Francis Scott Key was a respected young lawyer living in
Georgetown just west of where the modern day Key Bridge crosses the Potomac
River (the house was torn down after years of neglect in 1947). He made his home
there from 1804 to around 1833 with his wife Mary and their six sons and five
daughters. At the time, Georgetown was a thriving town of 5,000 people just a
few miles from the Capitol, the White House, and the Federal buildings of
Washington.
But, after war broke out in 1812 over Britain's attempts to
regulate American shipping and other activities while Britain was at war with
France, all was not tranquil in Georgetown. The British had entered Chesapeake
Bay on August 19th, 1814, and by the evening of the 24th of August, the British
had invaded and captured Washington. They set fire to the Capitol and the White
House ~ the the flames visible 40 miles away in Baltimore.
President James Madison, his wife Dolley, and his Cabinet had
already fled to a safer location. Such was their haste to leave that they had to
rip the Stuart portrait of George Washington from the walls without its frame!
A thunderstorm at dawn kept the fires from spreading. The next
day more buildings were burned and again a thunderstorm dampened the fires.
Having done their work the British troops returned to their ships in and around
the Chesapeake Bay.
In the days following the attack on Washington, the American
forces prepared for the assault on Baltimore (population 40,000) that they knew
would come by both land and sea. Word soon reached Francis Scott Key that the
British had carried off an elderly and much loved town physician of Upper
Marlboro, Dr. William Beanes, and was being held on the British flagship TONNANT.
The townsfolk feared that Dr. Beanes would be hanged. They asked Francis Scott
Key for his help, and he agreed, and arranged to have Col. John Skinner, an
American agent for prisoner exchange to accompany him.
On the morning of September 3rd, he and Col. Skinner set sail
from Baltimore aboard a sloop flying a flag of truce approved by President
Madison. On the 7th they found and boarded the TONNANT to confer with Gen. Ross
and Adm. Alexander Cochrane. At first they refused to release Dr. Beanes. But
Key and Skinner produced a pouch of letters written by wounded British prisoners
praising the care they were receiving from the Americans, among them Dr. Beanes.
The British officers relented but would not release the three Americans
immediately because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the
attack on Baltimore. They were placed under guard, first aboard the HMS
Surprise, then onto the sloop, and forced to wait out the battle behind the
British fleet.
Now let's go back to the summer of 1813 for a moment. At the
star-shaped Fort McHenry, the commander, Maj. George Armistead, asked for a flag
so big that "the British would have no trouble seeing it from a
distance". Two officers, a Commodore and a General, were sent to the
Baltimore home of Mary Young Pickersgill, a "maker of colours," and
commissioned the flag. Mary and her thirteen year old daughter Caroline, working
in an upstairs front bedroom, used 400 yards of best quality wool bunting. They
cut 15 stars that measured two feet from point to point. Eight red and seven
white stripes, each two feet wide, were cut. Laying out the material on the malt
house floor of Claggett's Brewery, a neighborhood establishment, the flag was
sewn together. By August it was finished. It measured 30 by 42 feet and cost
$405.90. The Baltimore Flag House, a museum, now occupies her premises, which
were restored in 1953.
At 7 a.m. on the morning of September 13, 1814, the British
bombardment began, and the flag was ready to meet the enemy. The bombardment
continued for 25 hours ~ the British firing 1,500 bombshells that weighed as
much as 220 pounds and carried lighted fuses that would supposedly cause it to
explode when it reached its target. But they weren't very dependable and often
blew up in mid air. From special small boats the British fired the new Congreve
rockets that traced wobbly arcs of red flame across the sky. The Americans had
sunk 22 vessels so a close approach by the British was not possible. That
evening the cannonading stopped, but at about 1 a.m. on the 14th, the British
fleet roared to life, lighting the rainy night sky with grotesque fireworks.
Key, Col. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes watched the battle with
apprehension. They knew that as long as the shelling continued, Fort McHenry had
not surrendered. But, long before daylight there came a sudden and mysterious
silence. What the three Americans did not know was that the British land assault
on Baltimore as well as the naval attack, had been abandoned. Judging Baltimore
as being too costly a prize, the British officers ordered a retreat.
Waiting in the predawn darkness, Key waited for the sight that
would end his anxiety; the joyous sight of Gen. Armistead's great flag blowing
in the breeze. When at last daylight came, the flag was still there!
Being an amatuer poet and having been so uniquely inspired, Key
began to write on the back of a letter he had in his pocket. Sailing back to
Baltimore he composed more lines and in his lodgings at the Indian Queen Hotel
he finished the poem. Judge J. H. Nicholson, his brother-in-law, took it to a
printer and copies were circulated around Baltimore under the title "Defence
of Fort M'Henry". Two of these copies survive. It was printed in a
newspaper for the first time in the Baltimore Patriot on September 20th,1814,
then in papers as far away as Georgia and New Hampshire. To the verses was added
a note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." In October a Baltimore actor sang
Key's new song in a public performance and called it "The Star-Spangled
Banner".
Immediately popular, it remained just one of several patriotic
airs until it was finally adopted as our national anthem on March 3, 1931. But
the actual words were not included in the legal documents. Key himself had
written several versions with slight variations so discrepancies in the exact
wording still occur.
The flag, our beloved Star-Spangled Banner, went on view for the
first time after flying over Fort McHenry, on January 1st,1876 at the Old State
House in Philadelphia for the nation's Centennial celebration. It now resides in
the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History. An opaque curtain
shields the now fragile flag from light and dust. The flag is exposed for
viewing for a few moments once every hour during museum hours.
Francis Scott Key was a witness to the last enemy fire to fall
on Fort McHenry. The Fort was designed by a Frenchman named Jean Foncin and was
named for then Secretary of War James McHenry. Fort McHenry holds the unique
designation of national monument and historic shrine.
Since May 30th, 1949 the flag has flown continuously, by a Joint
Resolution of Congress, over the monument marking the site of Francis Scott
Key's birthplace, Terra Rubra Farm, Carroll County, Keymar, Maryland.
The copy that Key wrote in his hotel September 14,1814, remained
in the Nicholson family for 93 years. In 1907 it was sold to Henry Walters of
Baltimore. In 1934 it was bought at auction in New York from the Walters estate
by the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore for $26,400. The Walters Gallery in 1953
sold the manuscript to the Maryland Historical Society for the same price.
Another copy that Key made is in the Library of Congress.