The head of Chesapeake Bay, on either side of the Susquehanna River,
is composed of various broad estuaries, with small streams entering
them. To the eastward the chief is Elk River, and to the westward are
the Gunpowder and Bush Rivers, with others. Not far above the Severn
is the wide tidal estuary of the Patapsco, so named by the Indians to
describe its peculiarity, the word meaning "a stream caused by back or
tidewater containing froth." A few miles up this estuary is the great
city and port of the Chesapeake, Baltimore, so named in honor of Lord
Baltimore, and containing, with its suburbs, over six hundred thousand
people. The spreading arms of the Patapsco, around which the city is
built, provide an ample harbor, their irregular shores making plenty
of dock room, and the two great railways from the north and west to
Washington, which go under the town through an elaborate system of
tunnels, give it a lucrative foreign trade in produce brought for
shipment abroad. From the harbor there are long and narrow docks, and
an inner "Basin" extending into the city, and across the heads of
these is Pratt Street. This highway is famous as the scene of the
first bloodshed of the Civil War. The Northern troops, hastily
summoned to Washington, were marching along it from one railway
station to the other on April 19, 1861, when a Baltimore mob,
sympathizing with the South, attacked them. In the riot and conflict
that followed eleven were killed and twenty-six were wounded. A creek,
called Jones's Falls, coming down a deep valley from the northward
into the harbor, divides the city into two almost equal sections, and
in the lower part is walled in, with a street on either side. Colonel
David Jones, who was the original white inhabitant of the north side
of Baltimore harbor, gave this stream his name about 1680, before
anyone expected even a village to be located there. A settlement
afterwards began eastward of the creek, known as Jonestown, while
Baltimore was not started until 1730, being laid out westward of the
creek and around the head of the "Basin," the plan covering sixty
acres. This was called New Town, as the other was popularly termed Old
Town, but they subsequently were united as Baltimore, having in 1752
about two hundred people.
Baltimore is rectangular in plan and picturesque, covering an
undulating surface, the hills, which are many, inclining either to
Jones's Falls or the harbor. Its popular title is the "Monumental
City," given because it was the first American city that built fine
monuments. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the State of
Maryland erected on Charles Street a monument to General Washington,
rising one hundred and ninety-five feet, a Doric shaft of white marble
surmounted by his statue and upon a base fifty feet square. This
splendid monument stands in a broadened avenue and at the summit of a
hill, surrounded by tasteful lawns and flower gardens, with a fountain
in front. It makes an attractive centre for Mount Vernon Place, which
contains one of the finest collections of buildings in the city, and
presents a scene essentially Parisian. Here are the Peabody Institute
and the Garrett Mansion, both impressive buildings. Baltimore has a
"Battle Monument," located on Calvert Street, in Monument Square, a
marble shaft fifty-three feet high, marking the British invasion of
1814, and erected in memory of the men of Baltimore who fell in battle
just outside the city, when the British forces marched from Elk River
to Washington and burnt the Capitol, and the British fleet came up the
Patapsco and shelled the town. The city also has other fine monuments,
so that its popular name is well deserved.
The City Hall is the chief building of Baltimore, a marble structure
in Renaissance, costing $2,000,000, its elaborate dome rising two
hundred and sixty feet, and giving a magnificent view over the city
and harbor. There are two noted churches, the Mount Vernon Methodist
Church, of greenstone, with buff and red facings and polished granite
columns, being the finest, although the First Presbyterian Church,
nearby, is regarded as the most elaborate specimen of Lancet-Gothic
architecture in the country, its spire rising two hundred and
sixty-eight feet. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is an attractive
granite church, containing paintings presented by Louis XVI. and
Charles X. of France. Cardinal Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, is
the Roman Catholic Primate of the United States. The greatest
charities of the city are the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns
Hopkins University, endowed by a Baltimore merchant who died in 1873,
the joint endowments being $6,500,000. Hopkins was shrewd and
penurious, and John W. Garrett persuaded him to make these princely
endowments, much of his fortune being invested in the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad, of which Garrett was President in its days of greatest
prosperity. This railroad is the chief Baltimore institution, giving
it a direct route to the Mississippi Valley, and was the first started
of the great American trunk railways, its origin dating from 1826,
when the movement began for its charter, which was granted by the
Maryland Legislature the next year. This charter conferred most
comprehensive powers, and the story is told that when it was being
read in that body one of the members interrupted, saying: "Stop, man,
you are asking more than the Lord's Prayer." The reply was that it was
all necessary, and the more asked, the more would be secured. The
interrupter, convinced, responded: "Right, man; go on." The
corner-stone of the railway was laid July 4, 1828, beginning the route
from Baltimore, up the Potomac and through the Alleghenies to the Ohio
River.
DRUID HILL AND FORT McHENRY.
