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Ten years ago, I wrote a gift book for the 200th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner, which was inspired by the Battle of Fort McHenry that took place Sept. 13-14 in Baltimore. To honor the national anthem and the victory at Fort McHenry, I’m sharing with you excerpts from America’s Star-Spangled Story. Enjoy!
“The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army,” General George Washington told his men before the battle of Long Island in 1776. He knew that they weren’t just fighting for their own families, but also for the Americans to come.
Can a fight ever be good? Perhaps a better question is this: Can a fight ever be just? General Washington thought so.
“However, under a full persuasion of the justice of our cause, I cannot entertain an idea that it will finally sink, tho’ it may remain for some time under a cloud,” Washington wrote days before he successfully defeated the British by crossing the Delaware River and fighting them at the Battle of Trenton.
In September 1814, Francis Scott Key witnessed two fights. One was a shipboard quarrel of sorts. The other was the Battle of Fort McHenry, which held the key to maintaining American sovereignty.
President James Madison had given Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown attorney, and John Skinner, the U.S. Army’s prisoner negotiator, permission to travel under a flag of truce and find the British flagship. Madison authorized them to negotiate the release of Dr. Beanes, whom the British military took from Marlborough a few weeks earlier.
When Key and Skinner arrived at the British flagship on September 7 to fight for liberating Dr. Beanes, Admiral Cochrane was about to sit for dinner. He invited them to join him, along with other British officers and Robert Ross, the general who’d ordered the burning of Washington.
Their awkwardly polite conversation quickly deteriorated. An English officer insulted America. Skinner hurled back.
“Never was a man more disappointed in his expectations than I have been as to the character of British officers. With some exceptions they appeared to be illiberal, ignorant, and vulgar, and seem filled with a spirit of malignity against everything American,” Key reflected.
With the duel of jabs going nowhere, General Ross offered to speak with Skinner privately. Though left out, Key was happy with the results. While believing that Dr. Beanes had violated a gentleman’s agreement with him, Ross agreed to free the physician. Why? Skinner and Key had brought evidence of good will—letters from captured injured British soldiers praising the good care provided by the Americans.
“I shall accordingly give directions for his being released . . . but purely in proof of the obligation which I feel for the attention with which the wounded have been treated,” Ross explained.
There was a hitch. They couldn’t leave anytime soon.
“Ah, Mr. Skinner, after discussing so freely our preparation and plans, you could hardly expect us to let you go on shore in advance of us?” Cochrane retorted.
Hence, Key, Skinner, and Beanes would have to stay with the British fleet through the perilous battle to come.
What leaves you in suspense? A movie thriller? A mystery novel? An unfinished story? Waiting for the next release of a mobile phone or the newest technological wonder? For Francis Scott Key, suspense was watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry for over twenty-four hours by rockets and bombs.
On the morning of September 13, 1814, Key knew something was up. Admiral Cochrane ordered him and Skinner back onto the truce boat that they’d used to find the fleet several days earlier. Dr. Beanes now joined them, while a nearby armed British ship guarded them.
Sure enough, at 6 AM Cochrane ordered several vessels to move into a line facing Fort McHenry two and three-quarter miles away. Soon the order came. Fire! Quickly realizing that the ships were too far away, the admiral sent them forward until they were two miles away. Return fire from the fort led the British commander to stop his advance. His ships couldn’t safely move any closer. They’d have to rely on their rockets to do their thing.
From his position eight miles away, Key could hear the shots. Aided with a spyglass, he could also see them—the latest in warfare technology: Congreve rockets.
William Congreve, a British engineer, had developed these weapons based on ones fighters in India had hurled against the British in a recent war. Cone-shaped cylinders served as warheads. They were attached to wooden poles about four feet in length.
The British then launched these rockets from metal A-shaped frames. By changing the elevation of the launching frames, they could adjust the distance of the rockets, which could go as far as two miles. These weapons also left a red glare in the sky, a scary sight as much as anything else.
