The Star-Spangled Banner

Billybob's Weekly Column ^ | 3 September, 2002 | Congressman Billybob (J. Armor, Esq.)

[Congressman Billybob]

This is an ancient story. But I'll wager there are details in this that even the most well-read FReepers do not know.

14 September is Flag Day. This year is the 190th anniversary of the battle in which that great flag flew, and of the National Anthem that tells its story.

[Cagey]

Thanks for posting this story. I was just in Baltimore this past week and visited Fort McHenry and it was indeed an honor to stand on the same ground American Patriots defended in 1814.

One error in this story is the report of troops being in "bunkers with 10 foot brick roofs". The bunkers were not built at McHenry until the Civil War. At the time of the British Bombardment, most of the American troops took refuge in the "dry moat" surrounding the fort. Four US soldiers were killed that night in 1814.

[Ima Lurker]

When was Flag Day changed from June 14th to September 14th?

[Consort]

It was August 3rd, 1949, when President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.

[Congressman Billybob]

I didn't know that there was a different "flag day" nationally. Growing up in Baltimore, it was always celebrated on 14 September, for obvious reasons. Regarding the earlier correction about the bunkers, I have been to the Fort many times and don't recall being told or reading that they were a Civil War era addition.

That fact makes it even more frightening to consider the thoughts and fears of the defenders as they hunkered down in ditches with bombs weighting up to 220 pounds coming in from (admittedly inaccurate) mortars from up to a mile away.

Billybob

[Jimmy Valentine]

"And the rockets red glare, the bombs, bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that the flag was still there."

There is a nun buoy in Baltimore harbor (marked red, white and blue) that marks the spot where Key's ship was sited during the fight.

With respect to any cannoneers out there it looks pretty close to the fort to me.

A pretty good question: "Oh, say does that star spangled banner still waive, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

We should all ask that question now and again.

Regards,

[Restorer]

Good story.

I disagree with your assertion that the fall of Baltimore would have meant the automatic collapse of the United States and its reconquest by the British.

The British were unable to conquer the colonies in the 1770s despite capturing all major colonial cites at one time or another. They certainly couldn't conquer a far more powerful America in 1814. Not unless there was a strong pro-British party among the Americans, which there wasn't.

[JohnBovenmyer]

There also was a notable prequel to this story. The Tripolitan war lives on not only in the Marine hymn, but also in other songs. In Georgetown, Maryland, a banquet honoring Stephen Decatur and the other heroes celebrated the victory with a song written by lawyer Francis Scott Key. Key took the popular drinking song, "Anacreon in Heaven," which had been used for many patriotic songs of the day, and turned it into an anthem:

When the warrior returns from the battle afar,
To the home and the country he has nobly defended,
Oh! Warm be the welcome to gladden his ear,
And loud be the joys that his perils are ended!
In the full tide of song, let his fame roll along.
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng.
Where mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.

The next verse celebrates the "band of brothers" that braved the desert and ocean to secure the rights and "fair fame" of America. The third verse continues the theme, more explicitly focused on the Tripolitan war:

In conflict resistless each toil they endured,
Till their foes shrunk dismay'd from the war's desolation:
And pale beam'd the crescent, its splendor obscur'd
By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation.
Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war,
And the turban'd heads bowed to the terrible glare.
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath, for the brow of the brave.

Nine years later, Key would stand aboard a British warship as it bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He would rewrite this song about Tripoli, with its imagery of bombs and warfare, and the arresting image of the "star-spangled" flag, which here obscures the Muslim crescent. Key's song of Tripoli lives on in the American national anthem.

More on these events can be found here.

[maica]

I highly recommend a visit to Fort McHenry for visitors of all ages to Baltimore, expecially for those with school-age children. The water's edge locale gives an entirely different perspective of the value of the City as a port. The barracks inside the Fort have really good exhibits pertaining to different periods of our nation's history.

Coincidentally, I was just talking this morning about the way history could be made more interesting to children, using The Battle of Baltimore as my example.

Baltimore had been preparing for this assault all summer. All able-bodied men spent hours every day either training as militia or reporting to Fort McHenry to build the earthenworks.

The night that the bombardment was raging, all the women and children in the city, from their homes ringing the harbor, were watching the devastation raining down with horror. Their brothers, husbands and fathers were part of the 3000 man City Militia.

