The Bombardment of Baltimore

Years after the American Revolution, Britain and the United States were still locked in conflict. Listen in as Katie and Sarah explore the British bombardment of Baltimore in 1814 -- and how it inspired a lawyer named Francis Scott Key -- in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And contrary to
our title the Bombardment of Baltimore, we are not starting

(00:22):
off on a battlefield as you might think, but rather
on a brewery floor in Baltimore where several women were
piecing together a flag. Yeah. That was Baltimore flag maker
in widow Mary Pickersgill, and she had gotten the order
for the flag in July of eight thirteen from Major
George Armistead. And he was the new commander at Fort McHenry,

(00:44):
which was a really important defense position for the city
of Baltimore, was defending the river, and he wanted a flag,
an enormous flag that the whole city could see, something
really big, thirty by forty two ft, which is about
the court a quarter of a basketball court, so larger
than even the biggest flag you've probably seen. And he

(01:06):
needed that flag soon because the war that had started
a year before the War of eighteen twelve was spreading
through the country. Action at the Canadian border had leaked
down to the Chesapeake Bay, where the British were menacing
ships and scooping things out. So Armistad knew battle was
going to come to Baltimore sooner or later, and so

(01:26):
he put in this rush order for his enormous flag
from picker Skill, as well as a smaller storm flag,
because you know, when it's raining, you don't want to
fly your rip apart thirty by forty two foot flag,
and picker Skill works with three hundred yards of English
worsted wool bunting, piecing together red and blue stripes and
sewing on fifteen because they're only fifteen stars at the time.

(01:49):
Um enormous cotton stars and uh. She carefully picked the
wool off the back so she'd sew on the star
and then pick the blue off the backs of the
white stark at show from both sides, so this is
a quality flag. She's helped by her daughter, two nieces,
and an African American indentured servant, and the women are

(02:09):
done by August. They make four hundred and five dollars
and ninety cents for the garrison flag and one hundred
and sixty eight dollars and fifty four cents for the
storm flag, which was very good money. Flagmaking was a
pretty lucrative profession of the time. And it's just in
time for Armistead. The British have arrived at the Potapsco River.
They're eyeing the city's defenses, and they're planning an attack

(02:32):
for the following year. But to understand that, we're going
to have to go back in time a little bit
and give you all some context about the War of
eighteen twelve. And at the time armist did commission the flags,
it was starting to become pretty clear to a lot
of Americans that the country had rushed into a war
against Britain. It wasn't strong enough, it wasn't prepared enough

(02:53):
to fight against these highly trained troops. And the declaration
of war had come in eighteen wealth and it was
over this dispute America had with Britain over maritime rights,
and the British had been battling Napoleon for global control
for decades, and uh, they didn't like that their former colony, America,

(03:15):
which was officially neutral, was trading with both of them.
I mean, it's understandable it seemed to them as though
the Americans were aiding Napoleon, but by blocking them, they're
interfering with American neutrality, which we didn't think was very fair.
And not only was it bad for business, it also
offended the relatively new America. Historian Douglas Egerton wrote to

(03:38):
England still regarded American trade as part of their domain
even after the Revolution, And to make matters worse, the
British needed all the men it could find to fight
in the Napoleonic Wars, so they would impress American citizens,
charge them as Royal Navy deserters and forced them into service.
And impressment is never very popular, not a good way

(03:59):
to win run stealing them off boats and making them
join your army. So it's the warhawks, though, that really
pushed this battle ahead in this war. And these are
Southerners and Westerners who are mostly too young to have
actually seen action in the Revolution, so they're kind of
itching for their own war um. But they're also expansionists.

(04:19):
They're offended over the violation of the maritime rights. Sure
you know that's a problem. They don't like the impressment,
but they're really eyeing British Canada to the north and
Spanish Florida to the south and hoping that maybe this
growing country can grow a little more, and they think
Canada will be easy pickings. Even Thomas Jefferson says the

(04:42):
acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood
of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching and
will give us an experience for the attack of Halifax
the next and the final expulsion of England from the
American continent. So basically he thinks we'll just walk in
and that will be the end. Yeah, but the warhawks
are still just a very small majority, and the votes

