Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And contrary to
Speaker 1: our title the Bombardment of Baltimore, we are not starting
Speaker 1: off on a battlefield as you might think, but rather
Speaker 1: on a brewery floor in Baltimore where several women were
Speaker 1: piecing together a flag. Yeah. That was Baltimore flag maker
Speaker 1: in widow Mary Pickersgill, and she had gotten the order
Speaker 1: for the flag in July of eight thirteen from Major
Speaker 1: George Armistead. And he was the new commander at Fort McHenry,
Speaker 1: which was a really important defense position for the city
Speaker 1: of Baltimore, was defending the river, and he wanted a flag,
Speaker 1: an enormous flag that the whole city could see, something
Speaker 1: really big, thirty by forty two ft, which is about
Speaker 1: the court a quarter of a basketball court, so larger
Speaker 1: than even the biggest flag you've probably seen. And he
Speaker 1: needed that flag soon because the war that had started
Speaker 1: a year before the War of eighteen twelve was spreading
Speaker 1: through the country. Action at the Canadian border had leaked
Speaker 1: down to the Chesapeake Bay, where the British were menacing
Speaker 1: ships and scooping things out. So Armistad knew battle was
Speaker 1: going to come to Baltimore sooner or later, and so
Speaker 1: he put in this rush order for his enormous flag
Speaker 1: from picker Skill, as well as a smaller storm flag,
Speaker 1: because you know, when it's raining, you don't want to
Speaker 1: fly your rip apart thirty by forty two foot flag,
Speaker 1: and picker Skill works with three hundred yards of English
Speaker 1: worsted wool bunting, piecing together red and blue stripes and
Speaker 1: sewing on fifteen because they're only fifteen stars at the time.
Speaker 1: Um enormous cotton stars and uh. She carefully picked the
Speaker 1: wool off the back so she'd sew on the star
Speaker 1: and then pick the blue off the backs of the
Speaker 1: white stark at show from both sides, so this is
Speaker 1: a quality flag. She's helped by her daughter, two nieces,
Speaker 1: and an African American indentured servant, and the women are
Speaker 1: done by August. They make four hundred and five dollars
Speaker 1: and ninety cents for the garrison flag and one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight dollars and fifty four cents for the
Speaker 1: storm flag, which was very good money. Flagmaking was a
Speaker 1: pretty lucrative profession of the time. And it's just in
Speaker 1: time for Armistead. The British have arrived at the Potapsco River.
Speaker 1: They're eyeing the city's defenses, and they're planning an attack
Speaker 1: for the following year. But to understand that, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to go back in time a little bit
Speaker 1: and give you all some context about the War of
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve. And at the time armist did commission the flags,
Speaker 1: it was starting to become pretty clear to a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans that the country had rushed into a war
Speaker 1: against Britain. It wasn't strong enough, it wasn't prepared enough
Speaker 1: to fight against these highly trained troops. And the declaration
Speaker 1: of war had come in eighteen wealth and it was
Speaker 1: over this dispute America had with Britain over maritime rights,
Speaker 1: and the British had been battling Napoleon for global control
Speaker 1: for decades, and uh, they didn't like that their former colony, America,
Speaker 1: which was officially neutral, was trading with both of them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's understandable it seemed to them as though
Speaker 1: the Americans were aiding Napoleon, but by blocking them, they're
Speaker 1: interfering with American neutrality, which we didn't think was very fair.
Speaker 1: And not only was it bad for business, it also
Speaker 1: offended the relatively new America. Historian Douglas Egerton wrote to
Speaker 1: England still regarded American trade as part of their domain
Speaker 1: even after the Revolution, And to make matters worse, the
Speaker 1: British needed all the men it could find to fight
Speaker 1: in the Napoleonic Wars, so they would impress American citizens,
Speaker 1: charge them as Royal Navy deserters and forced them into service.
Speaker 1: And impressment is never very popular, not a good way
Speaker 1: to win run stealing them off boats and making them
Speaker 1: join your army. So it's the warhawks, though, that really
Speaker 1: pushed this battle ahead in this war. And these are
Speaker 1: Southerners and Westerners who are mostly too young to have
Speaker 1: actually seen action in the Revolution, so they're kind of
Speaker 1: itching for their own war um. But they're also expansionists.
