The choice of the "Old Defenders" to do this was made as an open appeal to heal the wounds of the Civil War. The "Old Defenders" noted that troops from surrounding towns and counties in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia had rallied to Baltimore and Fort McHenry during the 1814 Battle of Baltimore. Nativism returned with the Confederate veterans after the Civil War. After the Civil War the militia in Baltimore was divided between Union veterans and initially illegal militias of Confederate veterans. Prior to the 1877 riots the Confederate militia was legalized as the 5th Maryland. Baltimore's militia on the eve of the nationwide labor strife and riots in July 1877, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was composed of the 4th, 5th and 6th Maryland militia regiments. The former Confederate 5th Maryland being drawn from veterans of the 1st Maryland C.S.A., the 6th Maryland being composed of Union Army veterans and the 4th Maryland of indeterminate origins. Each militia unit had its headquarters and armory close to one of the large railroad stations. The 5th Regiment Armory above the old Richmond Market at North Howard, West Read & West Biddle Streets, near the old Bolton Station of the Northern Central Railway, the 6th Regiment across the street from the old Phoenix Shot Tower, at East Fayette and North Front Streets, north of the President Street Station of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad and the 4th Regiment at Camden Street Station, headquarters of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. During the riot the 6th was attacked by an armed mob and fought its way west on Baltimore Street, the 6th broke and was chased by the mob through the downtown streets, and the 6th's armory was attacked and the remaining militia driven from their armory. The 6th Maryland was disbanded several years later and the unit blamed for all police and militia violence against the rioters. Governor John Lee Carroll then declared that the designation of "6th Maryland" be forever stricken from the Maryland militia rolls. This left the formerly Confederate 5th Maryland as the dominant militia in Baltimore, thereby shaping how Defenders' Day was commemorated until the outbreak of World War I. The post-Civil War nativism peaked just after the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and then slowly faded with the growing popularity of the "Star-Spangled Banner" as the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy unofficially adopted the song to be played at all military functions in the 1890s. The demise of the 6th Maryland and the ascendency of the 5th Maryland can be viewed as part of the national political changes ending the Reconstruction Era of the United States and the Compromise of 1877.