(05:02):
to declare war are really really close in both the
House and the Senate. It's an unpopular fight in a
lot of the country, and actually, a year and a
half into the war, some of the northern states are
actually considering the idea of succession so they could pick
up trading again. The idea of war is pretty unpopular
with a lot of Brits too, because, after all, Britain

(05:23):
is still busy fighting Napoleon. But in eighteen fourteen, Napoleon's
defeated and now Britain can focus on the conflict happening
in North America and focus they do, dispatching five thousand
troops from Europe and naval support from Bermuda, and their
plan is really intense. You know, they finally have full
attention to devote to North America, and they're going to

(05:46):
use their navy to attack coastal areas and then they're
going to use the army to take the east coast cities.
And they're hoping that all of this action will distract
Americans from the battles that are going on at the
northern boundary between the Canadians and the Natives and the British.
So during that scouting mission the Brits were doing in

(06:08):
eighteen thirteen that made Armistead really want to get this
flag of flying. They had decided that taking Washington and Baltimore,
the third biggest city in the country, would be a
piece of cake and that it would be payback for
the American sacking of York, which is of course Toronto.
And they've put Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane in charge

(06:29):
of the naval forces, in Major General Robert Ross in
charge of the land forces. And one important thing to
note with a lot of the British troops is they
are fresh out of the Continental Wars, So these are
seasoned soldiers and they really know what they're doing, contrary
to the American forces, which don't have much training and

(06:50):
a lot of them are commanded by revolutionary veterans who
are getting up there and um haven't really fought in
a serious war in decades. The British plan is to
attack Washington first since it would be off guard, and
they're right. The Americans are totally expecting Baltimore to be
attacked first since that's where all the privateers are. Actions

(07:12):
started June eighteen fourteen when American commodore Joshua Barney sailed
south from Baltimore to fight the British on one of
their island naval bases. But he couldn't get out of
the mouth of the Potomac and was forced to retreat.
So he holds up in St. Leonard Creek and the
Brits can't get to him there, so they raid the area,
burning plantations, kind of trying to lure him out to

(07:34):
engage again. And um, he finally does come out, they fight,
he's able to escape up the Texan River, and um,
the British change their plan of attack. They're going to
have a three pronged approach and the plan is to
divert American forces all while while pressing on towards Washington.
So the American forces will wonder are they going for Washington, Baltimore,

(07:58):
which way are they going to go? What's going on?
And just this sense of confusion will be created. By
August twentieth, more than four thousand troops have disembarked at
Benedict on the Patuxent River, which wasn't far from the city,
and smaller ships continued upstream, and these are the British,
right sorry, Barney was ordered to destroy his flotilla at
Pig Point to prevent its British capture. So things aren't

(08:21):
looking great for Americans at this point. So the British
decided to take the route to Washington through Bladensburg, and
they do run into American troops along the way, but
the Americans are so unorganized there's hardly a fight. They
flee and the Battle of Bladensburg is just this terrible humiliation.
I mean, Washington has no protection now. And by August

(08:45):
the British arrived in the capital and they burn the
Library of Congress, They burned the capital, the Treasury, Departments
of State, War and Navy, and the Executive Mansion, which
is of course not the White House at this time,
Um and the President and his cabinet actually have to
flee the city because they're concerned about what might happen

(09:05):
to them. We owe some thank yous to some quick thinkers,
like First Lady Dolly Madison, who made an arrangement to
protect some White House treasures. She stuffed congressional papers into
chests and waited for word from her husband, and when
it became clear that he wouldn't be able to come
back and she would have to flee, she wrote to
her sister, our kind friend Mr Carroll has come to

(09:27):
hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with
me because I insist on waiting until the large picture
of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be
unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious
for these perilous moments. I have ordered the frame to
be broken and the canvas taken out. It is done,
so thanks to Dolly for that one. Well, and we

(09:48):
also get things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
They're all rescued from the State Department. And there's a
clerk who has been left in charge of the Senate
archival materials, and he tells his boss basically, either help
me get these documents out of Washington, or I'm going
to do it by myself. And it ends up being
the clerk in an African American office messenger who confiscate

(10:09):
a wagon and then loaded up with twenty five years
worth of Senate archives, which I mean, this is the
early history of our country that would be lost in
a fire. It's sad, and it should be clear that
it's not just this huge burning of the city. It's
very controlled. The British are hitting specific targets and they
don't go about looting or burning private homes. There's actually

