Lee Departs for Fort Carroll
“. . . . My days are spent pretty much at Fort Carroll (Sollers Point); My thoughts are engrossed with driving piles & laying stone. . . . Poor subjects for a corres-pondence with young ladies. If it was not for my heart Markie, I might as well be a pile or stone myself. . . . "
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— Robert E. Lee, Fort Carroll, to his cousin Markie Williams, 10 May 1851
After the Mexican War, he spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor. During this time his service was interrupted by other duties, among them surveying/updating maps in Florida, an offer from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to lead an attack on Cuba (Lee declined), and a brief military assignment out west. In September 1852
The hexagonal structure was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee and named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Construction of the fort began in 1848, under Lee's supervision, by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Fort Carroll was important for the defense of Baltimore — before the fort was created, the only military defensive structure between Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay was Fort McHenry. In addition, a lighthouse, now abandoned, was built on the ramparts to aid navigation into Baltimore Harbor.
