If you're reading this, you probably know me. And if you know me, you probably know I now live in Maryland. If you know where Maryland is, you probably know it's a short drive to our nation's capital from just about anywhere in this state.
The same can be said about Delaware, most of Virginia, a fair portion of West Virginia, and even the southern part of Pennsylvania.
I don't think it needs to be said that most of the states in the eastern part of the US are smaller than the rest of the US states are. For example, you can drive across Tennessee going from west to east on your way to Washington, DC, and after several hours of driving you will still be in Tennessee, with several hours of Tennessee left to go. But when you leave Tennessee, boom, you're not all that far from DC anymore. Or from me, for that matter! So try it and see if I'm right (I am), and then while you're in the area, come see me.
One thing that is fascinating about where I live is that there is a lot of history here. Of course, you knew that already, and I knew that before I moved here. What I didn't know was exactly how much historical stuff happened here, and by "here" I mean stand in a spot, any spot, and you can just about be guaranteed that you're within spitting distance of some historically significant house, grave, battlefield, or historical marker detailing something that once stood on that spot.
Take Frederick, where I live. Do you know what happened in Frederick, or really close by? For beginners, the battle of Antietam occurred very close to Frederick and I can drive to that battlefield site in less than half an hour. It is located in Sharpsburg, MD, and holds the unhappy record of being the site of the deadliest one-day battle in all of US military history. Also near Frederick is Harper's Ferry, WV, which is where things happened that cause kids in school to need to learn about Stonewall Jackson and John Brown. In fact, it is after the Harper's Ferry battle (yup, there was a battle there, too) that Jackson left the processing of the prisoners to the underlings while he hot-footed it to Sharpsburg to join Lee for that battle. The battle in Harper's Ferry was also especially significant because it paved the way for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Another historically famous battlefield that is a short drive from Frederick is Gettysburg, PA, where Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address. "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Thank you, Mr. Whitten, for making me memorize this in 8th grade. I'm serious. I'm glad I had him as a teacher, and I'm glad he made us all learn the Gettysburg address, the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble to the Constitution. I can't tell you my son's phone number from memory, but I still remember these words, and I'm pretty proud of that because everyone should know them, even 53 years after having had to learn them in order to recite them in front of the class. (Thank you, too, Ruth Freeman Franklin, for prompting me by mouthing the words when I got stuck.)
Frederick, itself, had a lot of interesting stuff happen during the Civil War, but it came into its own long before that. The C&O Canal is close by, and that canal has a lot of wartime history connected with it. Did I mention that Frederick saw action during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War? I didn't, but it did. Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill and George Washington visited Frederick (although certainly not at the same time, and not in that order), and here's another cool thing: Francis Scott Key, the author of the words to the National Anthem, is from Frederick. Someone Of Importance decided to memorialize him by allowing a flag to be flown around the clock at his grave here (it is one of only three places in the US where this is allowed), and by naming a mall after him.
I'm sure he would be so proud if he were alive.
There are other historically significant sites here in Frederick, but this story is supposed to be about music (you didn't know that, but I did). So let's get to it!
Mr. Key, as I stated, wrote the words to The Star-Spangled Banner. It was sung to the tune of a well-known drinking song that folks at that time knew from their pub-hopping days in England. I expect you already knew that the song was not written about the Revolutionary War, but rather was penned at the conclusion of a major battle during the War of 1812 (which lasted until 1814, when Key wrote the poem that became the song).
Here is the story of how that poem came to be written.
Mr. Key was good friends with a doctor by the name of William Beanes. Dr. Beanes was a civilian doctor who happened to get himself captured and imprisoned on an enemy boat in the Chesapeake Bay, just a stone's throw from Ft. McHenry. Key happened to be a pretty prominent lawyer in DC so he got President Madison to write a sweet little letter to the British officer in command of the boat on which Beanes was being held, telling him what a fine person Dr. Beanes was and that, hey, he was actually a civilian so the officer needed to kindly realize the error of his ways and release Dr. Beanes, if he would be so kind as to accommodate this request. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist. It didn't hurt that Dr. Beanes had saved the life of someone the British officer knew...so the officer agreed. Well, wouldn't you just know it? At that very instant, jussssst before Key and his accompanying entourage of groupies (totaling 2 people) and Dr. Beanes were to head back to their own little boat and find their way to the fort, the Brits decided to choose that same exact moment to bombard the fort with volley after volley of weaponry. They obviously couldn't let Key and his companions to go back to the fort because they might warn the soldiers at the fort that an attack was imminent, so instead they let the four men (I've added the good doctor to the number) go on back to their little boat but they had to pinky-swear that they wouldn't leave and go back to the fort and rat on the British. The men in the little boat agreed, although I suspect a large part of the decision to not row, row, row their boat back to the fort might have hinged on the fact that there were rockets going off leaving red glares, and also bombs bursting in air, and the men were pretty sure their boat might suffer a little damage if they waded into the fray at that point. Also, they might personally suffer a little damage to theirOWNselves.