(10:31):
a tornado shortly after the burning that hurts and kills
more people, but there are some casualties. We lose three
thousand books in the Congressional Library that are completely destroyed,
but re established later with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's
private collection. So the American troops, who are exhausted and
defeated and probably feeling pretty bad at this point, head

(10:54):
to Baltimore because they know that is where the fight
is heading next. And it's starting to seem a pretty
bad idea to have declared war on Britain. But that
brings us to our Battle of Baltimore, our bombardment, if
you like. We like alliteration. The British troops join up
with the fleet at Benedict and head down the Patuxtion

(11:14):
and up the Chesapeake Bay towards Baltimore. And as Sarah
wrote in her notes, there's going to be a SmackDown.
It's true. The Baltimore privateers have captured all these British
ships over the course of the war or destroyed them,
and I mean the British are looking for some payback time.
All the privateers are based here. It's a very wealthy city. Um,

(11:35):
Baltimore is going to suffer at a greater extent than
Washington did. General Ross's British troops landed at north Point,
Maryland on September twelve, moving in toward the city, but
they ran into the American forward line that was actually
prepared this time, and Ross was killed in the fight
by a sharpshooter. So the surprised British make camp on

(11:57):
the battlefield and planned to attack again the night of September.
And meanwhile, the Navy, having already successfully attacked Alexandra, Virginia.
UH is ready to strike Fort and Kenry, which we
mentioned at the beginning. It's that crucial defensive point for Baltimore.
It's it's the key to the city. Yeah, And so
the ship's open fire on September and they lobby these

(12:20):
one hundred and ninety pounds shells at the fort and
it's a new arms technology where the shells actually explode,
and so some of them that don't quite reach their
targets explode in the air. You might call them bombs
bursting in air. It's a little hint for where we're going.
But one commander at the fort even finds a note
written on an unexploded shell, a present from the King

(12:44):
of England, which sounds like a scene out of a movie.
Or it also reminded us of the St. Paul's Watch pun. Yeah,
definitely things look bad for Baltimore because the ships are
out of Fort McHenry's range of fire, so they can't
fight back and they just have to sit there and
take it for twenty five hours. The British fire all

(13:04):
day long, throught and into the pre dawn hours of
the fourteenth, shooting one hundred and thirty three tons of
shells at the four, which is nearly one per minute,
and people as far away as Philadelphia can hear the
racket from the Baltimore attack. And there's one important thing though,
The British can't advance either, so they can sit there

(13:25):
out of range of the guns fire at them all day,
but they can't get any closer because when they do,
the Ford is actually able to hit them and does
some serious damage. When the ships try to advance in
the afternoon of the thirteen, and they're not doing too
much danger to the fort either. Only four men are
killed twenty four wounded, but out of one thousand, that's

(13:46):
not so many, and by dawn Admiral Cochrane halts the assault,
so it's rained the whole day and the whole night
of the attack. So it's likely that the the four
it was probably flying it's smaller storm flag. We should
note that. But as the British ships maneuver around to leave,
Major Armistead, who's in charge of the fort, orders that

(14:07):
they hoist the huge garrison flag that he's commissioned in
fire rounds in defiance of the retreating ship. So it's
this very patriotic moment Baltimore has pulled through, and lawyer
and poet Francis Scott Key has been watching the bombardment
from a ship in the bay. He was detained during
the battle after negotiating the release of an American and

(14:29):
a Kinsman. So all day long he's been able to
see what was likely the smaller storm flag flying from
the fort, knowing it was still in American hands. But
at night he can't see anything and doesn't know what's happening,
which must have been scary. Yeah, he wrote, it seemed
as though Mother Earth had opened and was vomiting shot
and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone. So

(14:52):
he's wondering all night if the ford is still going
to be in American hands. And then at dawn on
the fourteenth, he sees that the flag is still flying.
He knows the city has made it through the night.
It's this grand patriotic moment America is going to make it.
After the British leave, Key is so inspired that he
checks into a Baltimore hotel and finishes this poem. He

(15:13):
started thinking about about the flag, the Star Spangled banner,
and he sets it to an English drinking song and
publishes it. Within a week, it's reprinted nationally, and by
November it's been printed as sheet music, and then uh
long after, in ninety one, it becomes the country's official

