Two “Keys” and 47 Years

On September 14, 2014, the nation will pass a milestone anniversary. 200 years prior, Francis Scott Key penned “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a poem, which later, when adapted to music, would be come the United States of America’s national anthem.

The action that Key witnessed was the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, a star-shaped fort that guarded the water approaches to Baltimore, Maryland, named after a Maryland signer of the Constitution and the third Secretary of War, James McHenry.

Throughout the night of September 13, 1814, the fort and its defenders withstood constant shelling from the British fleet, and when dawn broke on September 14th, the flag still fluttered above the ramparts. Coupled with a setback at the battle of North Point in which British General Robert Ross was killed, the Americans, aided by Maryland militia, safely defended the city and harbor.

Forty-seven years after Key penned his poem aboard a ship where he had been confined pending the British assault on Fort McHenry, his grandson would also find himself in a similar predicament.

Frank (also commonly referred to as Francis) Key Howard was arrested on September 13, 1861 for his pro-Southern viewpoints as editor of the Baltimore Exchange. His paper had been critical of President Abraham Lincoln’s policies, namely the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the declaration of martial law.

Howard would be confined inside Fort McHenry, which would be used primarily as a military prison as the war progressed. Initially, though, it housed arrested pro-Southern (or suspected Confederate sympathizers) from the surrounding area.

With his cell in the second story of the fort, which gained the nortorious nickname as “An American Bastille,” Howard would pen a very eloquent and ironic reflection of his current predicament:

When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by the odd, and not so pleasant a coincidence. On that day, forty-seven years before . . . my grandfather had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. . . . As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, could not but contrast my position with his . . . . The flag which he so proudly hailed, I saw waving, at the same place, over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.

Howard would eventually pen a book about his time as a political prisoner inside Fort McHenry, titled “Fourteen Months in the American Bastilles,” completed by December 1862. When it was published by Baltimore publishers in October 1863, the two responsible editors were both arrested for selling the work.

History can be interesting like that: thrusting two Keys (or a Key and Howard, to be more accurate) at one location that underscored the forty-seven years of change between wars.

As the different anniversaries of the War of 1812 and American Civil War coincide, we are afforded an opportunity to look at the similarities and lasting legacies of both conflicts.

The War of 1812 cemented the United States as a sovereign nation and tied up loose ends from the American Revolution. The war provided a measuring stick in which, a short few years later, President James Monroe (who was both Secretary of State and War during the War of 1812) would issue the Monroe Doctrine, establishing American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. In a twist, the British provided nominal support for this declaration.

With the war’s successful conclusion, people flooded westward, heroes rose to prominence, i.e. Andrew Jackson, and the country and Americans saw the war as a victory for American democracy. On the heels of the war came a period of time classified as the “Era of Good Feelings.”

Yet, in that “Era of Good Feelings” were sown the seeds of discontent. Within a few short years, the country would face a crisis in Missouri that would be averted with the aptly named “Missouri Compromise.” Eventually, compromises would run out and sectional differences would tear the country apart.

During the American Civil War, Fort McHenry went from a beacon of American freedom to a pen holding dissidents against the same flag that Key so fervently hoped would still be waving when dawn broke on September 14, 1814. With the policies of Lincoln—a product of the frontier himself—the United States emerged from “a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” By tactics that bent and sometimes temporarily broke his Constitutionally sanctioned powers, Lincoln saved Maryland and, with it, the United States—much like the defenders of Fort McHenry did forty-seven years before.

As we commemorate the American Civil War, let’s not forget to celebrate the history and legacy of the War of 1812: the first Second American Revolution.

*For a schedule of events commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner click here.