Baltimore is proud of the great art collection of Henry Walters in
Mount Vernon Place, exhibited for a fee for the benefit of the poor;
and it also has had as a noted resident Jerome Bonaparte, brother of
Napoleon, who married, and then discarded by Napoleon's order, Miss
Patterson, a Baltimore lady. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has remarked
that three short American poems, each the best of its kind, were
written in Baltimore: Poe's _Raven_, Randall's _Maryland, My
Maryland_, and Key's _Star-Spangled Banner_. It is also proud of its
park--"Druid Hill"--a splendid pleasure-ground of seven hundred acres,
owing much of its beauty to the fact that it had been preserved and
developed as a private park for a century before passing under control
of the city. The route to it is by the magnificent Eutaw Place, and
the stately entrance gateway opens upon an avenue lined on either hand
by long rows of flower vases on high pedestals, laid out alongside
Druid Lake, the chief water-reservoir. The Park has an undulating
surface of woodland and meadow, with grand old trees and splendid
lawns, making a scene decidedly English, not overwrought by art, but
mainly left in its natural condition. The mansion-house of the former
owner, now a restaurant, occupies a commanding position, and on the
northern side the land rises to Prospect Hill, with an expansive view
all around the horizon and eastward to Chesapeake Bay.
In this beautiful park the higher grounds are used for
water-reservoirs. Baltimore has the advantage of receiving its supply
by gravity from the Gunpowder River to the northward, where a lake has
been formed, the pure water being brought through a tunnel for seven
miles to the reservoirs, of which there are eight, with a capacity of
2,275,000,000 gallons, and capable of supplying 300,000,000 gallons
daily. These reservoirs appear as pleasant lakes, Montebello and
Roland, with Druid Lake, being the chief. Across the ravine of Jones's
Falls is Baltimore's chief cemetery, Greenmount, a pretty ground, with
gentle hills and vales. Here, in a spot selected by herself, is buried
Jerome's discarded wife, Madame Patterson-Bonaparte, whose checkered
history is Baltimore's chief romance. Here also lie Junius Brutus
Booth, the tragedian, and his family, among them John Wilkes Booth,
who murdered President Lincoln.
The most significant sight of Baltimore, however, is its old Fort
McHenry--down in the harbor, on the extreme end of Locust Point,
originally called Whetstone Point, where the Patapsco River
divides--built on a low-lying esplanade, with green banks sloping
almost to the water. It was the strategic position of this small but
strong work, thoroughly controlling the city as well as the harbor
entrance, that held Baltimore during the early movements of the Civil
War, and maintained the road from the North to Washington. Its
greatest memory, however, and, by the association, probably the
greatest celebrity Baltimore enjoys, comes from the flag on the staff
now quietly waving over its parapets. Whetstone Point had been
fortified during the Revolution, but in 1794 Maryland ceded it to the
United States, and the people of Baltimore raised the money to build
the present fort, which was named after James McHenry, who had been
one of the framers of the Federal Constitution and was Secretary of
War under President Washington. When Admiral Cockburn's British fleet
came up the Chesapeake in September, 1814, the Maryland poet, Francis
Scott Key, was an aid to General Smith at Bladensburg. An intimate
friend had been taken prisoner on board one of the ships, and Key was
sent in a boat to effect his release by exchange. The Admiral told Key
he would have to detain him aboard for a day or two, as they were
proceeding to attack Baltimore. Thus Key remained among the enemy, an
unwilling witness of the bombardment on September 12th, which
continued throughout the night. In the early morning the attack was
abandoned, the flag was unharmed, and the British ships dropped down
the Patapsco.
Key wrote his poem on the backs of letters, with a barrel-head for a
desk, and being landed next day he showed it to friends, and then made
a fresh copy. It was taken to the office of the _Baltimore American_
and published anonymously in a handbill, afterwards appearing in the
issue of that newspaper on September 21, 1814. The tune was "Anacreon
in Heaven," and there was a brief introduction describing the
circumstances under which it was written. It was first sung in the
Baltimore Theatre, October 12th of that year, and afterwards became
popular. The flag which floated over Fort McHenry on that memorable
night is still preserved. Fired by patriotic impulses, various ladies
of Baltimore had made this flag, among them being Mrs. Mary
Pickersgill, who is described as a daughter of Betsy Ross, of
Philadelphia, who made the original sample-flag during the Revolution.
The Fort McHenry flag contains about four hundred yards of bunting and
is nearly square, measuring twenty-nine by thirty-two feet. It has
fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, which was then the official
regulation, there being fifteen States in the American Union. The poem
of the _Star-Spangled Banner_, thus inspired and written, has become
the great American patriotic anthem, and has carried everywhere the
fame of the fort, the city, and the flowery flag of the United States.
The following is the song, with title and introduction, as first
published:
DEFENCE OF FORT McHENRY.