Speaker 1: They're offended over the violation of the maritime rights. Sure
Speaker 1: you know that's a problem. They don't like the impressment,
Speaker 1: but they're really eyeing British Canada to the north and
Speaker 1: Spanish Florida to the south and hoping that maybe this
Speaker 1: growing country can grow a little more, and they think
Speaker 1: Canada will be easy pickings. Even Thomas Jefferson says the
Speaker 1: acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching and
Speaker 1: will give us an experience for the attack of Halifax
Speaker 1: the next and the final expulsion of England from the
Speaker 1: American continent. So basically he thinks we'll just walk in
Speaker 1: and that will be the end. Yeah, but the warhawks
Speaker 1: are still just a very small majority, and the votes
Speaker 1: to declare war are really really close in both the
Speaker 1: House and the Senate. It's an unpopular fight in a
Speaker 1: lot of the country, and actually, a year and a
Speaker 1: half into the war, some of the northern states are
Speaker 1: actually considering the idea of succession so they could pick
Speaker 1: up trading again. The idea of war is pretty unpopular
Speaker 1: with a lot of Brits too, because, after all, Britain
Speaker 1: is still busy fighting Napoleon. But in eighteen fourteen, Napoleon's
Speaker 1: defeated and now Britain can focus on the conflict happening
Speaker 1: in North America and focus they do, dispatching five thousand
Speaker 1: troops from Europe and naval support from Bermuda, and their
Speaker 1: plan is really intense. You know, they finally have full
Speaker 1: attention to devote to North America, and they're going to
Speaker 1: use their navy to attack coastal areas and then they're
Speaker 1: going to use the army to take the east coast cities.
Speaker 1: And they're hoping that all of this action will distract
Speaker 1: Americans from the battles that are going on at the
Speaker 1: northern boundary between the Canadians and the Natives and the British.
Speaker 1: So during that scouting mission the Brits were doing in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen that made Armistead really want to get this
Speaker 1: flag of flying. They had decided that taking Washington and Baltimore,
Speaker 1: the third biggest city in the country, would be a
Speaker 1: piece of cake and that it would be payback for
Speaker 1: the American sacking of York, which is of course Toronto.
Speaker 1: And they've put Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane in charge
Speaker 1: of the naval forces, in Major General Robert Ross in
Speaker 1: charge of the land forces. And one important thing to
Speaker 1: note with a lot of the British troops is they
Speaker 1: are fresh out of the Continental Wars, So these are
Speaker 1: seasoned soldiers and they really know what they're doing, contrary
Speaker 1: to the American forces, which don't have much training and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are commanded by revolutionary veterans who
Speaker 1: are getting up there and um haven't really fought in
Speaker 1: a serious war in decades. The British plan is to
Speaker 1: attack Washington first since it would be off guard, and
Speaker 1: they're right. The Americans are totally expecting Baltimore to be
Speaker 1: attacked first since that's where all the privateers are. Actions
Speaker 1: started June eighteen fourteen when American commodore Joshua Barney sailed
Speaker 1: south from Baltimore to fight the British on one of
Speaker 1: their island naval bases. But he couldn't get out of
Speaker 1: the mouth of the Potomac and was forced to retreat.
Speaker 1: So he holds up in St. Leonard Creek and the
Speaker 1: Brits can't get to him there, so they raid the area,
Speaker 1: burning plantations, kind of trying to lure him out to
Speaker 1: engage again. And um, he finally does come out, they fight,
Speaker 1: he's able to escape up the Texan River, and um,
Speaker 1: the British change their plan of attack. They're going to
Speaker 1: have a three pronged approach and the plan is to
Speaker 1: divert American forces all while while pressing on towards Washington.
Speaker 1: So the American forces will wonder are they going for Washington, Baltimore,
Speaker 1: which way are they going to go? What's going on?
Speaker 1: And just this sense of confusion will be created. By
Speaker 1: August twentieth, more than four thousand troops have disembarked at
Speaker 1: Benedict on the Patuxent River, which wasn't far from the city,
Speaker 1: and smaller ships continued upstream, and these are the British,
Speaker 1: right sorry, Barney was ordered to destroy his flotilla at
Speaker 1: Pig Point to prevent its British capture. So things aren't
Speaker 1: looking great for Americans at this point. So the British
Speaker 1: decided to take the route to Washington through Bladensburg, and
Speaker 1: they do run into American troops along the way, but
Speaker 1: the Americans are so unorganized there's hardly a fight. They
Speaker 1: flee and the Battle of Bladensburg is just this terrible humiliation.
