BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
“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”
This third stanza of the poem Defence of Fort McHenry was presumably written on a September day in 1814 in the Indian Queen Hotel in Baltimore, MD, by a lawyer and amateur poet named Frances Scott Key.
Key began writing the poem on the bow of a ship in the Baltimore Harbor, watching and waiting as American troops endured 25 hours of bombardment by British ships of war under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. No one is sure how much of the poem he wrote on the boat and how much in the hotel following the attack.
The poem would become our nation’s national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.
Key was on the boat in Baltimore Harbor because he had been sent there under the direction of President James Madison with Col. John Skinner to negotiate the exchange of prisoners, particularly his friend, Upper Marlboro Dr. William Beane, who had been taken from his home by British troops.
The bombardment of Fort McHenry began on September 13, just a few weeks after British troops had invaded Washington, burned the White House and took over the Capitol where they held a mock session of Congress in what is now Statuary Hall.
As dawn broke on the 14th, Key and Skinner, anxious to know whether the Americans had held their ground, peered through the smoke and smog and saw the garrison flag, a battered 30X42 symbol of a young, brash, broke and dangerously weak young republic, whose future could have been forever altered on that day had Fort McHenry fallen. The flag was torn and stained by gunpowder, but its 15 stars and 15 stripes were still flying from the Fort’s flagpole. The British turned their ships to the open sea and headed south for New Orleans and another defeat at the hands of General Andrew Jackson just weeks later. By then, the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war in favor of the Americans was being written.
When Key saw the flag still fluttering he pulled an old letter from his pocket and began to write: “Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?…”
He kept writing on the boat and back at his hotel. Within a week his masterpiece was published in two newspapers, the Baltimore American and the Patriot. Key gave his poem to his brother and it was within weeks put to the music of a popular British song called the Anacreontic Song, written for a London men’s social club. The Carr Music Company in Baltimore printed the new song under the title, Star Spangled Banner.
By 1889 it was the official anthem of the U.S. Navy. In 1931 Congress passed a bill making it our official national anthem and President Herbert Hoover signed it into law on March 3.
Key wrote about what he saw that morning on the Chesapeake, the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, but he was also clear about what had been at stake that day and for the two years since the United States declared war on the British in 1812. It was no trivial pursuit. He wrote “that the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, a home and a country should leave us no more. Their blood was washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution…
“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.”
This is a great anniversary of the birth of a great verse celebrating the rebirth of a great nation. It should help us learn and relearn the lessons of American history that make such good street lamps for finding our way two centuries later. The past is prologue, after all, and if we were better at applying the past to the present, we may be much better equipped to deal with the crises that have confronted us. Commemoration, reflection, looking over our shoulder now and then is good.
Most of us don’t observe these historic milestones. We let anniversaries and holidays and notable times slip by with faint after- thought, too little appreciation and too little reflection. We are usually more engrossed in the commercialism of our days of remembrance than the memories, inspiration, and aspirations they should invoke.
We are now celebrating great events leading up to the end of the Civil War 150 years ago. Constitution Day is Wednesday, September 17th, commemorating the 227 years we have come since 39 brave souls met for the last time in 1787 in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention and signed the historic document they wrote. Days that define us and our country.
Grab your mouse and click in the empty box on your Internet search application and learn something about Constitution Day. Then think about it. Reflect a minute or two. Then go back to browsing Facebook and Twitter.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.