09/14/2026
Continued from yesterday...
On the morning of September 14, 1814, the 30 ft × 42 ft oversized American flag, which had been made a year earlier by local flag maker Mary Pickersgill and her 13-year-old daughter, was raised over Fort McHenry (replacing the tattered storm flag which had flown during battle). Originally, historians said the oversized Star-Spangled Banner Flag was raised to taunt the British. However, that is not the case. The oversized flag was used every morning for reveille, as was the case on the morning of September 14.
An American lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, was on a mercy mission for the release of Dr. William Beanes, a prisoner of the British. Key showed the British letters from wounded British officers praising the care they received from Dr. Beanes. The British agreed to release Beanes, but Key and Beanes were forced to stay with the British until the attack on Baltimore was over. Key saw the American flag waving above Fort McHenry, and it was clear to him that it remained in American hands. Inspired, he began jotting down verses on the back of a letter he was carrying. Key's poem was originally named "Defence on Fort McHenry" and was printed on pamphlets by the Baltimore American.
Key's poem was later set to the tune of a British song called "To Anacreon in Heaven", the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. The song eventually became known as "The Star-Spangled Banner." Congress made it the United States national anthem in 1931.
The original battle flag is permanently housed in the National Museum of American History, one of the Smithsonian Institution museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The flag was given to the museum in 1912 and has undergone multiple restoration efforts after being originally restored by Amelia Fowler in 1914.
Never forget the sacrifices of those who came before us. They defended the freedoms we cherish today.
