A Battle Flag So Large the British Will Have No Trouble Seeing It: The Star Spangled Banner and the Saving of America in 1814

   

         September 12, 1814,

A massive British fleet sails toward Baltimore Harbor.  It is led by Admiral Alexander Cochrane.  By 1814 Cochrane was famous the world over for his exploits during the Napoleonic Wars.  

In 1807, as a Rear Admiral, Cochrane commanded the HMS Belleisle at the head of a squadron of Royal Navy ships that conquered the Danish West Indies.  In 1809 Cochrane defeated a French force and raised the Union Jack over the island of Martinique.

Now, in the late summer of 1814 Alexander Cochrane has been promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral and placed in overall command of all Royal Navy forces, both sailing ships and marines, deployed against the United States at the height of the War of 1812.

When war first broke out between the United States and Great Britain for the second time in just over a generation in 1812 the British government adopted a conservative, largely defensive strategy against the haughty and traitorous Americans because their military resources were stretched thin due to more pressing commitments on continental Europe, namely, the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte.

But when Napoleon abdicated on April 6, 1814 the British strategy quickly changed.  By the summer of 1814 the United Kingdom sought to crush, utterly defeat and finally eliminate the ungrateful, upstart and liberty-crazed nation of the United States of America once and for all.

Admiral Alexander Cochrane

On August 24, 1814 a force of 4,500 battle-hardened redcoats marched on the nation’s capital of Washington D.C. after having routed a poorly trained contingent of American militia at the Battle of Bladensburg in Maryland.  The American retreat was so disorderly and panic-stricken that observers named it, “the Bladensburg Races”.

The Governor General of British North America Sir George Prevost wrote to Admiral Cochrane stating, “(I)n consequence of the late disgraceful conduct of the American troops in the wanton destruction of private property (in Canada)...if the war with the United States continues...you may should you judge it advisable...inflict that measure of retaliation which shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages.”

Admiral Cochrane did indeed judge it to be advisable.

President James Madison and the United States government fled the capital city for the relative safety of rural Maryland and Admiral Cochrane gave his second in command, Admiral George Cockburn the following order, “You are hereby required and directed to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts as you may find assailable.”

British troops entered Washington and began to follow orders.  The Capitol building was looted and then burned.  Windows were smashed and private residences in Washington were ransacked.

The White House was razed to the ground, and for days while they occupied the city, British troops literally poured gallons of fuel onto the smoking embers of the Executive Mansion so that the now, supposedly humiliated Americans, could watch the symbol of their republic burn for miles around.

The Burning of the White House 1814

Not satisfied with merely destroying the American capital city British forces sailed from Washington and sought to find Madison and have the American President swaying from the end of a noose.  But in order to annihilate the United States, Cochrane needed first to occupy the strategically important port of Baltimore and cut America in half.

Standing in his way was Major George Armistead.

Armistead is in command of a garrison of 1,000 soldiers and civilians stationed within the brick and masonry walls of star shaped Fort McHenry.  If the British wish to enter the port of Baltimore they must defeat Armistead and the defenders of Fort McHenry because an imposing American force of 10,000 troops backed by over 100 pieces of artillery has already encircled the city and made any attack on Baltimore via land potentially far too costly for the British since American forces now outnumber British troops by a ratio of more than 2 to 1 on land.

Major George Armistead

The British have to pass through Fort McHenry to reach Baltimore and Armistead knows they’re coming.

In preparation, Armistead ordered a line of American merchant ships to be sunk in the harbor to help impede the passage of a British invasion fleet.  He has also stated that, “It is my desire to have a battle flag so large flown from Fort McHenry that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.”

Armistead commissions the largest American battle flag in history to be sewn and flown from the ramparts of Fort McHenry as a symbol of American defiance, designed to taunt any would-be invasion fleet that Admiral Cochrane might send his way.

        Local Baltimore widowed flagmaker Mary Pickersgill is commissioned to sew the flag at a cost of $405.90 by the United States government.

Mary Pickersgill

She makes the flag from a combination of red, white and blue dyed American cotton and British wool.  It is the only commissioned American flag to ever contain fifteen alternating red and white stripes, as opposed to the standard 13, with the extra two stripes being designed to represent Kentucky and Vermont’s recent entry into the Union.  At that time it was still common practice for additional stripes, as well as additional stars, to be added to the flag upon the admittance of a new state.

The flag when completed measured 30 by 42 feet with each individual stripe being two feet wide and each of the fifteen stars measuring a full two feet in diameter.

Ft. McHenry Flag on Display mid 19th Century

With Pickersgill’s flag flying over Fort McHenry, at exactly 6 in the morning on September 13, 1814, 5000 British soldiers led by a fleet of 19 Royal Navy warships began the largest bombardment ever seen in the Western Hemisphere up to that point.  Their goal is to annihilate Fort McHenry and its 1,000 defenders, land and destroy the port city of Baltimore, send American forces fleeing in defeat once again and track down and kill or capture President Madison.

To strike terror into the American defenders the British open their bombardment by launching thousands of Congreve Rockets from a specially designed rocket ship the HMS Erebus into the sky over Fort McHenry.  The Congreve Rocket was invented only ten years earlier in 1804 by British inventor Sir Robert Congreve, and each Congreve Rocket weighs thirty two pounds and packs the explosive punch of over three high explosive cannonballs of the time period.

The British rockets have a range of two miles and glow a terrifying blazing red as they fly through the air and land at will within the walls of Fort McHenry.

