second war of independence. An English army had invaded and occupied the seat of the National Government and had burned the Capitol of the nation. An English squadron was in undisputed possession of the Chesapeake Bay. There being nothing of interest or value left within the vicinity of Washington to detain them, the British were massing their land and naval forces for other conquests, and, as their ships sailed down the Potomac, Dr. William Beanes, a prominent citizen of Maryland, who had been arrested at his home in Upper Marlboro, charged with some offense, real or fancied, was carried off a prisoner. It was to secure the liberation of this gentleman, his neighbor and friend, that Francis Scott Key obtained leave of the President to go to the British Admiral under a flag of truce. He was conveyed by the cartel-boat used for the exchange of prisoners and accompanied by the flag officer of the Government. They proceeded down the bay from Baltimore and found the British fleet at the mouth of the Potomac. Mr. Key was courteously received by Admiral Cochrane; but he was not encouraged as to the success of his mission until letters from the English officers wounded at Bladensburg and left in the care of the Americans were delivered to the friends on the fleet to whom they had been written. These bore such testimony to the kindness with which they had been treated that it was finally agreed that Dr. Beanes should be released; but, as an advance upon Baltimore was about to be made, it was required that the party of Americans should remain under guard on board their own vessel until these operations were concluded. Thus it was that, the night of September 14, 1814, Key witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry, which his song was to render illustrious. He did not quit the deck the long night through. With his single companion, the flag officer, he watched every shell from the moment it was fired until it fell, "listening with breathless interest to hear if an explosion followed." While the cannonading continued they needed no further assurance that their countrymen had not capitulated. "But," I quote the words of Chief Justice Taney, repeating the account given him by Key immediately after, "it suddenly ceased some time before day; and, as they had no communication with any of the enemy's ships, they did not know whether the fort had surrendered, or the attack upon it had been abandoned. They paced the deck the residue of the night in painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for the return of day, and looking every few minutes at their watches to see how long they must wait for it; and, as soon as it dawned and before it was light enough to see objects at a distance, their glasses were turned to the fort, uncertain whether they should see there the Stars and Stripes or the flag of the enemy." Blessed vigil! that its prayers were not in vain; glorious vigil! that it gave us "The Star-Spangled Banner!" During the night the conception of the poem began to form itself in Key's mind. With the early glow of the morning, when the long agony of suspense had been turned into the rapture of exultation, his feeling found expression in completed lines of verse, which he wrote upon the back of a letter he happened to have in his possession. He finished the piece on the boat that carried him ashore and wrote out a clear copy that same evening at his hotel in Baltimore. Next day he read this to his friend and kinsman, Judge Nicholson, who was so pleased with it that he carried it to the office of the Baltimore American, where it was put in type by a young apprentice, Samuel Sands by name, and thence issued as a broadside. Within an hour after it was circulating all over the city, hailed with delight by the excited people. Published in the succeeding issue of the American, and elsewhere reprinted, it went straight to the popular heart. It was quickly seized for musical adaptation. First sung in a tavern adjoining the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, by Charles Durang, an actor, whose brother, Ferdinand Durang, had set it to an old air, its production on the stage of that theater was the occasion of spontaneous and unbounded enthusiasm. Wherever it was heard its effect was electrical, and thenceforward it was universally accepted as the national anthem. The poem tells its own story, and never a truer, for every word comes direct from a great heroic soul, powder-stained and dipped, as it were, in sacred blood. The Star-Spangled Banner! Was ever flag so beautiful, did ever flag so fill the souls of men? The love of woman; the sense of duty; the thirst for glory; the heartthrobbing that impels the humblest American to stand by his colors fearless in the defense of his native land and holding it sweet to die for it—the yearning which draws him to it when exiled from it its free institutions and its blessed memories, all are embodied and symbolized by the broad stripes and bright stars of the nation's emblem, all live again in the lines and tones of Key's anthem. Two or three began the song, millions join the chorus. They are singing it in Porto Rican trenches and on the ramparts of Santiago, and its echoes, borne upon the wings of the morning, come rolling back from far-away Manila; the soldier's message to the soldier; the hero's shibboleth in battle; the patriot's solace in death! Even to the lazy sons of peace who lag at home the pleasureseekers whose merry-making turns the night to daythose stirring strains come as a sudden trumpet call; men and women spring to their feet; whilst above the sounds of revelry, and the cadence of the music, rise wave upon wave of spontaneous enthusiasm, the idler's aimless but heartfelt tribute to his country and his country's flag. Since "The Star-Spangled Banner" was written, nearly a century has come and gone. The drums and tramplings of more than half its years have passed over the grave of Francis Scott Key. Here at last he rests forever. Here at last his tomb is fitly made. When his eyes closed upon the scenes of this life, their last gaze beheld the ensign of the republic "full-high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted nor a single star obscured." If happily they were spared the spectacle of a severed Union, and "a land rent by civil feud and drenched in fraternal blood," it may be that somewhere beyond the stars his gentle spirit now looks down upon a nation awakened from its sleep of death and restored to its greater and its better self, known and honored, as never before throughout the world. THE AMERICAN FLAG 1 JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE (1795-1820) When Freedom, from her mountain height, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. Majestic monarch of the cloud, 1 From "The Culprit Fay and Other Poems." George Dearborn, New York, 1835. Published by |