Our Flag Was Still There

By Edwards Park

Copyright (c) 2000 Edwards Park. Originally appeared in *Smithsonian*,
July 2000.

Every hour it used to appear, this ghost from the past. A curtain would
fall to reveal it, filling an entire wall of the National Museum of
American History\'s great lobby at the Mall entrance. It was, of course,
the huge American flag that flew over Baltimore\'s Fort McHenry on a hot
summer night in 1814. \"Was,\" because this object at hand, the original
Star-Spangled Banner, is no longer \"still there.\" The effects of age
brought it down \-- something the British failed to do 186 years ago.

That giant flag, one of the Smithsonian\'s proudest treasures, is being
cleaned and perked up in a large room about 150 feet away, and you can
see it happening. Look into the conservation lab, and there\'s the old
flag stretched out as though waiting for the surgeon to scrub up. But
it\'s a team of conservators who do the operating here, sitting beside
the fragile fabric, inching carefully around it, examining every flaw.
They\'ll finish in 2002, they say.

An exhibition along the concourse offers enough background to challenge
many notions you may have cherished about the glories of the War of
1812. One episode that\'s hard to forget, much as we\'d like to, is the
sack of our national capital in 1814. A British landing force put ashore
from the Chesapeake Bay, marched inland in the humid heat of August and
headed for \"Washington City.\" We scraped up all the militia we could,
and ventured to meet the invaders at the suburb of Bladensburg. At first
glimpse of approaching redcoats with bayonets aglitter, most of us
scampered home as fast as our weary legs could take us. The battle
became known as the Bladensburg Races.

The British were tired too, but they pressed on to Washington, burned
the Capitol and many other buildings, and stormed into the White House.
Before setting it ablaze, the officers sat down to a sumptuous dinner
laid out for President and Mrs. James Madison, who had hastily departed,
Dolly Madison clutching Gilbert Stuart\'s portrait of George Washington.

Though the war was hardly our finest hour, it did have its moments, and
that\'s where the flag now at the Smithsonian made its bow. Leaving
Washington smoking, the British troops, flushed with success (and wine),
marched toward the Bay to rejoin their fleet and attack the vital
seaport of Baltimore. We Americans, humbled but angry, finally rose to
the occasion. Capable leaders appeared and strengthened Baltimore\'s
defenses, beefing up Fort McHenry, which guarded the harbor, adding
shore batteries. More militia arrived from Pennsylvania and Virginia,
and a regiment of regulars showed up.

Earlier, in the second year of the war, Fort McHenry\'s new commander,
Maj. George Armistead, had asked for a suitable flag to fly above it,
\"so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a
distance.\" The request was granted, and Mary Pickersgill, who
supplemented her widow\'s mite by making flags for Baltimore ships,
started fabricating a standard-sized garrison flag \-- 42 by 30 feet,
with 15 stars stretching 26 inches across and two-foot stripes \-- 15 of
them, since the number of stripes didn\'t revert to the original 13
until 1818.

Now the British were really coming. Glutted with victory, and dead
tired, they encamped at Upper Marlborough. On the way to Washington,
they\'d usurped the manor house of Dr. William Beanes, a feisty
65-year-old, eminent in his profession. Now, as the British reached town
again, roistering redcoats disturbed Beanes and his dinner guests. They
went out to stop the noise and got the drunk soldiers jailed. For this,
the British brass ordered that Beanes be taken prisoner.

Aghast, the doctor\'s friends set about trying to get him released. A
parley with the British command called for a skillful negotiator, able
to exert charm yet put generals and admirals firmly in their place . . .
Aha! Francis Scott Key!

Key was one of those people who knew everybody. By 1814, he was a lawyer
and a popular success, with a wealthy wife and a fine home in
Georgetown, the rich old neighbor of muddy little Washington. He liked
to scribble poetry \-- a not unusual diversion two centuries ago. He was
a godly man, a pacifist who hated this war yet served as an officer in a
Georgetown artillery company. Altogether, this able, likable,
well-connected dilettante was the perfect choice for an extremely dicey
\-- if not impossible \-- mission.

Letters were exchanged across the battle lines. Grudgingly, the British
agreed to let Key and Col. John Skinner, in charge of prisoner exchange,
make their plea if they could meet the British fleet, sailing up the
Chesapeake. Key and Skinner hailed the British flagship from their small
vessel, were taken aboard and learned that Beanes was in danger of being
hanged. Key went to work, pointing out that the doctor had treated
wounded British soldiers with the same care and kindness as he had
Americans. That won over the British command. Dr. Beanes could go, but
he and his rescuers must stay with the fleet until Baltimore went the
way of Washington. Under a guard of marines, Key\'s party ended up in
their vessel, towed by the British flagship as it surged up the Bay.

On September 11, the British fleet came together \-- 50 vessels, ranging
from the 80-gun flagship through 74-gun men-of-war, 38- and 36-gun
frigates, to rocket and bomb ships (actually huge rafts). Transports
carried \"Wellington\'s Invincibles,\" the 4,000 or so troops who had so
enjoyed themselves in Washington.

Early on the morning of the 12th, the redcoats landed east of Baltimore
and charged the massed militia. And this time things fell apart for the
British. Two American snipers quickly picked off the British commanding
general, and although some militiamen skedaddled, many others stuck it
out. Humid, rainy weather helped the American cause. The Invincibles
pulled back and encamped, waiting for the navy to do its stuff. The
ships would first have to put out of action that pesky Fort McHenry.