Speaker 1: I mean, Washington has no protection now. And by August
Speaker 1: the British arrived in the capital and they burn the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress, They burned the capital, the Treasury, Departments
Speaker 1: of State, War and Navy, and the Executive Mansion, which
Speaker 1: is of course not the White House at this time,
Speaker 1: Um and the President and his cabinet actually have to
Speaker 1: flee the city because they're concerned about what might happen
Speaker 1: to them. We owe some thank yous to some quick thinkers,
Speaker 1: like First Lady Dolly Madison, who made an arrangement to
Speaker 1: protect some White House treasures. She stuffed congressional papers into
Speaker 1: chests and waited for word from her husband, and when
Speaker 1: it became clear that he wouldn't be able to come
Speaker 1: back and she would have to flee, she wrote to
Speaker 1: her sister, our kind friend Mr Carroll has come to
Speaker 1: hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with
Speaker 1: me because I insist on waiting until the large picture
Speaker 1: of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be
Speaker 1: unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious
Speaker 1: for these perilous moments. I have ordered the frame to
Speaker 1: be broken and the canvas taken out. It is done,
Speaker 1: so thanks to Dolly for that one. Well, and we
Speaker 1: also get things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Speaker 1: They're all rescued from the State Department. And there's a
Speaker 1: clerk who has been left in charge of the Senate
Speaker 1: archival materials, and he tells his boss basically, either help
Speaker 1: me get these documents out of Washington, or I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it by myself. And it ends up being
Speaker 1: the clerk in an African American office messenger who confiscate
Speaker 1: a wagon and then loaded up with twenty five years
Speaker 1: worth of Senate archives, which I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: early history of our country that would be lost in
Speaker 1: a fire. It's sad, and it should be clear that
Speaker 1: it's not just this huge burning of the city. It's
Speaker 1: very controlled. The British are hitting specific targets and they
Speaker 1: don't go about looting or burning private homes. There's actually
Speaker 1: a tornado shortly after the burning that hurts and kills
Speaker 1: more people, but there are some casualties. We lose three
Speaker 1: thousand books in the Congressional Library that are completely destroyed,
Speaker 1: but re established later with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's
Speaker 1: private collection. So the American troops, who are exhausted and
Speaker 1: defeated and probably feeling pretty bad at this point, head
Speaker 1: to Baltimore because they know that is where the fight
Speaker 1: is heading next. And it's starting to seem a pretty
Speaker 1: bad idea to have declared war on Britain. But that
Speaker 1: brings us to our Battle of Baltimore, our bombardment, if
Speaker 1: you like. We like alliteration. The British troops join up
Speaker 1: with the fleet at Benedict and head down the Patuxtion
Speaker 1: and up the Chesapeake Bay towards Baltimore. And as Sarah
Speaker 1: wrote in her notes, there's going to be a SmackDown.
Speaker 1: It's true. The Baltimore privateers have captured all these British
Speaker 1: ships over the course of the war or destroyed them,
Speaker 1: and I mean the British are looking for some payback time.
Speaker 1: All the privateers are based here. It's a very wealthy city. Um,
Speaker 1: Baltimore is going to suffer at a greater extent than
Speaker 1: Washington did. General Ross's British troops landed at north Point,
Speaker 1: Maryland on September twelve, moving in toward the city, but
Speaker 1: they ran into the American forward line that was actually
Speaker 1: prepared this time, and Ross was killed in the fight
Speaker 1: by a sharpshooter. So the surprised British make camp on
Speaker 1: the battlefield and planned to attack again the night of September.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the Navy, having already successfully attacked Alexandra, Virginia.
Speaker 1: UH is ready to strike Fort and Kenry, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning. It's that crucial defensive point for Baltimore.
Speaker 1: It's it's the key to the city. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: the ship's open fire on September and they lobby these
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety pounds shells at the fort and
Speaker 1: it's a new arms technology where the shells actually explode,
Speaker 1: and so some of them that don't quite reach their
Speaker 1: targets explode in the air. You might call them bombs
Speaker 1: bursting in air. It's a little hint for where we're going.
