FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
AUTHOR OF THE “STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.”
[Born August 9, 1780. Died January 11, 1843.]
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 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 H. M. S. 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. Armisteads great flag blowing in the breeze. When at last daylight came, the flag was still there!
Being an amateur 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 nations’ 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.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
Oh, say, does the star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam.
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream!
‘Tis the star-spangled banner: Oh, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul foot-steps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that has made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Key Monument, San Francisco, California
This beautiful monument was designed by W. W. Story. The bronze statue of Key, in the costume of the early part of the century, is eight feet in height, the figure of America with the flag is thirteen feet, and the entire structure is fifty-two feet in height.
A special bequest of $60,000 by James Lick-whose munificent gift of $700,000 established and endowed the celebrated Lick Observatory-provided the money for the erection of the monument.
James Lick was eighteen years of age at the time of the successful defense of Baltimore, September, 1814, in which brave Pennsylvanians participated among whom was James Buchanan, subsequently President of the United States.
Lick was for several years a young workman in a piano manufactory in this city. The National Anthem touched his young life of toil and struggle.
When, in a ripe old age, away off on the Pacific slope, great wealth had crowned his industry and sound business judgment, his admiration for the song and its author, blending with the love of country and humanity, found expression in this appropriate and magnificent memorial.
Photographs and sketches used by the sculptor were furnished by a citizen of Baltimore. The monument was dedicated July 4, 1888.
Francis Scott Key Monument, Frederic, Maryland
Space will not permit a full description of this exquisite memorial to Key. The heroic statue in bronze of the Patriot-Poet rests upon a substantial base and pedestal of granite.
A group emblematic of patriotism presents an attractive subject for study. The seal of Maryland and the text of the song find appropriate places.
Alexander Doyle was the sculptor. It was built under the auspices of the Key Monument Association, and represents the splendid result of years of patriotic devotion by the people of Key’s native county and their associates.
The State gave a liberal appropriation, and contributions were received from many portions of the Union. It was Key’s request that his remains should rest “beneath the shadows of the everlasting hills.”
Flag Day and August 9, 1898, are memorable in the history of Frederick, the former for the placing of Key’s remains in the crypt beneath the monument, the latter for the unveiling of the statue.
Both were occasions marked by outpourings of the people and by every appropriate token of respect and affection for the memory of the man which Time has not dimmed, but has enriched with the increasing lustre of enduring glory.
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Patriotism is the preserving virtue of a republic.
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We must do what we ought and not what we like.
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We are in the rich possession of what valor has won and wisdom has preserved for us.
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Legislate not for the next election, but for the next century.
— Francis Scott Key
Sources
The National Anthem…. “The Star-Spangled-Banner,” Francis Scott Key, and Patriotic Lines by Edwin Higgins, Baltimore, 1898. Download whole book (PDF) – 6.5 MB
The History of Our American Flag
