The Society’s color guard was back at Historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington on Sunday, August 23, 2026, for the Battle of Bladensburg wreath-laying ceremony, held with the District of Columbia National Guard. The service honors the twenty-six documented District of Columbia citizen soldiers who fought at Bladensburg and lie in that ground.

They were shopkeepers, clerks, dock workers, lawyers, and teachers who turned out in the summer of 1814 because the capital had no one else to send. On August 24, an American force of about six thousand, most of them militia, formed west of Bladensburg to stop a British column marching on Washington. The line broke. Commodore Joshua Barney’s flotillamen and a company of United States Marines held their guns on the last rise until they were nearly surrounded, and Barney himself was wounded and taken. That night the British entered the city and burned the Capitol and the President’s House.

The District of Columbia National Guard counts those militiamen as its own forebears and sends its officers to the graves every year. In 2024, the wreath was laid at the grave of Captain Peter Lenox, a veteran of the District militia, for his sake and for all who served beside him.

It is the easiest thing in the world to tell the story of Bladensburg as a rout and leave it there. The men buried at Congressional Cemetery are the reason not to. They lost a battle three weeks before Baltimore won one, and the same kind of citizen soldier stood on both fields.

The Society is glad to bring the colors and the muskets to this ceremony each year, and thanks Historic Congressional Cemetery and the District of Columbia National Guard for keeping it.