, a ship carpenter, was annexed. During the War of Independence, the
Continental Congress, frightened from Philadelphia in 1776, sat for several
weeks in a hall in W. Baltimore Street near Liberty Street; during the same
war also fortifications were first erected on the site of the present Fort
McHenry. This fort effectively protected the city in 1814 when attacked by
the British, and it was during the attack that Francis Scott Key, detained
on one of the British attacking vessels, composed the "Star Spangled
Banner." In 1860 all three of the candidates opposed to Lincoln--Douglas,
Breckinridge and Bell--were nominated here, and here in 1864 President
Lincoln was nominated for a second term. The city has been the
meeting-place of other important conventions, and is sometimes called "The
Convention City." At the outbreak of the Civil War on the 19th of April
1861, the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, while passing through Baltimore,
was attacked by a mob and several men were killed on both sides; in the
following month the city was subjected to military rule and so continued
until the close of the war. From 1856 to 1860 Baltimore was under the
control of the American or Know-Nothing party, and suffered greatly from
election riots and other disorders, until as a remedy the control of the
police system was taken from the mayor and council and exercised by the
state government. Soon after the Civil War a Democratic "machine" got firm
control of the city, [v.03 p.0290] and although a struggle to overthrow the
machine was begun in earnest in 1875 by a coalition of the reform element
of the Democratic party with the Republican party, it was not till 1895
that the coalition won its first decisive victory at the polls. Even then
the efforts of the Republican mayor were at first thwarted by the council,
which passed an ordinance over his veto, taking from him the power of
appointment and vesting it in themselves; the Maryland court of appeals,
however, soon decided that the council had exceeded its powers, and an
important outcome of the reform movement was the new charter of 1898.
Annexations of suburban territory in 1888 and 1890 greatly increased the
area of the city.

AUTHORITIES.--J. H. Hollander, _Guide to the City of Baltimore_ (Baltimore,
1893); T. P. Thomas, "The City Government of Baltimore" (in _Johns Hopkins
University Studies in Historical and Political Science_, Baltimore, 1896);
St G. L. Sioussat, "Baltimore, the Monume