On July 4, 1815 the citizenry of Baltimore, Maryland laid the cornerstone for what would become the first Washington Monument. A few months later, just a few blocks away, ground was broken for a second monument, called the Battle or the Baltimore Monument, which celebrated the ordinary citizens and soldiers who died defending the city during the War of 1812. These two monuments expressed rival political ideologies and reflected the clashing interests that hovered around them in urban space. It was the Battle Monument, rooted in more local, plebian, and essentially urban political culture, that came to best represent democratic ideals and to anchor them in the public space where they could be put into practice.
For examples of the virulent political rhetoric, see the Baltimore American and Commercial Daily Advertizer, June 23, 1812, October 7, 1808, and October 27, 1808; the Baltimore Evening Press and the Baltimore Patriot, September 8, 1815; Federal Gazette, July 7, 1808, April 3, June 24, 1809, July 3, and July 23, 1809; Federal Republican, February 1, 1809. The charges against Senator Smith were made in the Federal Republican for May 24 and July 13, 1809; William Bruce Wheeler, "The Baltimore Jeffersonians 1788-1800: A Profile of Intra-Factional Conflict," Maryland Historical Magazine 66, no. 2: 153-68.
2.
For an excellent account of the riot of 1812, see Paul Gilje, "‘Le Menu Peuple’ in America: Identifying the Mob in the Baltimore Riots of 1812," Maryland Historical Magazine 81, no. 1: 50-66 and idem., "The Baltimore Riots of 1812 and the Breakdown of the Anglo-American Mob Tradition," Journal of Social History 13 (1980): 547-64; also Paul Gilje, Rioting in America (Bloomington, 1996), chap. 3; for the Federalist’s perspective see Henry Lee "A Correct Account of the Conduct of the Baltimore Mobs" pamphlet (Winchester, VA, 1814): 18; a more balanced but Republican slanted account is found in "Address of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Cause and Extent of the Late Commotion in the City of Baltimore" pamphlet (The First Branch of the City Council, Baltimore, August 6, 1812). Charles Royster, Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution (New York, 1981).
3.
"Proceedings Relative to the Erection of a Monument to the Memory of Those Who Fell at the Battle of North Point Including the Prayer of Bishop Kent and the Address of the Rev Doctor Inglis" (Baltimore, 1815), 24.
4.
For evidence of the significance of Baltimore in the history of the early republic see Seth Rockman, Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery and Survival in Early Baltimore ( Baltimore, 2009); John Brooke "Ancient Lodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Associations and the Public Sphere in the Eighteenth Century," in Launching the "Extended Republic": The Federalist Era, Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds. (Charlottesville, VA, 1996), 273-359. Jeffrey Pasley, "The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesvile, VA, 2001).
5.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to America, 1805-1859, (Garden City, NY, 1971), 79.
6.
M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, MA, 1994).
7.
This rich recent historiography includes, among others, Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (New York, 2007); John Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 ( Cambridge, MA, 1989); Benjamin Carp, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (New York, 2007); Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Antifederalism and the Dissenting Traditions in America, 1788-1828 (Chapel Hill, 1990); Woody Holton, "An Excess of Democracy-Or a Shortage? The Federalists’ Earliest Adversaries,"Journal of the Early Republic25 (Fall, 2005): 339-38; Albrecht Koschnick, "Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together: Association, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775-1840 (Charlottesville, VA, 2007); Andrew Shocket, Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia (De Kalb, IL, 2007) ; Andrew W. Robertson , "‘Look on this Picture . . . and on This!’ Nationalism, Localism, and Partisan Images of Otherness in the United States, 1787-1820,"American Historical Review106 (2001): 1263-80; Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, eds. Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2004); Andrew Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Democracy in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania (Lawrence, KS, 2004).
8.
David Waldstreicher , In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill, 1997) is a model study of ceremony and early American nationalism. Models of symbolic analysis of place and memory include Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New York, 1996); Albert Boime, The Unveiling of the National Icons: A Plea for Patriotic Iconoclasm in a Nationalist Era , (Cambridge, 1998), and Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies ( Durham, NC, 1988); See Deborah Cherry, "Statue in the Square: Hauntings at the Heart of Empire,"Art History29 (September 2006): 660-97 for an especially perceptive and thorough London example. Excellent studies of U.S. monuments in the later period include Kirk Savage, Standing Soldier, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monuments in Nineteenth-Century America , (Princeton, NJ, 1991); Michele Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 ( Chicago, 1989) and Charles Thomas, The Lincoln Memorial and American Life (Princeton, NJ, 2002). For the early American and republican models see Stefan Rinke, "Pillars of the Republics: Early Monuments and the Politics of Memory in the Post-Colonial Americas"Iberoamericana1 (December 2001): 91-111, and Sarah J. Purcell, "Commemoration, Public Art, and the Changing Bunker Hill Monument,"Public Historian25 (Spring 2003): 55-57.
9.
J. Thomas Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore (Baltimore, 1874), 133.
10.
Brooke, "Ancient Lodges"; J. Thomas Scharf, Chronicles of Baltimore ( Baltimore, 1874), 133.
11.