For sixteen months British marines had used these Congreve rockets to burn houses along the Chesapeake Bay in terrorizing raids. They also had used long poles to burn the White House. Lighting the ends of their poles, which contained plate-sized balls of oily rags, and standing in front of the windows and doors, the men thrust their fiery sticks into the White House in unison, causing an instant ball of flames. Within about two and a half hours after firing the rockets at Fort McHenry on September 13, the pace slackened. Why? US artillery ripped one rocket ship’s main sail, forcing the vessel to retreat.
Such was the suspense that Key, Skinner, and Beanes witnessed from their truce boat trapped by the British fleet.
“Life will be brighter than noonday, and darkness will become like morning.” Job 11:17
What does silence mean to you? Is it glorious? Peaceful? Suspenseful? Uncomfortable? Silence can mean many things, depending on the context. Silence is golden, however, when it comes after a time of noise. The louder, more agonizing the noise, the more welcome the quiet.
Suddenly through the silence Key saw it—the most beautiful colors in the world. The largest US flag he’d ever seen burst to the top of the pole at Fort McHenry by the dawn’s early light. The sight could only mean one thing. Fort McHenry remained in US hands.
Earlier in the year, Commander Armistead had not only commissioned the smaller storm flag for Fort McHenry, but he’d also ordered “a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance.” Flag maker Mary Pickersgill made both. The giant flag stretched thirty feet by forty-two feet. Its stars alone measured twenty-four inches from point to point.
What Key didn’t know is that one thousand men had come to Fort McHenry. Refusing to give in, Commander Armistead and his forces held their ground, firing back. Miraculously only four had been killed, even though Armistead thought at many as fifteen hundred weapons had reached the fort.
In addition, Cochrane’s attempt to send a captain and nearly two dozen vessels to aid Brooke had failed. Seeing them, an America opened fire, stopping their assault. Colonel Brooke realized that the stakes were too high. Continuing the land assault would result in the loss of too many lives. He couldn’t live the rest of his life wondering if he’d needlessly thrown away the lives of men, like tossing leaves to the wind. Instead, he ordered a retreat. Back to the boats. It was time to go.
One US commander described the British departure this way: “The enemy has been severely drubbed, as well his army as his navy, and is now retiring down the river.”
As a few men raised the large flag at Fort McHenry, others there played Yankee Doodle while still others fired their guns in a victory salute. Suddenly the silence gave way to song.
“The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” Proverbs 4:18
Soon Francis Scott Key, John Skinner, and Dr. Beanes were free, too. Anchors away they went. Somewhere during their return voyage, or perhaps during the battle, Key’s emotions took flight; so much so that he had to write down what was in his heart. Poetic words came to his mind in a rhythmic pattern. Perhaps the phrases came like a flood, raining so fast that it was hard to catch them with pen and paper. Or maybe they came in bits and pieces, like a puzzle pulsing to conform to a cadence. However it happened, came they did.
Up first was the introduction. “O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?” Next was the nation’s most recognizable symbol: “Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight.” Then came the heroes: “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!” He couldn’t forget the bombardment, the dark night of soul. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.”
The suspense and endurance “gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” And when Key was finished with his lyrics, he had created something with a dual effect. His song clearly represented what happened at The Defense of Fort McHenry, the song’s original name. But Fort McHenry did more than represent a city. It symbolized America. The giant flag didn’t just soar over Baltimore, it unfurled over the entire United States. “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” It’s no wonder that someone renamed the song to The Star-Spangled Banner.
Key’s word pattern fit the tune To Anacreon in Heaven, a melody he’d used a few years earlier to write another song. The music was also well known to many Americans as the Boston Patriotic Song or the Adams and Liberty Song, written to celebrate the presidency of John Adams years earlier. Coming from the Anacreontic Society, which was a club in England, the tune was named after Anacreon, a lyric poet from Greece.
What started with the burning of the US Capitol and the White House at the twilight’s last gleaming gave birth to a new dawn for America and a new song.
What’s your favorite song? Maybe a better question is this: Who or what puts a song in your heart?
“Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession?” Song of Songs 6:10
