Defence of Fort M'Henry

The broadside is not a battlefield report. It is a poetic witness document written after a night of partial vision, then printed, sung, preserved, and eventually nationalized.

September 1814Broadside lyricRead the chapter →

Hand-colored nineteenth-century print showing bomb vessels firing toward Fort McHenry — John Bower's c. 1819 print is an early visual interpretation, produced after the battle rather than during it.Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; no known restrictions

Excerpt

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, ...

Historical wording and forms retained where stated.

Modernized reading

At daybreak, can you still see the flag that we saluted at sunset?

Plain-language reading; not a substitute for quotation.

Editorial method: The opening line break is closed with a space. The exclamation mark, capitalization, and comma follow the broadside witness; the ellipsis marks the omitted continuation.

Annotations

dawnThe lyric turns morning visibility into evidence that the fort had not surrendered.
weA rhetorical national community, not a precise inventory of everyone present or represented.

Witness and provenance

Creator: Francis Scott Key
Witness used: The first broadside printing, one of two known surviving copies, transcribed from the Smithsonian copy.
Repository or edition: Smithsonian Institution
Collection: Star-Spangled Banner primary sources
Identifier: Defence of Fort M'Henry broadside, Baltimore, September 1814
Transmission: Printed soon after the bombardment. The Smithsonian copy is one of two known surviving first broadsides and is the cited witness.
Rights: Public-domain 1814 text. The local image is a separate c. 1819 print with no known publication restrictions.

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