The Rockets' Red Glare: Francis Scott Key and the Bombardment of Fort McHenry

A lesson from the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places program, for American history, social studies and civics units on the War of 1812, the early Federal period and American political history.

The walls of Fort McHenry. NPS photo.

The story in brief

A man on the deck of a sailing ship, who had opposed the war, watched helplessly as the world's greatest navy rained shot and shell on the small fort guarding Baltimore. After more than 24 hours, peering through the morning mist, he saw a huge flag still flying — the fort had held. Francis Scott Key, overcome with "joyful triumph," began to write: "O say can you see . . ."

Setting the stage

• Why war? From 1793 to 1815, Britain and revolutionary France fought almost continuously and blockaded each other. Neutral American traders could profit but risked seizure. Britain stopped more American ships, and "impressed" American sailors it suspected of being British into its navy — to most Americans, kidnapping. Westerners blamed Britain for stirring up Indian tribes against frontier settlements, and some "War Hawks" in Congress hoped to seize Canada and Spanish Florida. On June 18, 1812, Congress declared war under the slogan "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights."
• 1814: after Napoleon's abdication in April, Britain sent veterans to the Chesapeake. In August, they routed Americans at Bladensburg and burned the White House, the Capitol and other buildings in Washington, then turned to Baltimore — an anti-British stronghold and home port of privateers who had grown rich raiding British shipping.
• Baltimore prepared. About 15,000 men under Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith and several hundred sailors under Commodore John Rodgers manned earthworks on Hampstead Hill. On September 12, about 5,000 British troops landed at North Point; defenders slowed them, and an American sharpshooter killed the popular British commander, General Ross. The British halted two miles short, waiting on the attack on Fort McHenry, the key to the harbor.

Map 1: Baltimore and Fort McHenry in 1814. Baltimore, with about 46,000 people in 1810, was the nation's third-largest city. NPS.

The bombardment, as the commander told it

Major George Armistead reported to Secretary of War James Monroe on September 24, delayed, he said, by illness from exhaustion and exposure:

• A fleet of about 30 sail appeared at the mouth of the Patapsco River on September 10. Armistead had about a thousand men — regular and volunteer artillery, Sea Fencibles, sailors from Commodore Barney's flotilla, and about six hundred infantry.
• On Tuesday morning, five bomb ships opened fire from about two miles — beyond the reach of the fort's guns, whose shot all fell short. His men endured a steady rain of shells unable to answer, yet, he wrote, none shrank from the fight.
• Around 2 p.m., a shell knocked a 24-pounder off its mount, killing a lieutenant; when three bomb ships crept closer, the fort opened fire and drove them back within half an hour.
• After 1 a.m. Wednesday, British boats slipped past toward Fort Covington firing rockets — Armistead later heard 1,250 picked men with scaling ladders meant to storm the fort. The fort's batteries, Fort Covington and a six-gun battery kept up fire for nearly two hours and drove them off.
• The shelling ended about 7 a.m., and by 9 the ships had sailed. Over 25 hours, fifteen to eighteen hundred shells were fired; about four hundred fell inside the works. Only four defenders were killed and 24 wounded.

Armistead signed as lieutenant colonel — the rank he was promoted to after the battle.

Illustration 1: Fort McHenry in 1814, a star fort built between 1794 and 1802 and strengthened in 1813. Historic American Buildings Survey.

Illustration 2: The Battle of Baltimore. The British navy under Vice Adm. Alexander Cochrane and the army under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross could not take the city until the fort fell. NPS.

Writing "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet from Maryland, had opposed the war for political and moral reasons, but the defeat at Bladensburg and the burning of Washington changed his mind. He had sailed out on September 5 to win the release of a prominent doctor, Dr. Beanes, held by the British. They agreed — but kept the Americans under guard on their small ship until after the battle, about eight miles from the fort.

Early on September 14, the firing stopped. Key strained to see whether the flag had been struck — surrendered. Instead the garrison raised a huge flag — Armistead had asked for one so large the British "will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance," and a British midshipman called it a "superb and splendid ensign." Key later wrote that in that hour of deliverance the song came with an inspiration he could not resist.

• He began on the back of a piece of paper and finished ashore, showing it to Judge Nicholson, a relative who had fought at the fort.
• The Baltimore American printed it as a broadside — each man at the fort got a copy — then in newspapers from September 20; by mid-October at least 17 East Coast papers had carried it.
• It was set to the popular tune "Anacreon in Heaven," the 1770s club song of a London gentlemen's music society, and by November was known as "The Star Spangled Banner."
• Key, from a prominent white family that owned many slaves, wrote of the "land of the free" — a contradiction the lesson asks students to consider. Few people sing the song's other three stanzas today.

Key died on January 11, 1843.

Fort McHenry today; the flag is the same size as the one Key saw. NPS photo.

From song to anthem

• After the battle: with a naval victory on Lake Champlain, Baltimore's defense erased the shame of Washington's burning and revived peace talks; the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) ended the war without settling its causes. Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans in January 1815 convinced most Americans they had won; negotiator Albert Gallatin thought the war made Americans feel more like a nation. Baltimore still keeps September 12 as Defenders' Day.
• Spreading the song: sheet music and performances made it a "national air"; parties rewrote it for campaigns from the 1830s, as did abolitionists and temperance groups. It was played as the flag came down at Fort Sumter and again when Union forces retook it.
• Official: by 1905 it was played at every military flag raising and lowering; the military made it its anthem in 1917. Fifteen bills failed in 1912–1917; opponents said it was too hard to sing, a former drinking song, or too anti-British. Congressman J. Charles Linthicum of Maryland persisted, and President Herbert Hoover signed it into law as the national anthem on March 3, 1931.
• The flag itself: the garrison flag, 30 by 42 feet when Key saw it, is now 30 by 34 — the Armistead family snipped souvenirs. Armistead's grandson gave it to the Smithsonian in 1912, where it has been conserved.

Illustration 4: A 1943 Army recruiting poster for the Women's Army Corps, by Bradshaw Crandell. Library of Congress.

Questions for students

• Using Armistead's report, build a timeline of the attack. Why couldn't the fort answer the bomb ships?
• Why might a star fort of packed-earth walls suit this site?
• How had Key's view of the war changed, and why? Who did he credit for the song?
• Why did it take until 1931 to make it the national anthem?
• What places in your community are sources of pride and identity?

More: Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail, the fort's National Register file, and the Park Service's Baltimore itinerary, including the home of flag maker Mary Pickersgill.

Sources

Based on "'The Rockets' Red Glare': Francis Scott Key and the Bombardment of Fort McHenry," Teaching with Historic Places, National Park Service, written by Marilyn Harper, drawing on the fort's National Register file and Lonn Taylor, Kathleen M. Kendrick and Jeffrey L. Brodie, The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon (2008); a work of the United States government in the public domain. Armistead's report is in the National Archives. An aerial photograph credited to the Maryland Governor's Office is not reproduced.