A Daily dose of History

'After capturing and burning Washington D.C. in August 1814, the British set their sights on Baltimore. As 5,000 British soldiers approached the city from the south, a 19-ship British naval squadron sailed toward it up the Chesapeake Bay. But to reach the city by water, the British would first have to get past Fort McHenry and the 1,000 American soldiers defending it.

Early on the morning of September 13, the British flotilla began shelling the fort with rockets, mortars, and cannon.
When the attack began, a 35-year-old lawyer named Francis Scott Key was aboard a vessel in the harbor, negotiating for the release of an American being held prisoner by the British. From aboard the ship he watched anxiously as the British rockets and shells rained down on the fort throughout the day. After nightfall, the streaking rockets and exploding shells would occasionally illuminate the American flag flying above the fort—proof that the defenders were fighting on and had not surrendered. But as dawn began to break, Key strained to see. Was the flag still there?

That morning the defenders in the fort ran down the tattered flag that had been flying since the bombardment began and ran up an oversized flag used for ceremonial purposes. As the sky brightened, Key was thrilled when he saw the flag flying defiantly over the Fort. An amateur poet, he quickly began to scratch out a poem on the back of an envelope. Titled “The Defense of Fort McHenry,” the poem begins “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming…,” concluding the first stanza with “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Afterwards, Key set his poem to the music of a popular British drinking song and, renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the tune began a popular patriotic anthem. So popular, in fact, that in 1931 it was adopted by Congress as the official national anthem of the United States.

The defenders of Fort McHenry saved Baltimore, turning back the British fleet, which next sailed to New Orleans and another appointment with destiny.

The conclusion of the Battle of Fort McHenry, and the episode which inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner,” occurred on September 14, 1814, two hundred seven years ago today.'

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