Well, it was pretty harrowing and noisy and scary considering these four men were in a tiny little boat sitting in the water near kind of a lot of British war ships waging a fiery battle on a fort that was severaly undermanned. Adding to this nightmare was Key's knowledge that his own brother-in-law was at Ft. McHenry at that moment with his troops defending the fort. All through the night, the bombs and rockets and, well, whatever else was used as artillery, kept exploding all around them and the men were trying to see if the flag was still flying, which meant the fort was still standing and not overtaken by the Brithsh, and the brother-in-law and his men were hopefully okay. It didn't help that the British officer, upon releasing Dr. Beanes, told Key and the others that they should get a good look at their beloved flag because once the firing stopped they wouldn't see it flying anymore.
It was like the universe was playing a cruel practical joke on the men. You see, it was pitch dark all night long, except for the rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air, which gave off just enough light on occasion that they could see the flag still flying. Then the shelling stopped. No rockets going off meant no red glare. No bombs bursting meant no flash of light. No glare or light meant no one could see if the flag was flying or not. Then came dawn. Wouldn't you know it, that practical joke continued even after dawn because there was such a heavy fog that they still couldn't see if the flag was flying. It wasn't until the sun burned through the fog that the men saw the flag in all her glory, flying high and proud. They half expected to see the Union Jack there, but no! The soldiers at the fort had held tough and the Brits had lost, causing them to limp home with their sails tucked between their legs, so to speak.
It is of interest to me, and perhaps to you, that the flag that flew over the fort consisted of 15 stars and 15 stripes, recognizing the 15 states currently in the union at the time. After this, the government reverted back to 13 stripes for the 13 original colonies, and just added a star each time a new state was formed. Also worth mentioning is that this was one humongous flag! Each star was 2 feet in diameter, and each stripe was 2 feet tall. The entire flag was about the size of a fourth of a basketball court. AND! There was actually not one, but two flags! One was smaller, and was probably the one actually flown during the battle, but in the morning the big one was raised and that is the one that Key and his friends saw flying in the sunlight.
On the way back to the fort that morning, the other men powered the boat paddles while Key spent the time writing a poem about the battle and their joy at seeing the flag. (There were four stanzas detailing the battle.) He showed it to his brother-in-law who titled it The Defence of Fort McHenry, and he managed to get it to someone who was instrumental in getting it published, and the rest is, well, history. Oh, except that it didn't become our national anthem until 1931 when Hoover was President. That's another story for another day.
Next up, the story of the song everyone knows as...you know what? I'm going to make you wait. I will give you one hint: It is a patriotic song. Wooo...who saw that one coming?
The same can be said about Delaware, most of Virginia, a fair portion of West Virginia, and even the southern part of Pennsylvania.
I don't think it needs to be said that most of the states in the eastern part of the US are smaller than the rest of the US states are. For example, you can drive across Tennessee going from west to east on your way to Washington, DC, and after several hours of driving you will still be in Tennessee, with several hours of Tennessee left to go. But when you leave Tennessee, boom, you're not all that far from DC anymore. Or from me, for that matter! So try it and see if I'm right (I am), and then while you're in the area, come see me.
One thing that is fascinating about where I live is that there is a lot of history here. Of course, you knew that already, and I knew that before I moved here. What I didn't know was exactly how much historical stuff happened here, and by "here" I mean stand in a spot, any spot, and you can just about be guaranteed that you're within spitting distance of some historically significant house, grave, battlefield, or historical marker detailing something that once stood on that spot.
Take Frederick, where I live. Do you know what happened in Frederick, or really close by? For beginners, the battle of Antietam occurred very close to Frederick and I can drive to that battlefield site in less than half an hour. It is located in Sharpsburg, MD, and holds the unhappy record of being the site of the deadliest one-day battle in all of US military history. Also near Frederick is Harper's Ferry, WV, which is where things happened that cause kids in school to need to learn about Stonewall Jackson and John Brown. In fact, it is after the Harper's Ferry battle (yup, there was a battle there, too) that Jackson left the processing of the prisoners to the underlings while he hot-footed it to Sharpsburg to join Lee for that battle. The battle in Harper's Ferry was also especially significant because it paved the way for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Another historically famous battlefield that is a short drive from Frederick is Gettysburg, PA, where Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg Address. "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Thank you, Mr. Whitten, for making me memorize this in 8th grade. I'm serious. I'm glad I had him as a teacher, and I'm glad he made us all learn the Gettysburg address, the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble to the Constitution. I can't tell you my son's phone number from memory, but I still remember these words, and I'm pretty proud of that because everyone should know them, even 53 years after having had to learn them in order to recite them in front of the class. (Thank you, too, Ruth Freeman Franklin, for prompting me by mouthing the words when I got stuck.)