Next morning, in pouring rain, bomb ships opened fire thunderously from
about two miles below Fort McHenry \-- well out of range of its guns.
Mortar bombs, some of 200 pounds, soared high in the air and plunged
into the fort to explode in showers of rubble. Key, Skinner and Beanes
had a distant view from their small vessel. They made out a flag, limp
in the soggy air.

All day the guns bellowed. Newly introduced Congreve rockets screeched
toward the fort in hopes of starting fires. When enemy \"bomb,\" or
mortar, vessels moved in to score even more hits, the Americans opened
up with everything they had and drove the British back.

Night fell. The tremendous bombardment eased off as boatloads of British
troops slipped past the fort to attack the city. The Americans spotted
the foray, and their guns roared, and again the British had to pull out
of range. Desperate to finish off the fort, they redoubled their
cannonade, bombs curling high in the night sky, their lit fuses
streaking across it, then down to their bright burst. Key, tirelessly
watching, realized that the roar of British guns meant the fort still
held; by the burst of bombs he could see the flag, still there.

And, in the faintest first light of dawn, at about the time the British
command called off its Baltimore campaign, he spotted it. The rain had
ceased; a stirring of wind opened it, and he made out the red of the
stripes, the blue square. The American flag.

As a poet, Key could be suddenly and deeply moved, and instinctively
he\'d create rhythmic phrases to describe his feelings. All night, words
had tumbled in his head: proudly hailed . . . gallantly streaming . . .
bombs bursting in air . . . gave proof . . . Still there! Now he
scribbled them on the back of a letter, then later, safely ashore in
Baltimore, he wrote out and polished the song. Of course it had to be a
song.

The phrasing of \"Defence of Fort McHenry,\" as he first named it,
fitted perfectly an old favorite: \"To Anacreon in Heaven.\" This was
the song of a popular London gentlemen\'s club, the Anacreontic Society,
honoring an ancient Greek poet who lyricized life\'s joys. Members
devoted themselves to good food, good wine, good cheer. They\'d composed
a pleasant, lilting tune, and one of the club\'s presidents had supplied
words, a fanciful communication with Anacreon, fun to sing:

*To Anacreon, in Heav\'n, where he sat in full glee,\
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,\
That he their inspirer and patron would be;\
When this answer arriv\'d from the jolly old Grecian \--\
\"Voice, fiddle, and flute,\
No longer be mute;\
I\'ll lend ye my name, and inspire ye to boot;\
And, besides, I\'ll instruct ye, like me to intwine\
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus\'s vine.\"*

The music was a hit in America. A patriotic song, \"Adams and Liberty\"
(later changed to \"Jefferson and Liberty\"), adopted the tune, which
was also used for a song celebrating the naval war against Barbary
pirates, early in the 19th century: \"When the warrior returns, from the
battle afar, To the home and the country he nobly defended . . . .\" And
who had written that? Francis Scott Key.

\"The Star-Spangled Banner\" was popular, but not our national anthem.
Not until 1931 did Congress grant that status. Before that we\'d made do
with \"My Country \'Tis Of Thee,\" our version of \"God Save the King
(Queen)\" as an anthem. (Many people still regret that \"America the
Beautiful\" wasn\'t chosen.) But Key\'s song, played more slowly than
the original song, with a few crashing chords and drumrolls, works well
because it deals with our flag. We Americans don\'t have a king or
queen. We have a flag.

The Smithsonian got this one in 1907, as a loan from Armistead\'s
grandson that turned into a gift. A strange red V may have been the
start of an A for Armistead. Some missing pieces were probably snipped
out for souvenirs. They were likely not shot away during the
bombardment. In that rain, the flag would have drooped against its mast
with little chance of being hit.

In fact, some experts believe that the giant Pickersgill flag wasn\'t
raised at all until that clear morning when Key saw it; another banner
had flown in the rain. The impact on Key as the morning breeze finally
revealed the enormous emblem of his beloved country \-- beaten, scoffed
at, but still in the fight \-- must have been explosive.

Even in these cynical days, Americans who have lived abroad for a while,
and suddenly meet the Stars and Stripes, feel a wrenching emotional
surge \-- the pulse quickens, breath shortens, the throat tightens. In
Alice Duer Miller\'s narrative poem \"The White Cliffs,\" an American
girl, living in England during World War I, feels Britain\'s anger and
dismay at our continued neutrality during three years of suffering. Then
the American doughboys arrive on their way to the trenches:

*Marching through London to the beat of a boastful air,\
Seeing for the first time Piccadilly and Leicester Square,\
All the bands playing: \"Over There, Over There,\
Send the word, send the word to beware \-- \"\
And as the American flag went fluttering by,\
Englishmen uncovered, and I began to cry.*

Additional Resources

National Museum of American History Star-Spangled Banner Website:
<http://americanhistory.si.edu/ssb/>

*The Star-Spangled Banner: The Flag and the Anthem It Inspired* by Lonn
Taylor, Harry N. Abrams, 2000

*Fort McHenry: Home of the Brave* by Norman G. Rukert, Bodine &
Associates (Baltimore), 1983

*So Proudly We Hail: The History of the United States Flag* by William
Rhea Furlong and Byron McCandless, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981

-   This article has been cleared for republication in English and in
    translation by U.S. Embassy Public Affairs and the press outside the
    United States; it may also be carried over the Internet. Credit to
    the author and the following note must appear on the title page of
    any reprint:\
    \
    Copyright (c) 2000 Edwards Park. Originally appeared in
    *Smithsonian*, July 2000.