Today in History—September 14: The Writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner”
It was 1814, and the U.S. and the British were still fighting the increasingly pointless War of 1812. Well-regarded lawyer Francis Scott Key was on a boat eight miles outside of Baltimore Harbor.
He was there to help negotiate a hostage release, but “Defense of Fort M’Henry” was the result.
“By the dawn’s early light” on this day, Key spied a huge American flag “gallantly streaming” above Fort McHenry. The garrison’s enormous flag was waving on its flagpole, some 90 feet high—a clear signal that the American fort had survived the Battle of Baltimore.
The battle had come on the heels of a blistering American defeat in Maryland that let the British troops take Washington and raze it.
William Beanes, an older and respected physician in southern Maryland, had been arrested by the British for his role in trying to thwart the British after the burning of Washington weeks before, and Key, along with the U.S. government’s official Prisoner Exchange Agent, was tasked by the president to secure Beanes’s release. They were successful, but the three were made to wait on a ship—lest they scamper off to warn someone of the upcoming attack.
Key, like many other Americans, deeply feared what would happen if the British forces succeeded in capturing Baltimore, then the country’s third largest city. He had spent an anxious night on deck watching the bombardment of the fort, and the sight of the flag brought great relief. In the distance Key could see the British fleet retreating.
Francis Scott Key was devoutly religious and deeply opposed to the War of 1812.
He immediately began writing the poem on the back of a letter. He later finished it in his hotel room, after he was released by the British. Though it started as a poem, he always had the tune of a popular drinking song in mind during its composition, and the first published copies included instructions for its musical accompaniment.
The poem was, shall we say, enthusiastically received.
Later that year it acquired the name we know it by: “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was designated the national anthem in 1931, and the flag Key wrote about still hangs “o’er the land of the free,” in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
- 25 hours: Length of the British bombardment of the fort
- 30 x 42 feet: Original size of the garrison flag
- $405.90: Paid to Baltimore flag maker Mary Pickersgill to sew the garrison flag
- 1741: George Frideric Handel completes his famous oratorio, Messiah
- 1812: Napoleon enters Moscow and finds the city on fire
- 1867: The first volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is published
