Four confirmed primary documents from the morning that produced the national anthem. The original manuscript. The first publication. The flag itself. The 1931 act of Congress that made it official, 117 years after it was written.
Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer and amateur poet. In September 1814, during the War of 1812, he traveled under a flag of truce to the British fleet anchored in the Patapsco River near Baltimore, Maryland, to negotiate the release of a Maryland physician, Dr. William Beanes, who had been captured by British troops. The British agreed to release Beanes but detained Key and his party aboard the truce ship HMS Tonnant during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, unwilling to allow them to return to shore with advance knowledge of the attack.
On the night of September 13–14, 1814, Key watched the bombardment from the ship. The British fired more than 1,500 shells, rockets, and bombs at Fort McHenry over twenty-five hours. When dawn broke on September 14, the American flag was still flying over the fort. The British fleet withdrew. Key wrote his poem, initially titled "Defence of Fort M'Henry", at the Indian Queen Tavern in Baltimore on September 14, 1814. The manuscript is at the Maryland Center for History and Culture in Baltimore.
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
Key distributed hand copies of the poem to friends in Baltimore. One copy reached the editor of the Baltimore Patriot, which published it on September 20, 1814, under the title "Defence of Fort M'Henry." A note in the paper suggested it be sung to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven," a popular British drinking song by composer John Stafford Smith. The pairing worked. The song spread rapidly through the cities of the Eastern Seaboard.
The poem was reprinted in newspapers across the country within weeks. Broadside printings were produced and sold in Baltimore and Philadelphia. By late 1814 it was commonly known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" after its most vivid image. Key's four stanzas describe the night of bombardment, the dawn revelation that the flag survived, a reflection on the cause, and a prayer for the nation. Today only the first stanza is typically sung.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was widely sung and recognized throughout the nineteenth century, particularly at military and patriotic events. The Army and Navy used it at official functions beginning in the 1890s. But it was not the official national anthem of the United States until March 3, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover signed the bill into law.
The legislation had been introduced multiple times over decades. Representative John Charles Linthicum of Maryland pressed for its passage beginning in 1929, supported by petitions and letters from across the country. Congress passed the bill and Hoover signed it on March 3, 1931. For 117 years after it was written, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was the de facto but unofficial national anthem.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the composition consisting of the words and music known as The Star-Spangled Banner is designated the national anthem of the United States of America.
The flag that flew over Fort McHenry on the morning of September 14, 1814, the flag Key described, is a 30 by 42 foot garrison flag with 15 stars and 15 stripes, made by Baltimore flag maker Mary Pickersgill and her daughter. It was commissioned in the summer of 1813 for Fort McHenry's commander Major George Armistead. Armistead kept it after the battle. His family retained it for nearly a century before it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution.
It is now permanently displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the same flag Key watched survive the bombardment, the same flag whose survival he recorded in his manuscript that morning at the Indian Queen Tavern. The manuscript is in Baltimore. The flag is in Washington. Both are accessible to the public.
The Star-Spangled Banner — the 15-star, 15-stripe garrison flag that flew over Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814, during the British bombardment in the War of 1812, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem — National Museum of American History · Smithsonian Institution.