The Original Star-Spangled Banner
Photo: Nicholas Aln Cope, Smithsonian Magazine
As we prepare to commemorate the 245th anniversary of America’s independence, it’s easy to forget that one of the most cherished artifacts in our nation’s history wasn’t even present during the Revolutionary War. Barely three decades after General Washington’s victory at the Battle of Yorktown, the flag that inspired the poem by Francis Scott Key looked remarkably different than the 50-star variant that is today the iconic emblem of the United States.
In June of 1813, the new Commander of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, Major George Armistead, commissioned a Baltimore flag maker by the name of Mary Pickersgill to create two flags for the fort… a 17 by 25-foot storm flag and a 30 by 42-foot garrison flag. Ms. Pickersgill along with her daughter, two nieces, and an indentured African-American girl, worked for two months on the flags… made of dyed English wool bunting and white cotton… delivering both to the fort on August 14th.
A year later, 5,000 war-hardened British Regulars landed near Bladensburg, Maryland and after defeating a force nearly twice their size… the troops marched on the fledgling nation’s Capital and set it ablaze. The British land & naval forces then set their sights on the nation’s third largest city, Baltimore, some 35 miles away. The morning of September 13th, 1814, British Admiral Alexander Cochrane began the shelling of Fort McHenry in a driving rainstorm.
After what would be a 25-hour bombardment, failed attempts to both take the fort by land and sea, the British commanders ordered retreat at 7:30 in the morning on September 14th. Seeing the forces withdraw, Major Armistead ordered his troops to lower the battered storm flag and hoist the massive garrison. As the weather cleared that fateful morning, Key looked on from the truce boat from which he had witnessed the battle and saw the flag rise high above the fort. So moved by the sight, knowing it meant his countrymen had won the day, the lawyer pulled out a letter he was carrying and, on the back, began to pen a poem. That poem, originally titled “Defense of Fort McHenry”, later became know by another name… “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
Though the storm flag that flew throughout the battle was sadly lost to history, the garrison that had inspired so many that morning eventually found its way back to the man that commissioned it… Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead… before his death in 1818. Remaining in the family through the end of the 19th century, and losing over 200 square feet of “souvenir” clippings in the process, Armistead’s grandson (Eben Appleton) loaned and then formally donated the flag into the care of the Smithsonian Institution in 1912… where it remains to this day.
Following years of restoration, Mary Pickersgill’s flag lays in a place of honor within the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. so as to inspire new generations as one of the most famous flags in history.
