July 12, 2023 Show with Tom McMillan on “Our Flag Was Still There”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 12th day of July, 2023.

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Today, we're switching up the format of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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We usually, nearly every day, address a topic that involves

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Christian theology, Christian doctrine, Christian history. Today, we are going to, for a change of pace, discuss something that is purely a patriotic theme.

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We have as a first -time guest on the program today, Tom McMillan, and he is going to be addressing his book,

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Our Flag Was Still There, The Star -Spangled Banner That Survived the British in 200

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Years and the Armistead Family Who Saved It. And Tom is someone who has served on the board of trustees at Pittsburgh's Heinz History Center, the board of directors of the

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Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, the marketing committee of the

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Gettysburg Foundation, and who, along with his wife, Colleen, who assists with much of the book research, are volunteer ambassadors at Antietam National Battlefield.

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And as I said, Tom is going to be addressing his book, Our Flag Was Still There, with us today.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom McMillan.

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Chris, great to be here. Thank you for having me. Let me right away give our listeners our email address if you have questions that you'd like to ask on The American Flag.

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Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. Well, you have quite a strong background connected with American history and the battles of the

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United States of America. How did this fascination and even love for this particular field of history come about in your life?

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They do tests when you're in high school, Chris. Back in the Stone Age when I was in high school, it came out that I would be a sports writer or a history teacher.

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I ended up going into sports media, but history was always my love and it was kind of my diversion. About 10 years ago,

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I had always been a writer, been a newspaper writer, but I tried my hand at writing some books. I didn't know if I could do it.

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I started with Flight 93, the September 11th flight that crashed pretty close to Pittsburgh where I live, and it's now led to four books.

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You kind of stumble into the topics, and this one in particular grabbed me because I'm a pretty good student of history,

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I think, and I realized when I started researching and thinking about the original Star -Spangled Banner and the

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Armistead family how little I knew. This was a research opportunity for myself.

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I learned as I researched and learned as I wrote, and that's why I thought I wasn't sure at the beginning if there was enough for a book.

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I realized there really is, and most people don't know this story. We have kind of the cliff notes. We know Key saw the flag.

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There was a battle in Baltimore. It became the anthem. That's about it. It's really quite a fascinating story of how that flag got to the

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Smithsonian and the family that saved it. Yeah, well, not only was there enough information to write a book, your book is well over 300 pages, so how did you go about this research that contains information that I'm assuming is not readily available in other books already in print?

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Right. There really hasn't been much written about this in detail. That really surprised me.

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I guess it's why I didn't know anything about it. I couldn't read about it anywhere. Clearly, the Smithsonian, their archives were extremely helpful.

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The flag that Key saw in 1814, we tend to sometimes forget that our anthem is about the

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American flag, but it's not a specific flag. It's the flag that Key saw at that battle in 1814, and it still exists.

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It's at the Smithsonian, the National Museum of American History. Part of the fascination of the story is how did it survive for 209 years?

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But they have about 100 years of records of how the flag got there, letters and upkeep of the flag.

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But beyond that, the flag was thought of and defended by the commander of Fort McHenry in 1814,

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George Armistead. So I had to research his family, and I was very fortunate enough, blessed to be able to track down two direct descendants who lived in Philadelphia, great -great -grandson and great -great -great -grandson.

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They had some information and were really helpful and encouraging, and actually through this have actually donated some of their historic documents to the

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Smithsonian. So you have the National Archives, there are certain books, and certainly the Smithsonian was unbelievable with their research, and some family descendants who had information and were, fortunately for me, very excited to talk about it.

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Now, going back to Betsy Ross, I don't know how much of what we have all heard as children growing up in school and on television programs, perhaps even movies,

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I don't know how much of the story of Betsy Ross and how she came up with the designs and so on is folklore, how much is true, but was the original design that she intended for the

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American flag, the famous rattlesnake on a yellow background that says underneath it, do not tread on me or don't tread on me?

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Not that I know of. One of the misconceptions that I had to clear up about this book, Chris, is this flag, the

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Star Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McKenry in 1814, was not made by Betsy Ross.