(15:34):
national anthem. And we'd like to note too that he
had been adamantly opposed to the war, but after the
White House was burned and Baltimore was attacked, he'd had it.
So not too long after Key's poem is set to music,
the war is over, and it's partly due to the
British loss at Baltimore and again at Lake Champlain. And

(15:55):
the British are just getting tired. I mean, they've been
fighting Napoleonic wars for that twenty years and they have
the taxes to show for it, and they're suffering from
the lack of trade with the US. That's a profitable
business for the British. The US has also realized that
it won't gain any of its objectives, so the two
countries work out a piece at the Treaty of Ghent,

(16:17):
and there are no major concessions and no major territorial exchanges,
so the impressment won't end. But that doesn't matter much anyway,
since Britain doesn't need soldiers for its continental wars, and
England promises not to mess with the Canadian boundary or
try to set up an Indian state. So really it
seems like a bit of a pointless and void outcome here.

(16:41):
No one got anything, doesn't we're going to call it
even so. The news of peace comes too late though,
to New Orleans where the British attack the city and
they're held off by Andrew Jackson. Despite the end of
the war, but that victory, as well as the victory
of Baltimore, kind of helped contribute to the American sense
that we won the war, and you can give a

(17:05):
little credence to it because it does help establish the um.
It helps establish American credibility abroad that we were able
to fight against uh, the larger world superpower, and defend
certain American cities. It also gives us a bit of
a desire to keep out of Europe's business for a while.

(17:26):
And Canada comes out with a similar surge of patriotism
because they kept America out, although they remained British. But
getting back to the flag, we're not going to finish
this podcast before we wrapped that little bit up. Major
Armistead takes it at home with him. It probably got
pretty beat up over the next few years. And he
dies pretty young and leaves it to his widow who

(17:49):
keeps it in Baltimore, and she takes it out every
now and then lends it to big patriotic events and
helps sort of build the cult of the Star Spangled banner,
and you know, people want to see it and get
a look at it in person. And his descendants keep
it through the Civil War, even though they have Confederate sympathies,
which is a really weird thing to imagine if their

(18:10):
Confederates and here they have the symbol of the country
they're rebelling against. And they pass it on through the generations,
so later visitors are allowed to take little snippets of it.
So over time or flag becomes rather square, and it
also becomes a bit of a curse on their family. Yeah,
there's all sorts of infighting and it leads to bitterness

(18:32):
and paranoia. You know, why should this person get the flag?
And I think some of the later descendants feel like
they're being hounded by constant requests to to see the
flag and hold the flag and get snippets of it.
Family flag feud. Yeah, more literation. Good job, Katie and Um.
One of the family members even notes that more battles

(18:53):
have been fought over the flag than under it. Finally,
an exhausted Armistead descendant Lee is it to the Smithsonian
Institution in nineteen o seven and it is there today.
And as for Key, his Georgetown house was removed for
a highway in nineteen forty seven, so two stories worth
of his brick house were dismantled, packed up and put

(19:16):
into storage. But by nineteen fifty five every brick had disappeared,
which reminded us a lot of the Amber Room. That's
our American version, I guess. So that about wraps up
the bombardment and the missing house and the flag story,
and it brings us to listener mail. We got an

(19:37):
email from Ali who had requested a podcast on never TD,
but we beat her to the punch and recorded it
before we got her email, and she said she was
pretty much an expert on the subject, So we wish
we'd gotten this before and could have taken her up
on some of her awesome sources. But she did have
one interesting tidbit, which was that never Titi and Akanat

(19:57):
and had a very publicly romantic relationship, and we're depicted
kissing in public and her sitting on his lap, So
there's a little romantic piece of never Cheati's life. We
also got some cool postcards and uh, two postcards from
Asia came the same day, which was funny. It must
have been the same sack of mail or something. Was

(20:18):
a nice interlude. Yeah, one was from Hong Kong and
it was inspired by our Opium Wars podcast from Luke,
and then another one was from Japan and um, it's
from Walter and I think Walter is going to be
pleased by the Samurai podcast. I bet he sent it
before it came out with I think I like that one.
And if you'd like to send us some email where

(20:40):
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(21:01):
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