Valor Friday

As we head into Memorial Day weekend, I’ll do something different with this week’s piece.

The War of 1812 was a conflict the United States started with the Great British empire. Leading up to the declaration of war, the Royal Navy had been stopping and boarding American ships. They took American prisoners and impressed them into service. By some estimates between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1812 some 15,000 men were so shanghaied.

Fort McHenry was a key military fortification in the Port of Baltimore. The fort was besieged by a British fleet in 1814, more than two years into the war. This was just weeks after Washington, D.C. has been sacked and the White House and Capitol burned. It was during the Burning of Washington and the subsequent Raid on Alexandria that the British would take prisoner a civilian doctor, William Beanes from inside his own house outside Baltimore.

Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer and amateur poet, sailed out to the British fleet outside Baltimore Harbor to secure the release of Dr. Beanes from the British. Key was accompanied by John Stuart Skinner, also a lawyer by trade. They sailed to the British under a flag of truce and were operating with the approval of President Madison.

Key and Skinner arrived on 7 September, 1814. They dined with British Army Major General Robert Ross and Royal Navy Vice Admiral Alexander Chochran. The British officers initially refused to release the elderly doctor but relented after Key and Skinner showed the men letters written by British prisoners of war speaking to Beanes’ excellent treatment of the prisoners.

Because the two British officers had discussed military strategy and plans for the attack on Baltimore at the dinner, the lawyers were not allowed to return to land. They were held aboard their truce ship until after the battle more than a week later. It was from this vantage point that they watched the British land 5,000 troops at North Point (Baltimore’s last line of defense), from which they were repulsed by the Americans on 12 September.

The next day the British tried to attack at Rodgers Bastion. More than 4,000 British came upon a better entrenched American line of 10,000 men, and were again repulsed. Before attempting to take Baltimore again, the British decided to bombard Fort McHenry.

Fort McHenry had been heavily fortified. To keep the British, who had naval superiority, from accurately firing on the fort, the defenders sunk a line of American merchant vessels to block the approach.

The British fleet, consisting of 19 ships included one rocket ship and five bomb ships, opened fire on the fort on 13 September. Helping the defenders, the British ships had to move out of range of the fort’s cannons, putting their rockets and bombs at their maximum effective range. As twilight last gleamed and rain fell from the sky, Francis Scott Key watched from the harbor “O’er the ramparts” of the American fort as they were so heavily beset by enemy fire. Above the fort was the American flag that was “so gallantly streaming.”

During the night, Key would see the American flag flying above the fort but only when illuminated by the “rocket’s red glare [and] the bombs bursting in air.” The flashes of the enemy munitions “gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

As the battle unfolded in a “perilous fight”, the British launched between 1,500 and 1,800 cannonballs at the fort that evening and overnight. They watched what must have looked like an impossible number of enemy munitions, but the end of the bombardment overnight meant Key couldn’t see the flag. After ceasing their bombings, the British had again attempted a land assault. Would the fort still be in American hands come morning?

As daybreak arrived, Key started to look for the fort’s flag. What had been there at the beginning of the battle was the normal-sized “storm flag”. Come morning reveille, the oversized 30ft x 42ft garrison flag was hoisted to replace the smaller, tattered storm flag. The flag was commissioned by George Armistead, the commander of Fort McHenry, who specified “a flag so large that the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.” It was this flag that, after the long battle, flew proudly over the fort at daybreak.

Despite the onslaught, only four American troops at McHenry were killed and 24 injured, out of the 1,000 men within the walls. The sight of the flag, taunting to the Brits as it was, drew some lone shots from the British before the land troops retreated to their ships.

The majesty of that giant flag, triumphant above Fort McHenry, inspired Key to describe it as the “star-spangled banner.” The visage of that flag announcing an American victory was such a powerful image, Key immediately started to scratch down the poetry of it all on the back of a letter he was carrying. “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

In the words that Key wrote, you can feel the sense of relief, glory, and pride he felt in those moments. The memory of the American victory in the Revolution was still in living memory. The world’s greatest naval fleet once again was unable to make the Yankees bend a knee.

A few days later, on 16 September, Key and his compatriots were finally released, as the British withdrew from the area defeated. Key stayed in a hotel in Baltimore and worked on his poem. It was published within a week as “Defence of Fort M’Henry”. Set to the tune “The Anacreontic Song”, the first stanza I quote heavily above is immediately recognizable to any American as our national anthem.

In musical form, Key’s poem became known as the “Star-Spangled Banner” and was a popular patriotic song throughout the 19th and into the 20th Century. It was the defacto national anthem until 1931 when it was officially adopted as such.

The Star-Spangled Banner itself, the actual flag hoisted after the battle, is now a national treasure held by the Smithsonian. Before being preserved, it was held in private hands. Small bits of the flag were snipped off as souvenirs, so the flag on display now is a bit smaller than original.

The American Flag at the time of the Battle of Baltimore consisted of 15 stars and 15 stripes. It was after the addition of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union as states that the original 13 stars and stripes of the original colonies were replaced with 15 on the national flag. Despite there being three more states by the time of Key’s observations, the flag itself hadn’t been updated with their admissions. The national flag was updated in 1818 (by which time the country consisted of 20 states) to consist of 20 stars (with an additional star to be added for each subsequent state to join the Union) and 13 stripes (in honor of the original colonies).

That star-spangled banner that inspired revolutions around the world and continues to be a shining symbol of freedom, liberty, and prosperity, carries a lot of meaning for those of us who served under it. As we join with family and friends for Memorial Day, we should reflect on the sacrifices of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country and came home under that flag.

The words of Francis Scott Key are powerful and poignant even more than 200 years later;

The Star-Spangled Banner (The Defence of Fort M’Henry)

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through 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 in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O 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 footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or 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.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath 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!

Category: Historical, Holidays, We Remember