Gary Lawson Browne, Baltimore in the Nation, 1789-1861, (Chapel Hill, 1980); Robert J. Brugger with the assistance of Cynthia Horsburgh Requardt, Robert I. Cottom, Jr., and Mary Ellen Hayward, Maryland, a Middle Temperament, 1634-1980 (Baltimore, 1988); W. Wayne Smith, "Jacksonian Democracy on the Chesapeake: The Political Institutions,"Maryland Historical Magazine62, no. 4 ( 1967): 381-93; William B. Lefurgy, "Baltimore’s Wards, 1797-1978: A Guide,"Maryland Historical Magazine75, no. 2 (1980): 145-53.
12.
Evening Post, December 12 and 18, 2005.
13.
American, September 30, 1808; Ordinances of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore (Baltimore, 1834 ), March 1808; "The Three Patriots, or the Cause and the Cure of Present Evils Addressed to the Voters of Maryland" pamphlet ( Baltimore, 1811).
14.
Federal Republican, April 21, 1809; "A Portrait of the Evils of Democracy Submitted to the Consideration of the People of Maryland" (Baltimore, 1816); Federal Gazette, September 7 and 27, 1815.
15.
"Excerpts from the Petition of the People of Baltimore to the General Assembly of Maryland, 1809, Requesting the Enactment of a Law Authorizing a Lottery to Raise Funds for a Washington Monument," printed in the appendix of J. Jefferson Miller II"Baltimore’s Monument" (MA thesis, University of Delaware, 1962), 175.
16.
"Account of Laying the Cornerstone, Raising the Statue of the Washington Monument Baltimore" (n.p., 1849), 6.
17.
Comegy is quoted in "1915 Washington Monument Centennial Records" Washington Monument Collection (Maryland Historical Society , Baltimore).
18.
The board of managers were traced through the City directories from 1812 to 1835 and in Scharf, Chronicles.
19.
On Mills biography, see John M. Bryan, America’s First Architect (New York, 2001); R.W. Liscombe, Altogether American, Robert Mills, Architect and Engineer, 1781-1855 ( New York, 1994); Mills to the manager of the Washington Monument, January 12, 1814, WMC, MHS; Pamela Scott, "Robert Mills and American Monuments," in Robert Mills, Architect, ed. John M Bryan (Washington, DC, 1989).
Letter to the Managers of the Washington Monument accompanying Mills entry , January 12, 1814, Washington Monument Collection .
23.
Federal Gazette, July 15, 1815.
24.
Baltimore Patriot, August 28, 1815.
25.
Subscription Book, Baltimore City Archives ; Baltimore Patriot, March 21, 1815.
26.
Ordinances of the City of Baltimore, vol. 2, March 18, 1819, p. 250; March 31, 1821; March 5, 1825.
27.
Patriot, July 29, 1815 and August 28, 1815.
28.
C.B. Davidson , "Maximillian Godefroy,"Maryland Magazine of History24 (September 1934): 175-213; Robert L. Alexander, The Architecture of Maximillian Godefroy (Baltimore, 1974), chap. 1 and 2.
29.
Robert Alexander, "The Public Memorial and Godefroy’s Battle Monument," Journal of theSociety of Architectural Historians 17 (March 1958): 19-24.
30.
Mills, August 22, 1826, Washington Monument Collection; Kirk Savage, "The Self-Made Monument: George Washington and the Fight to Erect a National Memorial,"Winterthur Portfolio22 (1987): 225-42.
31.
For the evolution of the political institutions of Baltimore and Maryland, see Norman Risjord, Chesapeake Politics, 1781-1800 (New York, 1978) and Browne, Baltimore in the Nation, 1789-1861.
32.
Whitman Ridgeway , "Search for Power," in Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland: Proceedings of the First Conference on Maryland History, June 14-15, 1974, ed. Aubrey C. Land, Lois Green Carr, and Edward C. Papenfuse (Baltimore , 1977); Whitman Ridgeway, Community Leadership in Maryland, 1790-1840: A Comparative Analysis of Power in Society ( Chapel Hill, 1979).
33.
Federal Gazette , July 8, 1815; Mills correspondence, WMC, October 30, 1820 and February 28, 1832; Miller Mills to Gilmor, November 7 and 16, 1814; Bryan, America’s First Architect.
34.
Mills and Gilmore correspondence, WMC, November 3, 1830 and February 28, 1832; " An Act Relating to Monument Street in the City of Baltimore Passed March 8, 1834," March 12, 1834; The Charter of the Province of Maryland. The Declaration of Rights of 1776 and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland Relating to Baltimore Town and City ( Baltimore , 1879). Resolution Number 85, April 10, 1837, April 18, Ordinances of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore ( Baltimore, 1834); Acts of the Assembly, March 12, 1830.
35.
Ordinances, February 20, 1826; March 5, 1825; March 16, 1826; March 27, 1828.
36.
Baltimore Patriot, September 21, 1821.
37.
Alexis de Tocqueville , Journey to America, translated by George Lawrence , edited by J. P. Mayer ( New York, 1972).
38.
Baltimore Patriot, March 3, 1834.
39.
Baltimore Patriot , September 21, 1821; George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America (Baltimore, 1996), 502.
40.
Niles Weekly Register, August 15, 1835; Scharf, Chronicles, 475-79; David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York , 1998), 7-12; Frank Otto Gatell, "Secretary Taney and the Baltimore Pets: A Study in Banking and Politics,"Business History Review39 (1965 ): 205-27.
41.
The Report and Testimony Taken Before the Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Maryland (Annapolis, 1836)
