SIGHT OF GIANT FLAG INSPIRES BALTIMORE LAWYER TO WRITE POEM
Baltimore, Maryland (JFK+50) A giant American flag was raised by U.S. soldiers over Fort McHenry near Baltimore, Maryland on the morning of September 14, 1814. The flag raising was in celebration of an important victory in the War of 1812.
A Baltimore lawyer, Francis Scott Key*, was being detained on a British troop ship four miles away. He saw the flag and was inspired to write a poem titled "Defence of Fort McHenry ."
Key wrote one verse on the back of an envelope and finished three more verses back in Baltimore. The poem was set to music under the title, "The Star Spangled Banner." It was one of the most famous patriotic songs in our history, and in 1931 became "Our National Anthem."
"O say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
*Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) was born in Frederick County, MD. He graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis in 1796 & then read law. Key owned a number of slaves but freed them in the 1830s. FSK, who was a devout Episcopalian, publicly criticized slavery.
SOURCE
"The Star Spangled Banner," Smithsonian, www.amhistory.si.edu/
1st Sheet Music of
The Star Spangled Banner
by Thomas Carr (1814)