Frederick, itself, had a lot of interesting stuff happen during the Civil War, but it came into its own long before that. The C&O Canal is close by, and that canal has a lot of wartime history connected with it. Did I mention that Frederick saw action during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War? I didn't, but it did. Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill and George Washington visited Frederick (although certainly not at the same time, and not in that order), and here's another cool thing: Francis Scott Key, the author of the words to the National Anthem, is from Frederick. Someone Of Importance decided to memorialize him by allowing a flag to be flown around the clock at his grave here (it is one of only three places in the US where this is allowed), and by naming a mall after him.
I'm sure he would be so proud if he were alive.
There are other historically significant sites here in Frederick, but this story is supposed to be about music (you didn't know that, but I did). So let's get to it!
Mr. Key, as I stated, wrote the words to The Star-Spangled Banner. It was sung to the tune of a well-known drinking song that folks at that time knew from their pub-hopping days in England. I expect you already knew that the song was not written about the Revolutionary War, but rather was penned at the conclusion of a major battle during the War of 1812 (which lasted until 1814, when Key wrote the poem that became the song).
Here is the story of how that poem came to be written.
Mr. Key was good friends with a doctor by the name of William Beanes. Dr. Beanes was a civilian doctor who happened to get himself captured and imprisoned on an enemy boat in the Chesapeake Bay, just a stone's throw from Ft. McHenry. Key happened to be a pretty prominent lawyer in DC so he got President Madison to write a sweet little letter to the British officer in command of the boat on which Beanes was being held, telling him what a fine person Dr. Beanes was and that, hey, he was actually a civilian so the officer needed to kindly realize the error of his ways and release Dr. Beanes, if he would be so kind as to accommodate this request. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist. It didn't hurt that Dr. Beanes had saved the life of someone the British officer knew...so the officer agreed. Well, wouldn't you just know it? At that very instant, jussssst before Key and his accompanying entourage of groupies (totaling 2 people) and Dr. Beanes were to head back to their own little boat and find their way to the fort, the Brits decided to choose that same exact moment to bombard the fort with volley after volley of weaponry. They obviously couldn't let Key and his companions to go back to the fort because they might warn the soldiers at the fort that an attack was imminent, so instead they let the four men (I've added the good doctor to the number) go on back to their little boat but they had to pinky-swear that they wouldn't leave and go back to the fort and rat on the British. The men in the little boat agreed, although I suspect a large part of the decision to not row, row, row their boat back to the fort might have hinged on the fact that there were rockets going off leaving red glares, and also bombs bursting in air, and the men were pretty sure their boat might suffer a little damage if they waded into the fray at that point. Also, they might personally suffer a little damage to theirOWNselves.
Well, it was pretty harrowing and noisy and scary considering these four men were in a tiny little boat sitting in the water near kind of a lot of British war ships waging a fiery battle on a fort that was severaly undermanned. Adding to this nightmare was Key's knowledge that his own brother-in-law was at Ft. McHenry at that moment with his troops defending the fort. All through the night, the bombs and rockets and, well, whatever else was used as artillery, kept exploding all around them and the men were trying to see if the flag was still flying, which meant the fort was still standing and not overtaken by the Brithsh, and the brother-in-law and his men were hopefully okay. It didn't help that the British officer, upon releasing Dr. Beanes, told Key and the others that they should get a good look at their beloved flag because once the firing stopped they wouldn't see it flying anymore.
It was like the universe was playing a cruel practical joke on the men. You see, it was pitch dark all night long, except for the rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air, which gave off just enough light on occasion that they could see the flag still flying. Then the shelling stopped. No rockets going off meant no red glare. No bombs bursting meant no flash of light. No glare or light meant no one could see if the flag was flying or not. Then came dawn. Wouldn't you know it, that practical joke continued even after dawn because there was such a heavy fog that they still couldn't see if the flag was flying. It wasn't until the sun burned through the fog that the men saw the flag in all her glory, flying high and proud. They half expected to see the Union Jack there, but no! The soldiers at the fort had held tough and the Brits had lost, causing them to limp home with their sails tucked between their legs, so to speak.
It is of interest to me, and perhaps to you, that the flag that flew over the fort consisted of 15 stars and 15 stripes, recognizing the 15 states currently in the union at the time. After this, the government reverted back to 13 stripes for the 13 original colonies, and just added a star each time a new state was formed. Also worth mentioning is that this was one humongous flag! Each star was 2 feet in diameter, and each stripe was 2 feet tall. The entire flag was about the size of a fourth of a basketball court. AND! There was actually not one, but two flags! One was smaller, and was probably the one actually flown during the battle, but in the morning the big one was raised and that is the one that Key and his friends saw flying in the sunlight.
On the way back to the fort that morning, the other men powered the boat paddles while Key spent the time writing a poem about the battle and their joy at seeing the flag. (There were four stanzas detailing the battle.) He showed it to his brother-in-law who titled it The Defence of Fort McHenry, and he managed to get it to someone who was instrumental in getting it published, and the rest is, well, history. Oh, except that it didn't become our national anthem until 1931 when Hoover was President. That's another story for another day.
Next up, the story of the song everyone knows as...you know what? I'm going to make you wait. I will give you one hint: It is a patriotic song. Wooo...who saw that one coming?
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