Today in History

As the evening of September 13, 1814, approached, Francis Scott Key, a young lawyer who had come to negotiate the release of an American friend, was detained in Baltimore harbor on board a British vessel. Throughout the night and into the early hours of the next morning, Key watched as the British bombed nearby Fort McHenry with military rockets. As dawn broke, he was amazed to find the Stars and Stripes, tattered but intact, still flying above Fort McHenry.

Earlier, on September 12, British forces had disembarked at the mouth of the Patapsco River to begin an assault on the city of Baltimore. The following day, British Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane commenced a naval bombardment of the fort, the last remaining barrier to the city. The siege of Baltimore, which came close on the heels of the British occupation of Washington, D.C., proved to be a turning point in the War of 1812.

Turned back on land and at sea, the British abandoned their attempt to capture Baltimore on September 14. Four months later, they signed the Treaty of Ghent which brought an end to the war.

Key's experience during the bombardment of Fort McHenry inspired him to pen the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner." He adapted his lyrics to the tune of a popular drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven," and the song soon became the de facto national anthem of the United States of America, though Congress did not officially recognize it as such until 1931.

The rockets that had moved Key to create poetry were the products of the recent innovations of English munitions expert William Congreve. The Chinese had deployed rockets in warfare as early as the thirteenth century. In the 1790s, the British themselves had been the object of rocket fire in southern India.

By the early nineteenth century, Congreve had not only significantly increased the firepower of rockets, but had also made it possible to vary the timing and range of launchings. The British put the new technology to use in the Napoleonic Wars and in the War of 1812 against the United States, inaugurating the widespread use of the weapon in nineteenth-century Europe.

The tattered flag that flew at Fort McHenry has been on display for many years at the Smithsonian Institution. The Star-Spangled Banner Preservation Project is saving an American treasure--the flag that inspired our national anthem. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is engaged in a significant effort to preserve this icon, which has been endangered by time and exposure to pollution and the elements.