Robert Congreve beside the Rockets he invented

A young 35 year old lawyer from Baltimore  named Francis Scott Key is being held against his will as a “guest” of the British government aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant at the mouth of the Patapsco River near Baltimore Harbor.

Key, along with a fellow American lawyer and publisher named John Stuart Skinner had come aboard the Tonnant the day prior as guests of Admiral Cochrane and Admiral Cockburn to negotiate a possible prisoner exchange between British and American forces.  After spending the night of September 12th to the 13th, 1814 engaged in fruitless negotiations and dining with British officers aboard ship, when Key and Skinner awoke in the morning they were held against their will, and not allowed to leave because Admiral Cochrane has now decided that the two American lawyer/diplomatsknow too much about the British positions around Fort McHenry and could help aid the American defense.

It is while watching the bombardment as a prisoner of the British that Francis Scott Key is inspired to write a poem entitled “Defence of Fort M’Henry” and it is the phosphorescent red glow of Congreve Rockets streaking across the sky over the fort which prompt Key to write the immortal line, “the rockets red glare/ the bombs bursting in air/ gave proof through the night/ that our flag was still there.”

In those four simple lines of poetry, Francis Scott Key would immortalize not only Congreve Rockets but also the enormous battle flag created by Mary Pickersgill that was flying above Fort McHenry.  After the siege the words of Key’s poem would be put to the music of a popular  song called “To Anacreon in Heaven” and renamed “The Star Spangled Banner” to honor Pickersgill’s enormous flag and the brave defenders of Fort McHenry.

Francis Scott Key

In 1916, on the eve of American entry into the First World War, an Executive Order by President Woodrow Wilson would adopt “The Star Spangled Banner” as the de facto national anthem of the United States.  And finally, in 1931 a joint act of Congress would be signed into law by President Herbert Hoover making “The Star Spangled Banner” the official national anthem of the United States of America.

On September 13, 1814 that all still remained over 100 years in the future.  For the moment, the defenders of Fort McHenry held tenuously to their position as the British bombardment intensified.  All through the morning and afternoon, without respite, the British ships and forces on land continued to lay siege to Fort McHenry, and as night fell, though our flag was indeed still there the fate of America continued to hang in the balance.

Over 1,500 shells, cannonballs and rockets were fired at Fort McHenry in just over a twenty seven hour period beginning at six in the morning on September 13th.  Due to the shallow waters of Baltimore Harbor and the obstructions ordered by Armistead, many of the larger British warships could not be brought to within accurate firing range of the fort, and Admiral Cochrane was forced to rely on craft called bomb ships to try and lob fused mortar shells over Fort McHenry’s ramparts and in amongst the Americans.

On the morning of September 14, with the American defense remaining steadfast despite the withering bombardment, Cochrane orders a contingent of troops under Colonel Arthur Brooke to land on the shores adjacent to Fort McHenry in an attempt to create a diversion to draw American troops into pitched battle outside the protective walls of the fort.

Aerial View of Fort McHenry

When the British land near the fort Major Armistead orders that the enormous battle flag be raised even higher for all on land to see.  Facing withering American small arms fire, not only from Fort McHenry itself, but also from American forces stationed all around Baltimore Harbor, and with explicit orders from Admiral Cochrane not to attack the walls of Fort McHenry unless he can be assured of an easy victory as the British are now wholly unsure of how many troops the Americans actually have within the walls of the fort, Colonel Brooke believing caution to be the better part of valor orders his troops back on board their ships in the harbor.

Unable to break the resolve of the American garrison at Fort McHenry, and with more American forces from in and around Baltimore rushing to aid the fort’s heroic defenders, after firing one last salvo from all of his bomb ships sometime around noon on September 14, 1814, Admiral Cochrane breaks off the Siege of Fort McHenry and sails south for New Orleans and the safety of the British controlled Mississippi River.

Our flag was still there!  And as a direct result of the heroic defense of Fort McHenry, not only would our nation gain a national anthem but the British government finally realizing that they may have underestimated the strength of American resolve during the War of 1812, and not wishing to be drawn into a costly and protracted conflict in North America, agree to meet with representatives of the United States of America in Ghent in neutral Belgium to discuss a peace agreement to end the war after almost three years of conflict.

Francis Scott Key will go on to have a successful law practice in  Washington D.C.  He will be an ardent defender of slavery in the courtroom despite also being a founding member of the American Bible Society.  In 1859 Key’s son Philip will be murdered in cold blood by New York congressman Daniel Sickles as the result of a bizarre love triangle.  He is the cousin, and namesake, of author F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Major George Armistead is promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel for leading the brave defense of Fort McHenry.  He is much celebrated for turning the tide against the British during the War of 1812.  However, as a direct result of injuries suffered during the siege, and much weakened from the defense of the fort, George Armistead dies only three years later at the young age of thirty-eight.  An enormous monument, which still stands overlooking Baltimore Harbor, was constructed in his honor after his death.

Armistead’s nephew Lewis, son of George’s brother Walker, will become a distinguished Confederate general during the American Civil War and die in combat at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

The enormous Star Spangled Banner commissioned by George Armistead and sewn by Mary Pickersgill is given to the Armistead family on behalf of the government of the United States.  The Armistead family keeeps the flag in their possession for nearly an entire century before George Armistead’s grandson Ebeneezer Appleton donates it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1912.

The original Star Spangled Banner that so defiantly flew above Fort McHenry back in September of 1814, and inspired our national anthem, can still be seen within the walls of the Smithsonian Museum today.