[Cagey]

Thanks for posting this story. I was just in Baltimore this past week and visited Fort McHenry and it was indeed an honor to stand on the same ground American Patriots defended in 1814.

One error in this story is the report of troops being in "bunkers with 10 foot brick roofs". The bunkers were not built at McHenry until the Civil War. At the time of the British Bombardment, most of the American troops took refuge in the "dry moat" surrounding the fort. Four US soldiers were killed that night in 1814.

[maica]

I highly recommend a visit to Fort McHenry for visitors of all ages to Baltimore, expecially for those with school-age children. The water's edge locale gives an entirely different perspective of the value of the City as a port. The barracks inside the Fort have really good exhibits pertaining to different periods of our nation's history.

Coincidentally, I was just talking this morning about the way history could be made more interesting to children, using The Battle of Baltimore as my example.

Baltimore had been preparing for this assault all summer. All able-bodied men spent hours every day either training as militia or reporting to Fort McHenry to build the earthenworks.

The night that the bombardment was raging, all the women and children in the city, from their homes ringing the harbor, were watching the devastation raining down with horror. Their brothers, husbands and fathers were part of the 3000 man City Militia.

Washington DC had been burned just a month before.

If children could be helped to see such a picture of citizens defending the Independence won from the British a few decades previously, they might find history lessons to be much more interesting than just a dry mention of dates and names of battles.