Enough was enough. On June 18, 1812 America declared war on Great Britain. The British were stopping our trade ships on the high seas and seizing young American merchant sailors, forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy. They were blockading our ports to prevent us from trading with Napoleon’s France, with whom they were at war. They were inciting Indians on the frontier to attack American settlers.
America, with a fleet that could in no way match the Royal Navy, got back at England the best way it could—with privateers. Privateers were small, privately owned vessels with enough guns to subdue any British trade ship. Our government commissioned them to do exactly that. Their pay was the right to keep the vessels and their cargoes for themselves.
The main port from which the privateers operated was Baltimore Harbor. By 1814, Baltimore based privateers had seized 556 British vessels. The British were not happy.
After finally dispatching Napoleon to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea, they decided to teach America a lesson. They sent a powerful fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn and an army under Major General Robert Ross to capture and destroy both Washington and Baltimore.
The British succeeded with surprising ease in their first objective. President Madison and his government were forced to flee Washington. The British captured and burned most of the government buildings in the capitol city. Once Washington was subdued, they set their sights on Baltimore, thirty-seven miles to the north.
But Baltimore was far better prepared to meet an attack. As the British army approached the city on September 12, 1814, General Ross seized a farmhouse and stopped for a leisurely breakfast, waiting for the bulk of his troops to catch up with him. When asked if he would need dinner at the same house that evening, he replied, “I’ll eat in Baltimore tonight—or in hell.”
General Ross did not eat in Baltimore that night. Later that same day, during a lull after a brief firefight, he was struck by a musket ball from an American sharpshooter. He died within an hour. His command fell to Colonel Arthur Brooke. Brooke continued the advance and soon was engaged by three regiments of Americans under General John Stricker. The British won the field, but at a cost of two soldiers for every one American. Colonel Brooke decided to advance no further until the Royal Navy had taken Fort McHenry, which guarded Baltimore harbor.
Over Fort McHenry flew a large, woolen American flag, some thirty by forty-two feet, woven by a Baltimore widow named Mary Pickersgill and her thirteen-year-old daughter Caroline. Fort McHenry, commanded by Major George Armistead, was a powerful stronghold, but the British were confident. They were about to concentrate upon it the greatest display of naval firepower the world had ever seen. They had thirty-five warships with powerful, long-range guns, and five bomb ships, a new, innovative British horror weapon. The bomb ships fired aerial bombs called carcasses from mortars in a high arc. Each carcass weighed about 200 pounds. Filled with gunpowder, they sometimes exploded on the ground, or sometimes in mid-air over the target. Either way they spewed shrapnel in a wide, deadly radius.
The bombardment began at dawn on September 13. The British ships, with their superior range, stayed beyond the reach of Fort McHenry’s guns. For much of the day the bombardment continued. In the afternoon, thinking that the American guns must be silenced by then, three of bomb ships came closer in an attempt to make more effective use of their mortars.
Now in range of Fort McHenry’s guns, Major Armistead gave the order to open fire. Two of the bomb ships were hit. Admiral Cochrane, shocked that the American guns could still fire, was forced to withdraw them out of range. At that point, the bombardment ceased. He would renew his attack that night, under the cover of darkness.
Late that afternoon, during the lull, two Americans, Colonel John Stuart Skinner and a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key boarded the British flagship, an eighty-gun ship of the line called the HMS Tonnant, under a flag of truce. Their mission was to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Specifically, the Americans wanted to liberate Dr. William Beanes, a prominent physician who had been taken prisoner by the British and who was held in chains on that very ship. With chivalrous courtesy, the British treated their American guests to dinner. But since they knew too much about British strength, positioning, and intent, they were told they would have to await the morning before they would be free to go.
At dusk, the British ships moved back into position to bombard Fort McHenry, hopefully this time into submission, thus clearing the way for the advance of Brooke’s troops and the taking of Baltimore. Thirty-five year old Francis Scott Key had to content himself with watching the battle unfold from the deck of the British warship.
In the gleaming twilight he began to write his poem, not knowing the outcome of his writing. There before him stood Fort McHenry, with its huge American flag atop a ninety-foot pole. Heavy rain clouds loomed overhead, turning the night into an inky blackness, making it impossible to see, except for flashes from the aerial bombs exploding over the fort and the red glare of the British Congreve rockets, which were used for illumination or as incendiaries. Both showed the giant flag still waving defiantly.
At 1:00am the firing ceased. The darkness of the stormy night, combined with the smokiness of the air shrouded the fortress. In that impenetrable darkness, under a torrential downpour, a British landing force moved stealthily toward the shore, intent on surprising the Americans and taking the fort.
But part of the landing force got lost in the darkness. A supporting British vessel had to fire Congreve rockets to illuminate for the attackers the shore west of Fort McHenry. The same rockets revealed to the Americans the impending attack. Defenders at nearby Fort Babcock opened fire on them, forcing a withdrawal with heavy losses. The bombardment resumed until 4:00am, when again the guns fell silent.
Vainly Francis Scott Key peered through the darkness and smoke with his spyglass, trying to ascertain if the American flag was still flying over Fort McHenry. “We paced the deck for the residue of the night in painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for the return of day,” he later told a friend.
Finally, in the dawn’s early light, he peered again through the glass and saw that our flag was still there. Soon after he was freed. Elated, he returned to Baltimore and fleshed out the four stanzas of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which would later become our National Anthem.
Oh, 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 thru 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.
Oh, 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! 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 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!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory 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!
