In the fall of 1814 — 30 years after the United States won its independence from the British Empire — the two powers were once again at war. The British, after torching government buildings in Washington, sailed up the Chesapeake Bay with plans to bombard Fort McHenry, at the entrance to the harbor in Baltimore, and capture the city.
Behind enemy lines, three stranded Americans watched as the British fleet threw its might at the fort, bombarding it for 25 hours. Among them was lawyer Francis Scott Key, who wrote a poem about what he saw that later became America’s national anthem.
Now, 210 years later, Key is at the center of renewed public attention. On Tuesday, the Francis Scott Key Bridge, built in the 1970s near Fort McHenry and named for Key, partly collapsed into the Patapsco River after a freighter crashed into it — presumably killing at least six people.
The incident has shaken Baltimore and brought Key once again to the fore.
Key’s early life
Key was born Aug. 1, 1779, in Frederick County, Md., the son of wealthy landowners. He received his early education in Annapolis, then studied law there and worked at his uncle’s law firm. Though he was religious and briefly considered becoming an Episcopal priest, he continued his career and rose to prominence as a lawyer. In the early 1800s, he opened his own practice in Georgetown, a neighborhood of Washington, and would go on to be appointed a U.S. attorney.
In 1812, when Key was in his 30s, the United States declared war in response to Britain’s interference in American trade with France and its practice of forcefully conscripting American sailors. But the decision was deeply divisive among the American public. Some — including Key — thought the U.S. government should have sought to avoid war through diplomacy. Despite his opposition, however, Key served in the Georgetown Artillery in 1813.
Key’s role in the Battle of Baltimore
In September 1814, Key led a mission to negotiate the release of American doctor William Beanes, who had been captured by British forces when he tried to protect his home in Upper Marlboro, Md. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Key and an American officer named John Skinner boarded the flagship of the British fleet, the HMS Tonnant, and succeeded in securing Beanes’s release — but were forced to stay aboard as the British fleet bombarded Fort McHenry.
When dawn broke, and the British assault ended, Key saw the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry, in a sign that Baltimore’s defenses had prevailed. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Key, who enjoyed writing poetry and had been inspired by the sight, pulled a letter from his pocket and jotted down a few lines. Later, he wrote a few more.
That poem, titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry” and later renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” was published in local newspapers. It was set to the tune of an existing song and, over time, grew to be considered a patriotic melody. In 1931, it became America’s national anthem.
As The Washington Post previously reported, “The Star-Spangled Banner” did not become the national anthem until more than a century after it was written because of controversy, partly over Key’s racist views. One section of the poem’s third verse, in particular, has come under scrutiny from those who say it was intended to mock or threaten African Americans who escaped slavery to join the British forces, after being promised land in exchange for their service:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And The Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Controversy
Long before Baltimore’s Key Bridge — one of two in the region named after Key, the other linking Washington and Virginia over the Potomac — partly collapsed, the legacy of the American lawyer and poet was a source of controversy. Many have argued that he should not be celebrated because of what the National Park Service has called his “conflicted relationship with slavery.”
As The Post previously reported, Key spoke of Black people as “a distinct and inferior race.” Key’s parents enslaved people on their plantation, Key himself enslaved six people, and his wife’s family were prominent enslavers in Maryland, according to the Park Service. As a lawyer, Key represented several enslavers in cases brought against enslaved people who had run away. According to the Park Service, “Key vehemently opposed abolition” and helped found a group that advocated for free people of color to emigrate from the United States.
Supporters of Key point to the fact that he also defended enslaved people as a lawyer. He also freed several enslaved people — though the decision “may have been rooted in profit,” according to the Park Service, because “the enslaved individuals he manumitted were of advanced age and may not have been able to provide a level of free labor that Key felt justified the cost of feeding and housing them.”
Because of this legacy, monuments built in Key’s honor have been defaced, and calls to rename institutions named after him have grown. In 2017, the Francis Scott Key Monument in Baltimore was splashed with red paint, and phrases such as “Racist Anthem” and “Blood on his hands” were spray-painted on it. Last year, the Montgomery County Public Schools system, the largest in Maryland, said it would consider whether several schools named after enslavers, including Francis Scott Key Middle School, should be renamed.
Nicole Asbury, Gillian Brockell and Jennifer Hassan contributed to this report.
