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—— ON THIS DAY ——
SEPTEMBER 14, 1814
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
212 years ago
The bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour on September 13 and 14, 1814, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became The Star-Spangled Banner.
In the second week of September 1814, during the War of 1812, a Washington lawyer named Francis Scott Key sailed out to the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to negotiate the release of a physician, William Beanes, who had been taken prisoner. The mission succeeded, but Key and his companions had heard details of the coming attack on Baltimore and were held aboard until it was over. They watched from a truce vessel as British warships bombarded Fort McHenry, which guarded the harbour, through the night of September 13.
The shelling went on for roughly twenty-five hours. The British ships fired from beyond the range of the fort's guns, launching mortar shells and rockets, but the defenders held and the fleet could not force the harbour. At dawn on September 14, Key saw that the American garrison flag was still flying over the fort. He began writing lines about it on the back of a letter, and finished the poem in a Baltimore hotel over the following days.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Fort McHenry, the star-shaped coastal fort guarding Baltimore harbour whose defence against British bombardment in September 1814 inspired the poem that became the American national anthem.
The moment mattered because the war had been going badly. Weeks earlier the British had marched into Washington and burned the Capitol, the President's house, and other public buildings. Baltimore, a prosperous port and a base for American privateers, was the next target, and its fall would have been a serious blow. The British attack was repulsed on land at North Point and at sea at Fort McHenry, and the fleet withdrew. The war ended in a negotiated stalemate a few months later.
The poem was printed as a broadside within days under the title Defence of Fort M'Henry and was quickly set to the tune of a well-known English social club song, To Anacreon in Heaven. The pairing was not accidental. Key had used the same melody for an earlier poem, and the metre fit. The combination spread rapidly and was published as sheet music under the title The Star-Spangled Banner before the end of 1814.
It was popular for a century without official status. The Navy adopted it for ceremonial use in 1889, and it was played at ballgames and public occasions long before Congress acted. It became the national anthem by act of Congress on March 3, 1931. The flag Key saw, a garrison flag measuring roughly nine by twelve metres, sewn by Mary Pickersgill and a team including her daughter, her nieces, and an indentured African American girl named Grace Wisher, survives and is displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The anthem itself has been the site of recurring public argument, over its difficulty to sing, over the content of its rarely performed third stanza, and over the politics of standing for it.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
It produced the national anthem of the United States. A poem written on the back of a letter by a lawyer held aboard a truce ship became, more than a century later, the official anthem of the country, sung at ceremonies and sporting events millions of times a year.
The defence of Baltimore turned a bad war around. Weeks after the British burned Washington, the failure to take Baltimore ended the campaign in the Chesapeake and helped push both sides toward the negotiated peace signed at the end of 1814.
The anthem has become a recurring site of national argument. Debates over its lyrics, its difficulty, and the meaning of standing or kneeling during its performance have made the song a lightning rod for larger disagreements about patriotism and belonging.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On the morning of September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key looked across Baltimore harbour after a night of bombardment and saw the flag still flying over Fort McHenry. He wrote a poem about it, someone set it to the tune of a London drinking club song, and 117 years later Congress made it the national anthem.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave.”
— Francis Scott Key, from the poem written after the bombardment of Fort McHenry, September 1814
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the bombardment of Fort McHenry, why Francis Scott Key was aboard a British ship, the tune his words were set to, and how the song became the anthem?
