The most beloved flag of all

Before the successful defense of Fort McHenry the American flag was little more than a military real-estate marker. But after Britain’s assault on Sept. 14, 1814, when the red white and blue colors defiantly attested to whom the victory had gone, a national icon — the first of the young nation — was born.

Mary Pickersgill’s team of seamstresses sewed two flags for the fort during the summer of 1813. One was a large garrison flag nearly one-fourth the size of a basketball court, and the second was a smaller, storm flag. The larger flag was requisitioned by Major George Armistead to be large enough that “the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.”

And see it they did, as did others on that September day in 1814, when the defiant wave of fabric not only indicated that Baltimore had miraculously survived Britain’s bombardment, but that a change was likewise occurring in the human fabric of the infant nation the flag represented.

Caught between the warring nations of France and Britain, America had suffered a decade of embargoes and blockades that crippled its fragile economy until the northern, merchant-driven states were threatening secession.

For two years, the states along the Canadian border and along the Atlantic coast had been bitterly assailed. During the summer of 1813, British forces meted out the most horrid atrocities upon Hampton, Virginia’s most defenseless citizens.

In 1814, Europe subdued Napoleon, and as peace negotiations began in Ghent, Great Britain, released its battle-tested soldiers upon America. British ships pounded the Chesapeake region, plundering and burning what they could not carry.

In August, British forces stormed Washington D.C., ransacking and burning its grand Capitol, the President’s House, and other symbols of the republic. Three weeks later the British armada moved to the Patapsco River near Baltimore. Some thought the young republic might not survive.

One can easily imagine Francis Scott Key’s worry and fear. He had been welcomed aboard the British flagship, anchored in the Patapsco River, but after hearing the British plans to torch Baltimore, he soon found himself detained.

Was it the atrocities committed at Hampton that inspired this letter written to his friend, John Randolph of Virginia?