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Two teenagers with rifles hid in the forest and marveled at the sight before them. Daniel Wells and Henry Macomas didn’t understand why anyone, especially a British general who didn’t want to be shot, would dress himself in a bright red coat and sit on a white horse 100 yards in front of them.
All they knew was the Red Coats had burned Washington D.C. a few days earlier and now they had come to burn Baltimore. Well, Daniel and Henry would not stand for that, so the boys took careful aim and fired.
To this day we don’t know if it was Daniel or Henry who’s shot found its mark. All we know is that the general’s red coat was ruined along with several of his vital organs. As his men scooped him off the ground and rushed him back to his warship, the badly wounded British general thought about the American doctor sequestered on board. He knew the doctor wouldn’t stand by and watch him die even though they were enemies.
That same American doctor had already saved the lives of many other British soldiers wounded in battle. At that same moment, as the British general slowly bled to death, eight miles away, 21-year-old Private William Williams, along with hundreds of other American soldiers, rushed to prepare the fort for the looming attack by the British Navy. Private Williams was a runaway slave who had escaped his master four months earlier and been on the lamb ever since.
Private Williams joined the Maryland Militia under an assumed name and prepared to defend the only home he knew. Private Williams had no idea what his survival would actually mean.
This part is important. A week earlier, that American doctor had confronted a handful of British soldiers harassing women in the local village. The American doctor, a man who would not stand for bad manners, had conducted a citizen’s arrest and imprisoned the British soldiers.
The British general, however, took exception to the American doctor’s actions and therefore had him arrested and confined to this very warship. The American doctor’s lawyer was there to persuade the British general to pardon the American doctor. But now, the British general has been mortally wounded by an American sharpshooter and now his worsening condition casts much uncertainty upon the immediate future of all concerned.
While the American doctor and his lawyer were pondering their fate, British command was postponing the bombardment upon the American fort. This delay, brought about by the shooting of the British general, allowed Private Williams and the other defenders to better prepare the fort for the looming siege.
Meanwhile, back in the forest, 18-year-old Wells and 19-year-old Macomas were dying in a withering volley of musket fire even as the body of the general they killed was being preserved for a proper burial. That required the general’s men to remove his clothes and push his naked corps into a giant barrel of Jamaican rum.
When the British bombardment finally got underway, 24 hours behind schedule, the American fort was fully prepared. The American doctor and his lawyer found themselves with a front row seat to an historical battle right there on the deceased British general’s warship now anchored just outside Baltimore. To the lawyer, the bombardment was hard to watch. Baltimore was his home and all through the rainy night he peered into the gloom looking for proof that the fort guarding his city had not fallen. For the American doctor, the torment was even worse because there was nothing he could do to help the wounded on the receiving end of that bombardment. He could only pray and imagine what fresh hell was unfolding beyond those ramparts.
Private Williams, on the other hand, well, he didn’t have to imagine anything because he was right there to experience the reality of a 24 hour shelling up close and personal when a cannon ball took his leg off above the knee leaving him flat on his back. The runaway slave looked up from a pool of his own blood and saw the broad stripes and the bright stars of a flag that was still there, flying defiantly over his head.
No one knows what he was thinking as he stared up at that flag. But, two miles away in the British warship, the lawyer was staring in wonder at that very same flag and his thoughts are a matter of public record. It must have been a hell of a sight. A lawyer scribbling, a doctor praying. Bombs bursting in air while a British general marinated in a barrel of rum and a runaway slave died a free man underneath the star spangled banner waving over a fort called McHenry.
Anyone who stayed awake through eighth grade social studies knows that our National Anthem was written by a stubborn lawyer who would not stand for injustice. But Francis Scott Key would not have been on British General Ross’s warship if not for William Beans, a stubborn doctor who wouldn’t stand for bad manners.
Of course the battle itself would have gone in a different direction if not for two stubborn teenagers from Baltimore who simply would not stand for Red Coats burning their city. And there’s the most unlikely patriot of them all, Private William Williams, the runaway slave who would not stand living in bondage even if it meant defending the country that did not stand for his independence.
War is often confusing and so is history but our National Anthem is a simple tribute to those who refuse to stand for kings or masters. That is why we stand when we hear it today. Not because our country is perfect. We stand simply to honor all those Americans who died trying to make our country better.
We stand for Daniel Wells and Henry Macomas. We stand for Private Williams. In the land of the free in the home of the brave, we stand for the Star Spangled Banner because it’s the very least we can do.
Richard Lancaster
Westfield