Washington DC had been burned just a month before.

If children could be helped to see such a picture of citizens defending the Independence won from the British a few decades previously, they might find history lessons to be much more interesting than just a dry mention of dates and names of battles.

[tet68]

And pale beam'd the crescent, its splendor obscur'd By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation. Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war, And the turban'd heads bowed to the terrible glare.

I LIKE it!

[maica]

I grew up in baltimore and think of Sept 14 as Defenders' Day, and Jun 14 as Flag Day - both good days to honor Old Glory.

[maica]

I disagree with your assertion that the fall of Baltimore would have meant the automatic collapse of the United States and its reconquest by the British.

---

Perhaps it would not have meant the reconquest by the British, but America could not have evolved as we know it today. "Peace talks" were underway at Ghent, Belgium and the British commisioners had issued an ultimatum including

--Surrender of the northern half of Maine
--Surrender of the Mississippi River to international control
--Surrender of the northern half of Minnesota, from Lake Superior and the Canadian border to the headwaters of the Mississippi
--Surrender of almost all of the Northwest Territory and part of the Louisiana Purchase, with the creation of a buffer Indian 'nation' under British military control, as a permanent barrier to westward expansion of America.

With this ultimatum came a British warning that unless the Americans agreed to these terms of surrender, there would be no talk of peace.

This coincided with the Battle of Baltimore, making it one of the decisive battles of the world.

[gcruse]

Thanks for the article.  I was just yesterday eating
at the local Golden Corral restaurant.  The drink
cups they are using now have four different US
flagson  the cup with a little history under each.
Two of them I had never seen nor heard
of before. Seems there's always something
new to learn.

[DakotaGator]

Interesting article. People also need to remember that significant land action accompanied this critical Naval bombardment. The whole battle makes fascinating reading.

In regards to Captain John Paul Jones' comment; Captain Jones said, "I have not yet begun to fight.", here's another nugget of info. US Navy lore has it that the complete quote is; "Surrender be damned! I have not yet begun to fight."

Thought you'd like the salty version.

[smorgle]

Lyrics with music here.

Smithsonian Star- Spangled Banner Website

Star- Spangled Banner links

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' 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 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: 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 wash'd 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 free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd 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!

Play ball!!

[Restorer]

The British ultimatum would have undoubtedly changed with events, unless the American negotiators had caved. Which seems very unlikely. The most probable result of such a cave-in would have been a nationalistic uprising to drive the "traitors" from the government and the Brits from our soil.

It is also highly likely that the Brits would have changed their minds about the desirability of being enmeshed across the pond when Napoleon escaped his confinement on Elba on March 1, 1815. Or perhaps when the cream of their troops were slaughtered at New Orleans.

[nicollo]

Yeah, but could anybody actually sing it any better then than now? I'm hearing that it was based on a drinking song, and a few glasses later I still can't sing it...
I'll chck in latr whn ive had a cupel moor...

[nicollo]

It was a war England didn't want and was never gonna win. Americans started it, and Americans were ready to finish it, as Andy Jackson proved a few months after the Treaty of Ghent was signed.

The story about the burning of Washington comes of revenge upon the Yankees for burning York (Toronto), the capital of the Canadian province. American frontiersmen and fisherman wanted the Brits out. Their one-country vision for North Americas didn't die for some time. In 1911, and based largely on this fear,the Brits defeated a free trade treaty between Canada and the U.S. Not until the 1990s did this become a reality. Wow.

Unlike many contemporary historians, I am all for the War of 1812. I think it tested the Brits, gave force to national sentiment, and was a sweet little flex of muscle. Americans were just then tasting their identity and power. Like good little adolescents, they couldn't be held down.

As for the importance of Baltimore: it doesn't matter. We held out and went from there.

Thanks, Hon. Billybob, for this wonderful account. Happy Flag Day!

[maica]

We held out and went from there.

---

That is the lesson I wish children would be taught. The "we" who held out were civilians: -- shopkeepers, tradesmen, laborers, farmhands, ordinary people, many who were immigrants to America. As 'adolescents' they knew that they had to prove the approaching maturity of the United States as fully independent from the mother country.

[gcruse]

 Like good little adolescents, they
couldn't be held down.

Well, actually, we lost that one.
Unless you can claim victory by
negotiating an end to the war while
your forces are surrounded, that is.