On August 24, 1814, a British army occupied Washington and burned many of its public buildings and the Washington Navy Yard before withdrawing. As British forces withdrew through Upper Marlboro, Maryland, on August 26, they took Dr. William Beanes, a prominent physician and friend of Francis Scott Key, as prisoner. Friends of Beanes asked Key to seek his release, which he did with Colonel J. S. Skinner, but they had to wait with the fleet while the British carried out an attack on Baltimore.
This famous rendering of Francis Scott Key (1779–1843), depicts Key’s inspiration for writing the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the words to which were to become the lyrics for the National Anthem of the United States. Key was held on a British ship during the Battle of Baltimore, and here he is portrayed in the dawn’s early light of September 14, 1814, looking at the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry after the British bombardment. Asked to create an enormous flag to ward off the British during the War of 1812, Mary Young Pickersgill sewed a 36’ by 42’ red, white, and blue flag, with 15 stripes and 15 stars. Key’s account of the sight of that flag, which indicated that the British assault had proven unsuccessful, proved over time a vital legendary component of a burgeoning American sense of national identity. (Library of Congress)
On September 13–14, 1814, Key spent the night on board a ship, the Minden, at Fort McHenry, Maryland, watching as the British bombarded Baltimore. At dawn, he spied the still-waving American flag in the distance, signaling an unlikely victory. Inspired, he composed a poem, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” which was quickly printed by the offices of the Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser then distributed around the city. The text of the song appeared in the daily newspaper, the Baltimore Patriot and Evening Advertiser, on September 20, with an introduction that indicated that the song was to be sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English song popular in pubs, composed by John Stafford Smith around 1775. The tune was well known in the United States as the theme song of the Anacreontic Society of London, a gentleman’s club that enjoyed musical performances; there were similar organizations in the United States.
The popularity of the song has created its own set of myths that have surfaced over the years, involving debates over the circumstances under which Francis Scott Key came to write it. Did John Stafford Smith compose the music, as scholars in recent decades have assumed? Composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa, conducting research at the Library of Congress in the late nineteenth century, produced the first serious study of the piece. Music Division Chief Oscar Sonneck in 1909 authored a groundbreaking report that helped resolve the lingering mystery of the music’s composer as the obscure London church organist John Stafford Smith. Then, in 1977, librarian William Lichtenwanger produced the work now considered to be the definitive history: “The Music of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’: From Ludgate Hill to Capitol Hill.”
So what was Key’s real contribution? Was he writing a poem when he scribbled down the verses that night and polished them the next morning? Or was he writing a song to be sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven”? Since Key never addressed the matter publicly, scholars lack sufficient information to determine the truth, except for a few scraps of concrete evidence. Key was an amateur poet who was unmusical and possibly tone deaf. Even though he referred to his verses as “a song” in an 1834 speech, he spoke these words long after he wrote his untitled poem.
The evidence that Key wrote a song on the night of September 13–14 is also speculative, as the poem’s rhyme and meter almost perfectly match those of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” a song that Key had heard since it was used in many popular songs of the day. Also, in 1805, Key wrote a patriotic poem that was sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven.”
Key’s first verse is a long question, wondering not just whether the flag still flew over the fort but whether the young nation would survive. The second verse captures Key’s relief at spotting the American flag “in full glory reflected” at first light. Yet what flag was Key referring to in his poem? Two extra large flags flew over Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore. Both were commissioned by Major Armistead in the summer of 1813 and were made by Baltimore flag-maker Mary Young Pickersgill. Armistead ordered large flags because he wanted anyone approaching Baltimore from the water to see that Fort McHenry was flying the colors of the United States. Historians now believe that it was the smaller flag (17” × 25”) that Key actually saw as the larger flag (42” × 30”) would have broken the flagpole; it would have hung as a soggy mess as a fierce storm was raging during much of the bombardment. It would not have waved majestically in the breeze, as Key observed. The larger flag, which is now part of the collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, most certainly replaced the smaller at Fort McHenry after the Battle of Baltimore ended.
Many accounts erroneously say Key was on a British ship, anchored far away from the bombardment. But before the attack, Key and the other Americans were allowed to reboard their own sloop, guarded by a detachment of Royal Marines. A sketch by a Maryland militia officer watching the bombardment shows an American sloop anchored with the British bombardment squadron, a location where Key would have had an unparalleled view.
The ongoing debate is whether another song should be our national anthem, one that is easier to sing and that has words that better reflect the United States. The national anthem has a staggering range of twelve tones, when ten tones are considered the limit for a popular song, while eleven tones are as much as most musically trained voices can handle. One alternative is “America the Beautiful,” which was inspired by a view from Pike’s Peak in Colorado, with music taken from a melody written by a New Jersey choirmaster. An even more popular alternative is Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which is often called “America’s other national anthem.”
War of 1812 (1812–1815)
Largely forgotten by a Britain much more occupied with the Napoleonic Wars of the period, and indeed often overlooked by Americans today, the War of 1812 looms large in the American mythic imagination for many reasons, most importantly the legendary penning of the “Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key at the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, but also including the victory of Oliver Hazard Perry over the British on Lake Erie, the burning of the White House in Washington by an invading army, and the defeat of the British (incidentally, after the official end of the war) by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Although the outcome of the war was somewhat inconclusive, the “Second American War of Independence,” as it has been called, confirmed America’s identity as a sovereign nation in the eyes of the world, at least in the minds of Americans.
C. Fee
Yet those who dislike the “Star-Spangled Banner” should consider what the song meant to the troops who fought to save the Union during the Civil War. Key’s song resonated when the American flag came under attack at Fort Sumter. It was embraced by federal troops, who played it as they entered Savannah, Richmond, and New Orleans. In the years that followed, the Army and the Navy gave it more formal status as the national anthem. In 1889, the U.S. Navy band adopted it for official use, and in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the tune to be played at all military venues. In 1931, Congress approved the “Star-Spangled Banner” as the nation’s official anthem and President Herbert Hoover signed the measure into law.
Martin J. Manning
See also Founding Myths; Ross, Betsy
Further Reading
Leepson, Marc. 2014. What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, a Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lichtenwanger, William. 1977. The Music of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’: From Ludgate Hill to Capitol Hill. Washington, DC: Library of Congress/Government Printing Office.
Molotsky, Irvin. 2001. The Flag, the Poet, and the Song: The Story of the Star-Spangled Banner. New York: Plume.
Sonneck, Oscar George Theodore. 1909. Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” and “Yankee Doodle.” Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Vogel, Steve. 2014. “Five Myths about ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’” Washington Post, September 14, B2.