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Happy Defenders Day (1 Viewer)

Interesting, I just got in from putting up my Defenders lights on the outside of my house. Man, they look beeeeeeautiful

 
This day marks valor and bravery for principles of Liberty, and serves as just another sad reminder how far the Marylanders have fallen from their heroes vision. The Constitution is more than a stepping stone to statism. HTH.

 
fsword said:
This day marks valor and bravery for principles of Liberty, and serves as just another sad reminder how far the Marylanders have fallen from their heroes vision. The Constitution is more than a stepping stone to statism. HTH.
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Hard to be anti-federal government with the growing dominance of the DC suburbs in Maryland politics.
 
With forecasted temperatures in the '90's it should be remembered that more veterans of the Battle of North Point died from heat reenacting the battle on Defender's Day than in the battle itself.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Young Pickersgill's flag and 199th anniversary of the Battle of Northpoint here is an excerpt from the much anticipated Vol 4 of Walter Lorenz's My Father's America that was posted a while back:

'jamny said:
. Meanwhile, since you're into it, here's a snippet from Volume 4 (which ends in 1815) you'll enjoy:

Well pleased by their easy success at Washington, Ross and Cochrane had meanwhile allowed Cockburn to persuade them to attack Baltimore as well. Again it was to be a joint land-water attack. The British regulars under Ross were to land at North Point and assault the city from the east, while Cochrane and his fleet would reduce Fort McHenry, guarding the inner harbor, and then bombard the city itself into submission. But Baltimore was not about to repeat the mistakes of Washington. More than 10,000 men were scraped together to man the strong positions where General Ross intended to make his attack. The defenses of Fort McHenry were strengthened, and a number of boats were sunk at the entrance of the harbor to block the passage of the British fleet. And a brigade of nearly 1,000 sailors did much to quiet the fears of the citizens of Baltimore. On Sunday, September 11, word reached Baltimore that the British were on their way up the bay with the obvious intention of attacking the city. The Sabbath services were interrupted by this news, and the minister dismissed his congregation with the prayer: May the Lord bless King George, convert him, and take him to Heaven, as we want no more of him. At the same time, there were two incidents that did much to make the coming battle a moment forever memorable in the American mind. A young Georgetown lawyer named Francis Scott Key had gone out to the British to try to arrange the release of an American being held by them. He was politely received by Admiral Cochrane, but was then detained so he could not carry back some word of the British plan of attack, and Key was forced to watch the coming events from aboard one of the British ships. And a year earlier, when Fort McHenry was being refurbished, it had been decided that there also would be a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance. The task was handed to a young widow, whose specialty was making flags; 400 yards of cloth were used in making the huge flag - 15 stars, each two feet across, and 13 stripes, alternately red and white, two feet in width. The flag was now raised on its towering pole, and it could indeed be seen miles away. General Ross, with 4,700 overconfident redcoats looking for more action, landed at North Point early in the morning of September 12, and were immediately met by 1,500 grim and determined militiamen, who held them off for more than an hour, inflicting serious casualties, including General Ross himself. And when the British navy tried to come to their countrymen's aid by sending out another 1,200 men in barges, they too were driven back by the defenders of Fort McHenry. The fort would have to be silenced, and the British began to rain bombs, shrapnel shells and red-glaring incendiary rockets on the garrison, hoping to set fire to anything combustible. The flight time of a bomb was calculated by the officer in charge, and the fuse was cut to the proper length to have the bomb explode just before impact, throwing its deadly shrapnel far and wide. It was a crude and unreliable method at best, and many of the bombs exploded too soon, others after impact, and some not at all; the famous bombs bursting in air was thus an appropriate description of many such shells. Hour after hour, all through the day and the following night, the bombardment continued without any sign that the fort was being substantially weakened. The British fleet threw nearly 1,800 missiles at Fort McHenry, but the next morning, by the dawn's early light, Francis Scott Key, still aboard one of the British ships, saw that the Star-Spangled Banner was still there. Key was a man of Federalist inclinations and was by no means a supporter of Mr. Madison's War; he also deplored Baltimore's reputation as a mob city. But his experiences with the British officers had been disillusioning. He found them ignorant and vulgar . . . filled with a spirit of malignity against everything American. On this morning of September 13, 1814, he now sat down and wrote a poem for the occasion on the back of a letter he found in his pocket. The British had meanwhile reconsidered their plans of attacking the city of Baltimore. The commanders had been informed that 15,000 Americans were dug in behind strong fortifications, supported by 120 guns. 15,000 Americans seemed rather a large number for 4,500 British soldiers to engage, even if they were Wellington's veterans. And now that General Ross was dead, it was decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, and the British troops and navy prepared to withdraw. The militiamen, too, went home, properly pleased with themselves, and the war on the Chesapeake had come to an end.
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And then there is this park ranger's presentation, though you may just want to turn the wind noise sound down and watch.

 
Well Sept 12 is still a few weeks away, but I figured I'd start early this bicentennial year on the day that God intervened to keep DC from burning to the ground.

Throughout the events of that day, a great storm blew into the city the night of 24 August 1814, and it continued to get worse, even tornadoes came down from the sky, terrifying the troops who felt God was not happy about what was happening in Washington City.LINKhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

Of course not too far from North Point used to be one of these places which sold these and especially these. So while Dolley Madison may have been credited for some things on the 24th in DC, Dolly Madison was more memorable for the reduced price snack cakes of my '70s lunches.

A week from now the British will land on the Eastern Shore between the Rock Hall and Tollchester fishing spots on their way to teach those in that "nest of pirates" a thing or two.

 
How did the Defenders get their own day and the Avengers don't? What's next, Canadian Alpha Flight Day?

 
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