I was just watching a video about the Star Spangled Banner, and it reminded me, it’s really *really* a great story, but not too many people know about it.  We just kind of sing the words at baseball games and such, without realizing why they were written in the first place, and about the brave Sheep Dogs that defended our nation so many years ago.  A great part of the story is, just like Jeremy Glick and Todd Beemer on Flight 93 on September 11th, the story of the Star Spangled Banner involves “ordinary” Americans who were prepared to defend freedom.  So, here ye go:

The War of 1812 had gone on for some time now, and during the British raid on Washington, they captured a doctor by the name of Dr. William Beanes, accusing him of unfriendly acts towards British soldiers.  Dr. Beanes was a popular and upright man in his community, so when he turned up missing, they knew where he was taken (with the British) and what they were going to do to him (hang him).

They appointed a lawyer named Francis Scott Key to negotiate the release of Dr. Beanes, and other prisoners as well.  Knowing that he would need assistance, he sought the help of a skilled negotiator, Col. John Skinner.  They rowed towards the british fleet, taking with them letters from British Prisoners that detailed how well they had been treated by the Americans, and many mentioned Dr. Beanes specifically.

They arrived at the fleet and negotiated their relase, but were prohibited from returning to shore immediately, because while onboard, they were told of an imminent bombardment of Fort McHenry by a massive British Fleet, and the subsequent invasion of Baltimore.  The British were planning to utterly annihilate Fort McHenry if they did not surrender.  Francis Scott Key told the British Officer that they couldn’t bombard Fort McHenry, it was mostly a civilian fort with women and children.  The Officer replied that was irrelevant, because they had sent notice to the Fort that in order to stop the bombardment, all they would have to do was to lower the American Flag from their flagpole.

At this point, Key remembered what George Washington had said: “The thing that separates the American Christian from every other person on earth is the fact that he would rather die on his feet, than live on his knees!”  He went below deck to tell the prisoners about the situation.

Looking back prior to these events, the Commanding Officer of Fort Mchenry, Major General George Armistead, knew that the British would attack Baltimore, and since Fort McHenry guarded the harbor, it too would be attacked.  Knowing this, he sought to have a massive flag created to ensure the “British would not have trouble seeing it from a distance”.  He paid a lady named Mary Pickersgill to make that flag (for modern reference, it was about the size of a basketball court).  This was the flag that the British demanded be lowered.

Additionally, the citizens of Baltimore and the surrounding area knew that the British were coming, and knowing what would happen if they were able to enter the harbor, these ordinary citizens got in their own private boats, brought them to the entrance to the harbor, and sunk them.

As the battle began, the fleet was so massive, and its guns so many that there were no breaks at all in the sounds of the firing of the guns.  During the battle, the British were using rockets that trailed red streaks behind them when fired, and a new type of artillery bombshell that exploded in mid-air, throwing deadly fragments.  Every time a shell exploded near the flag, it would light up the sky and reveal that the flag was in fact still there.  The British were targeting the flagpole specifically, and their reconnaissance told them they had scored multiple direct hits, but they weren’t sure why it was still standing.  The flagpole swayed from side to side, and leaned at odd angles, but the flagpole always remained with the American Flag raised atop it.  The night of the invasion, Francis Scott Key, Col. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes all watched the battle from the ramparts of the British ship.  They all knew what was at stake, and so they were watching intently to see if the flag stayed flying.  They knew that as long as the battle continued, Fort McHenry had not surrendered, and that the flag was still flying.  For Twenty-Five hours, the British bombarded Fort McHenry.

Then suddenly, in the middle of the night, the shelling stopped.  Had Fort McHenry surrendered?  Did the British take Baltimore?  It was too dark to see the flag, they couldn’t tell what had happened, and they were very worried.

At dawn’s first light, Key and the others rushed to the side of the ship, and saw “the star spangled banner” still flying over Fort McHenry.  Do you know what happened?  When the British approached the harbor to bombard Fort McHenry, they couldn’t sail past the hulls of the sunken ships of the ordinary American citizens, so they were forced to shell Fort McHenry from a distance, where they were not terribly accurate.  Their continued bombardment of the Fort, and specifically its flag, put multiple holes in the American Flag flying over Fort McHenry.  It splintered the flagpole, and would have fallen on numerous occasions.  But ordinary men, Americans, would see the flagpole start to lean, and they would rush out to prop up the flagpole with their own hands.  As the British continued to target the flag with their explosive shells, these men would be cut down by shell fragments, and others would rush to replace them to hold the flagpole steady.

When the shelling was not proving as effective as they had hoped, the British landed soldiers on shore.  These soldiers marched through the marsh, but met American resistance.  Who were these men?  They were the same type of men who had sunk their own ships at the entrance to the harbor, they were ordinary Americans.  The British ran into these very men, the defenders of Fort McHenry, pictured here, 66 years later, in 1880:

As Francis Scott Key rushed to the side of the ship at the first light of dawn, he discovered the American Flag still flying, and wrote these words:

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 through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ 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?

But that was only the first verse of his four-verse poem.  After Key had returned to shore, he rushed to Fort McHenry, and learned what these ordinary men had done, he concluded his poem “The Star Spangled Banner” with these words.

Oh! Thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blessed 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!