Cover Me: The Star-Spangled Banner

On September 13, 1814, America was under attack.

Just three weeks earlier, the Capitol had been stormed and almost burned to the ground by looters and rioters. The British soldiers burned the White House, U.S. Treasury, and other institutions, too.

Only a ferocious and miraculously timed storm broke the invaders’ hold on the nation’s capital. At one point a tornado even touched down on Constitution Avenue, flinging cannons through the air.

The British may have given up on their occupation of Washington, but they continued their assault on the United States. British warships amassed in Baltimore Harbor, and on September 13th, the invaders began an attack on Fort McHenry, raining rockets and shells upon it ceaselessly.

The attack lasted for twenty-five hours.

Imagine that: try to picture what it must have felt like to sustain a non-stop assault for twenty-five hours.

It must have felt like four years.

Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer, didn’t have to imagine it. He witnessed it all from his ship on the harbor, where the British kept him detained while they attacked the fort.

Key was certain that the Americans couldn’t withstand such a sustained barrage, but when the sun rose the following morning and the smoke cleared, a giant American flag flew proudly over the fort

America had held the line.

The British detained Key’s ship for another two days. Able to do little else, Key was moved to write. By the time he left the ship, he’d written his account of the previous day on the back of a letter, a poem paired to the music of a popular song in the U.S. at the time: “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

Key finished the song a few days later from safety. He gave a copy of it to his brother-in-law, a militia commander at Fort McHenry, who shared it with the local newspaper, The Baltimore Patriot.

On September 20, just one week after the onset of the assault, the paper ran Key’s poem, entitled “Defence of Fort M’Henry.”

It quickly went viral, picked up by newspapers across the young country, and by October it was being performed in public. When it was published as sheet music, it carried a new name: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The song quickly and firmly entrenched itself in the American zeitgeist and refused to leave–the first verse, at least. Key’s song originally had four verses, but today most Americans know only the first:

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 thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s 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?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
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.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

In 1931, an act of Congress made “The Star-Spangled Banner” America’s first and only national anthem, and to this day it is proudly performed before events both civic and sporting, although few likely give much thought to the events that inspired it.

As familiar as the song is to most Americans, what’s less known is that the original flag that inspired the song survives to this day.

Over the years that followed that horrific battle, the flag passed from caretaker to caretaker. Over time, its custodians began removing small pieces of it, giving them away as gifts or outright selling them.

By the late 20th century, the Star-Spangled Banner was in tatters. The Smithsonian Institution began the long process of reversing the decay, preserving what was left of the original flag and adding modern-day reinforcement.

The process took eight years and required the support of scientists and bi-partisan politicians.

Just days after the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the restored Star-Spangled Banner was unveiled at its new home in the National Museum of American History, where it can be viewed today under carefully controlled low-light conditions.

Like the song it inspired, the Star-Spangled Banner symbolizes not America’s greatness but  its endurance. Even in its protected state, however, the Star-Spangled Banner won’t last forever. Nothing ever does.

But with care, continuity, cooperation, and respect, this symbol of American resilience continues to endure.

On this day, the 20th of January in the year 2021, remember and reflect on the story of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” because it was written at and for a moment very much like this one.

Play it, Bruce.

The Star-Spangled Banner
First performed: October 1, 2004 (Philadelphia, PA)
Last performed: October 13, 2004 (East Rutherford, NJ)