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When the flag was still there, they celebrated their perseverance more than the victory.Īmerica has faced other dark days over the last two centuries: a Civil War at home and many wars on foreign fields, depressions, lynchings, segregation, floods and earthquakes and hurricanes, Dust Bowl-induced hunger, terrorists – both homegrown and external – and at every turn, we’ve been left to wonder whether life as we knew it was coming apart at the seams. But with the war front and center, those differences receded and they knew they were all in it together. Others, including Key, had opposed the war. Some were open supporters of the war that had suddenly arrived at their doorstep. The people of Baltimore, like people throughout American history, struggled with divisions of class, race, religion, and political bent. It makes the question of whether the banner still waves, our question. It imbues the question of the first stanza with timelessness. The second stanza is about the flag itself, the third about war and all its troubling consequences, and the fourth stanza is about faith. Most of us know the first stanza, which Key directed toward those who watched with him. Key’s poem and our national anthem has four verses.
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would remain the land of the free and the home of the brave was, for people of those times as it was for Key, an open question. There have been many dark days when the future was anything but certain and when the question of whether the U.S. He reminded guests that the history of our nation is a history of struggle toward a more perfect union. General Colin Powell spoke at Fort McHenry after the flag had been raised. The British departed, and the hostilities of the War of 1812 were over. That flag, the one Key named the Star-Spangled Banner, made clear that the defenders of Baltimore had carried the day. Which flag would the people see next? Would it be Britain’s Union Jack or the stars and stripes?Īt 9:00 a.m., with a military band playing Yankee Doodle, the informal national anthem of the day, the larger garrison flag was hoisted. But by dawn, the storm had passed and blue skies blanketed the refreshing, smoke-free air. It had rained through the night, and the fort was flying its smaller, lighter storm flag. It was directed toward his fellow Marylanders who watched in suspense along with him. What did this mean? Had the British taken the fort? Key penned the first stanza of his poem, ending with the famous line: O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? It was a real question, not a rhetorical one. What would be the fate of their city?, they wondered.Īt seven o’clock the following morning, the first light of dawn broke and the shelling stopped.
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Capitol, the White House, and most government buildings to the ground. The people of Baltimore gathered on rooftops, as they had two weeks earlier to watch the distant red glow to the south as the British burned the U.S. Key and his two companions on the boat that evening were not the only ones watching the battle rage through the night. One solider in the fort wrote that “we were like pigeons tied by their legs to be shot at,” yet they persevered. The British ships fired their ceaseless barrage from two miles, a half mile beyond the reach of Fort McHenry’s 24-pound cannons. From accounts left by those who fought, they did their job effectively. They were designed not to maim but to instill fear. The rockets’ red glare came from a new technology – rockets that screeched through the night sky, lighting it up. 13, 1814, British war ships launched 200-pound bombs a mile into the air, which fell toward the fort and burst in air ten feet over the defender’s heads. Key watched the 25-hour bombardment, part of the War of 1812, from a truce ship anchored about four miles from the fort. We huddled in the chilly morning air in the dawn’s early light to remember the moment 200 years earlier when Francis Scott Key penned the first words of the poem that was to become our national anthem. 14, I joined several hundred fellow citizens, along with guests from Canada and the United Kingdom, inside Fort McHenry in Baltimore.