Independence Day Propers – George Yandell
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. It proclaimed the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France’s intervention on behalf of the Patriots.
After the war, the colonies had to determine how they would create a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The “United States in Congress Assembled” in 1787 then sitting in New York City, forwarded the new Constitution to the states. Each state legislature was to call elections for a “Federal Convention” to ratify the new Constitution. Eleven ratified in 1787 or 1788. The Congress of the Confederation certified eleven states to begin the new government, and called the states to hold elections to begin operation. It then dissolved itself on March 4, 1789, the day the first session of the Congress of the United States began. George Washington was inaugurated as President two months later.
Some wags say the founding parents who created the constitution walked across the street to Christ Church and then created the constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Not exactly historically accurate. What did lead up to the organizing of the Episcopal Church?
By the beginning of the revolutionary war, many Anglican clergy had already departed back to England. And of course there were no bishops in the colonies. The congregations in the colonies had been supported in large part by societies in England. Support from those venues was curtailed before the end of the war. Most sources of income were lost, and the Church was in a depressed condition.
The Protestant Episcopal Church faced the daunting task of organizing 13 independent state church bodies into a national church federation after the revolutionary war. General conventions were held in 1785, 1786, and 1789- the church constitution was completed at the 1789 General Convention at Christ Church in Philadelphia on October 2, 1789. (Christ Church had been founded in 1694 by Anglican missionaries.) That constitution paralleled in many ways the federal democracy of American civil government. The church was organized at first by states rather than by dioceses, and governed by a bi-cameral legislative body. In the 1789 convention the delegates met for the first time as the House of Bishops and House of Deputies. The brand new Episcopal Book of Common Prayer was presented and accepted in that last convention meeting in Philadelphia. (If you want specific details, you can turn to p. 9 in the prayer book and read the three pages telling how our prayer book was adapted from the Church of England Book of Common Prayer.) Do you see how much the Episcopal Church relied on the founding parents of the country in creating a unique way of bonding disparate parishes into a national Church? [This paragraph adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men, p. 452, 2010, published by the Church Pension Fund.]
The lessons and prayers for our Independence day were first appointed for a national observance in the proposed prayer book of 1786. They were deleted by the General Convention of 1789, primarily because of Bp. William White’s intervening. Bp. White was the first and fourth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States (1789; 1795–1836), and the first bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania (1787–1836). Though he himself supported the American Revolution, he felt that the required observance was inappropriate, since the majority of the Episcopal clergy had been loyal to the British crown. It was not until the revision of the prayer book of 1928 (which many of us grew up with) that provision was again made for the Church to observe Independence Day. [ibid]
Flash forward to the war of 1812. Francis Scott Key was a respected young lawyer living in Georgetown just west of where the modern-day Key Bridge crosses the Potomac River. But after war broke out in 1812 over Britain’s attempts to regulate American shipping and other activities while Britain was at war with France, all was not tranquil in Georgetown. The British had entered Chesapeake Bay on August 19th, 1814, and by the evening of the 24th of August, the British had invaded and captured Washington. They set fire to the Capitol and the White House, the flames visible 40 miles away in Baltimore.
President James Madison, his wife Dolly and his Cabinet had already fled to a safer location. Such was their haste to leave that they had had to rip the Stuart portrait of George Washington from the walls without its frame!
In the days following the attack on Washington, the American forces prepared for the British assault on Baltimore (population 40,000) that they knew would come by both land and sea. Word soon reached Francis Scott Key that the British had carried off an elderly and much loved town physician of Upper Marlboro, Dr. William Beanes. He was being held on the British flagship TONNANT. The townsfolk feared that Dr. Beanes would be hanged. They asked Francis Scott Key for his help. He agreed and arranged to have Col. John Skinner, an American agent for prisoner exchange, to accompany him.
On the morning of September 3rd, he and Col. Skinner set sail from Baltimore aboard a sloop flying a flag of truce approved by President Madison. On the 7th they boarded the British flagship to confer with Gen. Ross and Adm. Alexander Cochrane. At first they refused to release Dr. Beanes. But Key and Skinner produced a pouch of letters written by wounded British prisoners praising the care they were receiving from the Americans, among them Dr. Beanes. The British officers relented but would not release the three Americans immediately because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the attack on Baltimore. They were placed under guard, first aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, then onto the sloop and forced to wait out the battle behind the British fleet.
At the star-shaped Fort McHenry, the commander, Maj. George Armistead, flew an American flag so big that “the British would have no trouble seeing it from a distance”. The flag held 15 stars that measured two feet from point to point. Eight red and seven white stripes, each two feet wide, were cut. It measured 30 by 42 feet.
At 7 a.m. on the morning of September 13, 1814, the British bombardment began, and the flag was ready to meet the enemy. The bombardment continued for 25 hours, the British firing 1,500 bombshells that weighed as much as 220 pounds and carried lighted fuses that would supposedly cause them to explode when they reached their target. From special small boats the British fired new rockets that traced wobbly arcs of red flame across the sky. That evening the bombing stopped, but at about 1 a.m. on September 14th, the British fleet roared to life, lighting the rainy night sky with grotesque fireworks.
Key, Col. Skinner, and Dr. Beanes watched the battle with apprehension. They knew that as long as the shelling continued, Fort McHenry had not surrendered. But, long before daylight there came a sudden and mysterious silence. Judging Baltimore as being too costly a prize, the British officers ordered a retreat.
Waiting in the predawn darkness, Key waited for the sight that would end his anxiety; the joyous sight of Gen. Armistead’s great flag blowing in the breeze. When at last daylight came, the flag was still there! As an amateur poet, Key began to write on the back of a letter he had in his pocket. Sailing back to Baltimore he composed more lines and in his lodgings and finished the poem. Copies were circulated around Baltimore under the title “Defence of Fort M’Henry”. Immediately popular, it remained just one of several patriotic airs until it was finally adopted as our national anthem in 1931.
My connection to Key is through my seminary. Best known for writing The Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key was also one of the founders of Virginia Theological Seminary. It began in a storefront in Old Town Alexandria in 1823 as the ‘School of the Prophets’. (I often ate clams and oysters in the Fish Market, next door to the shop where the seminary began.) In order to ensure the Seminary’s lasting good health, Francis Scott Key set aside one-tenth of all he earned throughout his life for charities, including the Seminary. Upon his death in 1843, the money was disbursed according to his wishes. By including Virginia Seminary in their wills or trusts or by making life income gifts to the Seminary, the members of the Society that bore his name have emulated Francis Scott Key by planning for the Seminary’s financial future. I am a member of that society. When I see the flag, I see it through the eyes of Francis Scott Key. I am pleased that the national flag flies next to the Episcopal Church flag in ours and many Churches across the country. The flags together tell a tale of creating freedom out of conflict, cooperation out of chaos, and peace for all people. They fly those values for not only the USA, but light a path for all nations to follow in their own ways. I am grateful.