randall Monument on July 21, 1817, spoke of how people in far distant days would contemplate the monument and the melancholy event that had brought the assembly there. Before the Battle of North Point, British commander Robert Ross was killed in a skirmish, and while a monument in Baltimore honors Daniel Wells and Henry McComas as possible shooters, others credit Aquila Randall. The Aquila Randall Monument, as it appeared in the 1850s, was originally located where General Ross fell, and the monument to Daniel Wells and Henry McComas was shown decorated for Baltimore’s sesquicentennial in 1880.

Dundalk, Maryland · United States