Speaker 1: But one commander at the fort even finds a note
Speaker 1: written on an unexploded shell, a present from the King
Speaker 1: of England, which sounds like a scene out of a movie.
Speaker 1: Or it also reminded us of the St. Paul's Watch pun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely things look bad for Baltimore because the ships are
Speaker 1: out of Fort McHenry's range of fire, so they can't
Speaker 1: fight back and they just have to sit there and
Speaker 1: take it for twenty five hours. The British fire all
Speaker 1: day long, throught and into the pre dawn hours of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth, shooting one hundred and thirty three tons of
Speaker 1: shells at the four, which is nearly one per minute,
Speaker 1: and people as far away as Philadelphia can hear the
Speaker 1: racket from the Baltimore attack. And there's one important thing though,
Speaker 1: The British can't advance either, so they can sit there
Speaker 1: out of range of the guns fire at them all day,
Speaker 1: but they can't get any closer because when they do,
Speaker 1: the Ford is actually able to hit them and does
Speaker 1: some serious damage. When the ships try to advance in
Speaker 1: the afternoon of the thirteen, and they're not doing too
Speaker 1: much danger to the fort either. Only four men are
Speaker 1: killed twenty four wounded, but out of one thousand, that's
Speaker 1: not so many, and by dawn Admiral Cochrane halts the assault,
Speaker 1: so it's rained the whole day and the whole night
Speaker 1: of the attack. So it's likely that the the four
Speaker 1: it was probably flying it's smaller storm flag. We should
Speaker 1: note that. But as the British ships maneuver around to leave,
Speaker 1: Major Armistead, who's in charge of the fort, orders that
Speaker 1: they hoist the huge garrison flag that he's commissioned in
Speaker 1: fire rounds in defiance of the retreating ship. So it's
Speaker 1: this very patriotic moment Baltimore has pulled through, and lawyer
Speaker 1: and poet Francis Scott Key has been watching the bombardment
Speaker 1: from a ship in the bay. He was detained during
Speaker 1: the battle after negotiating the release of an American and
Speaker 1: a Kinsman. So all day long he's been able to
Speaker 1: see what was likely the smaller storm flag flying from
Speaker 1: the fort, knowing it was still in American hands. But
Speaker 1: at night he can't see anything and doesn't know what's happening,
Speaker 1: which must have been scary. Yeah, he wrote, it seemed
Speaker 1: as though Mother Earth had opened and was vomiting shot
Speaker 1: and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone. So
Speaker 1: he's wondering all night if the ford is still going
Speaker 1: to be in American hands. And then at dawn on
Speaker 1: the fourteenth, he sees that the flag is still flying.
Speaker 1: He knows the city has made it through the night.
Speaker 1: It's this grand patriotic moment America is going to make it.
Speaker 1: After the British leave, Key is so inspired that he
Speaker 1: checks into a Baltimore hotel and finishes this poem. He
Speaker 1: started thinking about about the flag, the Star Spangled banner,
Speaker 1: and he sets it to an English drinking song and
Speaker 1: publishes it. Within a week, it's reprinted nationally, and by
Speaker 1: November it's been printed as sheet music, and then uh
Speaker 1: long after, in ninety one, it becomes the country's official
Speaker 1: national anthem. And we'd like to note too that he
Speaker 1: had been adamantly opposed to the war, but after the
Speaker 1: White House was burned and Baltimore was attacked, he'd had it.
Speaker 1: So not too long after Key's poem is set to music,
Speaker 1: the war is over, and it's partly due to the
Speaker 1: British loss at Baltimore and again at Lake Champlain. And
Speaker 1: the British are just getting tired. I mean, they've been
Speaker 1: fighting Napoleonic wars for that twenty years and they have
Speaker 1: the taxes to show for it, and they're suffering from
Speaker 1: the lack of trade with the US. That's a profitable
Speaker 1: business for the British. The US has also realized that
Speaker 1: it won't gain any of its objectives, so the two
Speaker 1: countries work out a piece at the Treaty of Ghent,
Speaker 1: and there are no major concessions and no major territorial exchanges,
Speaker 1: so the impressment won't end. But that doesn't matter much anyway,
Speaker 1: since Britain doesn't need soldiers for its continental wars, and
Speaker 1: England promises not to mess with the Canadian boundary or
Speaker 1: try to set up an Indian state. So really it
Speaker 1: seems like a bit of a pointless and void outcome here.
