The Flag over Fort McHenry
Sure it's hard to sing, but you have to give "The Star-Spangled
Banner" huge points for sincerity. When Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) strained to see whether the U.S. flag was still
flying over Fort McHenry on the morning of September 14, 1814, he wasn't just a curious bystander. He was a virtual prisoner
of the British navy, which had been bombarding the fort for more than 20 hours.
Why did this Washington, DC, lawyer have a front-row seat to observe one of the War of 1812's most important
battles? Because of a client, of course. Key had been persuaded to negotiate the release of an elderly Maryland physician,
Dr. William Beanes, whom the British had imprisoned after they captured and burned the U.S. capital in August 1814.
Key enlisted the help of John Skinner, a U.S. government agent who served as a liaison to the British forces. On
September 7, under a white flag of truce, they approached the British fleet and made their case for the freeing of Dr. Beanes.
The British brass agreed. Yet they also decided that these Americans had seen too much of the preparations for the attack
on Baltimore. The Americans were not permitted to head home until after the battle.
The British attack on
Fort McHenry began early on September 13 in a pouring rain. All through the day and into the night, rockets and shells battered
the fort that guarded Baltimore Harbor. The British ships carried mortars that could lob bombs over a target from two miles
away. The high-trajectory shells exploded above the heads of Americans in the fort, raining shrapnel down on them. Fires raged
wherever the shells landed. As many as 1,800 bombs were fired at the fort. The U.S. commander estimated that 400 fell within
its walls.
Key watched the battle illuminated by what he later called "the rockets' red glare."
When, on the morning of September 14, the shelling stopped, the Americans watching must have feared that the commander of
the fort had surrendered. But then they saw the American flag flying triumphantly over the battlements. British commanders
had judged Baltimore too costly a prize and had ordered the withdrawal of their forces.
Key, an amateur
poet, pulled an old letter out of his pocket and scribbled a few lines on the back. He worked on the rest of the verses for
a day or so. A few days after the battle, he showed his poem to some friends. One of them took it to the office of the Baltimore
American, where it was printed as a broadside and distributed under the name "Defence of Fort M'Henry"
to the fort's garrison.
More than a dozen newspapers, beginning with the Baltimore Patriot on
September 20 and the Baltimore American on September 21, reprinted Key's poem in the next few weeks. Most noted
that the words could be sung to a popular tune called "To Anacreon in Heaven" by John Stafford Smith, whose melody
had become a sort of theme song for a gentlemen's club (called the Anacreontic Society) that met in London in the late
1700s.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" gained popularity over the years, particularly in the
North during the Civil War. But the song did not become America's national anthem until 1931, when Congress made it so.
In 1949, Congress decreed that a flag fly continuously at Key's birthplace in Maryland--a perpetual answer to Key's
anxious question: "O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?" Yes, Mr. Key, it does.
--Colleen
Kelly
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