Speaker 1: No one got anything, doesn't we're going to call it
Speaker 1: even so. The news of peace comes too late though,
Speaker 1: to New Orleans where the British attack the city and
Speaker 1: they're held off by Andrew Jackson. Despite the end of
Speaker 1: the war, but that victory, as well as the victory
Speaker 1: of Baltimore, kind of helped contribute to the American sense
Speaker 1: that we won the war, and you can give a
Speaker 1: little credence to it because it does help establish the um.
Speaker 1: It helps establish American credibility abroad that we were able
Speaker 1: to fight against uh, the larger world superpower, and defend
Speaker 1: certain American cities. It also gives us a bit of
Speaker 1: a desire to keep out of Europe's business for a while.
Speaker 1: And Canada comes out with a similar surge of patriotism
Speaker 1: because they kept America out, although they remained British. But
Speaker 1: getting back to the flag, we're not going to finish
Speaker 1: this podcast before we wrapped that little bit up. Major
Speaker 1: Armistead takes it at home with him. It probably got
Speaker 1: pretty beat up over the next few years. And he
Speaker 1: dies pretty young and leaves it to his widow who
Speaker 1: keeps it in Baltimore, and she takes it out every
Speaker 1: now and then lends it to big patriotic events and
Speaker 1: helps sort of build the cult of the Star Spangled banner,
Speaker 1: and you know, people want to see it and get
Speaker 1: a look at it in person. And his descendants keep
Speaker 1: it through the Civil War, even though they have Confederate sympathies,
Speaker 1: which is a really weird thing to imagine if their
Speaker 1: Confederates and here they have the symbol of the country
Speaker 1: they're rebelling against. And they pass it on through the generations,
Speaker 1: so later visitors are allowed to take little snippets of it.
Speaker 1: So over time or flag becomes rather square, and it
Speaker 1: also becomes a bit of a curse on their family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of infighting and it leads to bitterness
Speaker 1: and paranoia. You know, why should this person get the flag?
Speaker 1: And I think some of the later descendants feel like
Speaker 1: they're being hounded by constant requests to to see the
Speaker 1: flag and hold the flag and get snippets of it.
Speaker 1: Family flag feud. Yeah, more literation. Good job, Katie and Um.
Speaker 1: One of the family members even notes that more battles
Speaker 1: have been fought over the flag than under it. Finally,
Speaker 1: an exhausted Armistead descendant Lee is it to the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Institution in nineteen o seven and it is there today.
Speaker 1: And as for Key, his Georgetown house was removed for
Speaker 1: a highway in nineteen forty seven, so two stories worth
Speaker 1: of his brick house were dismantled, packed up and put
Speaker 1: into storage. But by nineteen fifty five every brick had disappeared,
Speaker 1: which reminded us a lot of the Amber Room. That's
Speaker 1: our American version, I guess. So that about wraps up
Speaker 1: the bombardment and the missing house and the flag story,
Speaker 1: and it brings us to listener mail. We got an
Speaker 1: email from Ali who had requested a podcast on never TD,
Speaker 1: but we beat her to the punch and recorded it
Speaker 1: before we got her email, and she said she was
Speaker 1: pretty much an expert on the subject, So we wish
Speaker 1: we'd gotten this before and could have taken her up
Speaker 1: on some of her awesome sources. But she did have
Speaker 1: one interesting tidbit, which was that never Titi and Akanat
Speaker 1: and had a very publicly romantic relationship, and we're depicted
Speaker 1: kissing in public and her sitting on his lap, So
Speaker 1: there's a little romantic piece of never Cheati's life. We
Speaker 1: also got some cool postcards and uh, two postcards from
Speaker 1: Asia came the same day, which was funny. It must
Speaker 1: have been the same sack of mail or something. Was
Speaker 1: a nice interlude. Yeah, one was from Hong Kong and
Speaker 1: it was inspired by our Opium Wars podcast from Luke,
Speaker 1: and then another one was from Japan and um, it's
Speaker 1: from Walter and I think Walter is going to be
Speaker 1: pleased by the Samurai podcast. I bet he sent it
Speaker 1: before it came out with I think I like that one.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to send us some email where
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