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Betsy Ross gets credit for lots of things she didn't do. This flag, I'll answer your question, we'll get around to it.

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The flag at Fort McKenry was made by a Baltimore seamstress and flag maker named Mary Pickerskill, whose name doesn't flow off the tongue as easily as Betsy Ross's, but she made the flag, we can get into a little story of how that happened,

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When you said she made it, did she design it as well? No, the flag was, back to the original

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Betsy Ross story, a lot of that seems to have come, that wasn't the deep part of the research of my book, but a lot of that seems to come from something her grandson said and wrote about, so she's gotten a lot of credit, she certainly was a flag maker.

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But the design went through several phases. By the time we get to 1813, when

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Mary made this flag, it was the format of the stripes and the stars that we know today.

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But back then, the flag at Fort McKenry, the flag on the cover of my book, and some people get startled by this, has 15 stars and 15 stripes.

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We were such a young country back then, that we thought we could add one star and one stripe for each new state.

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It wasn't until, imagine what our flag would look like today if that had continued. It wasn't until 1818 that Congress decided 13 stripes for the original colonies and one star for each new state.

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But this flag in 1814 had 15 stars and 15 stripes. When people look at it, it doesn't look traditional to us, but if you go through the oyster of the 1800s, as stars were added to the flag, it looked different each time.

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So by this point, we were well established that there were stars and stripes. That had been there for decades.

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There's debate as to who came up with this, but people ask me particularly about this flag, why does it look a little different?

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That's why. That was the policy at the time, one star and one stripe for each new state. Now, what specifically is the flag that Francis Scott Key wrote about when he said, as your title has borrowed from that poem, our flag was still there?

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Yeah, it's this flag that we're talking about, that Mary made. The one that's on the cover of the book? Yes, yes.

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And that was one of the covers of the first photo that was ever taken. That was in 1873, almost 60 years after the battle.

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This became historic as time went on. For a while, people didn't even know that it existed. But it came into existence in the first place because George Armistead, who was the commander of Fort McHenry, took over in 1813, a year before the battle.

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He was a career military man. He had this thing for big flags. He loved the symbolism of big flags.

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So when he took over Fort McHenry, the War of 1812 wasn't going well for the Americans. He wanted a flag so large the

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British couldn't help but see it from a distance. So this flag was 30 feet high by 42 feet wide, gigantic flag, larger than a garrison flag today.

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And it took Mary Pickerskill, her teenage daughter and three teenage nieces and a couple of other young ladies, they worked for six weeks, 10-, 12 -hour days on this thing.

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At one point, it got so big they had to drag it from her house to the floor of a local brewery so they could continue working on it.

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And she delivered it to Major Armistead in August of 1813. So this flag actually flew over the fort for about a year before the battle.

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It was well -known in Baltimore as the Fort McHenry flag. Now, what was the flag that our colonial troops were waving and carrying into battle during the

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Revolutionary War? You're speaking of the War of 1812. Yeah, if you look through American history, there were many different formats for the

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American flag. There's kind of a Washington flag, but troops, as militia troops, came together in the

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Revolutionary War. Again, this wasn't a deep part of my research because I went back to about 1813. But if you look through photos, the flag went through several, many iterations, and sometimes troops brought their own flags.

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But it started around the red and white stripes and the white stars on the blue shield.

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So it took a while for there to be a formal American flag.

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And then we had a flag code, and Flag Day exists, and June 14th still exists, when the country formalized a flag.

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But again, a lot of my research was on this particular flag and kind of explained to people why it looks a little different than the flag we have today.

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And the flag that we have seen in films and other places where the blue shield has a circle of stars, when did that come about?

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That was during the Revolutionary War period. That was one of the flags that they used. And that's the one that people talk about now as the

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Betsy Ross flag. So that's kind of true. But it wasn't formalized for a long time.

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So there were various flags that were used. At that time, the priority wasn't creating a flag for the country.

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The priority was creating a country. We weren't sure that was going to happen for a while. So I think in retrospect, then, some things happened, and people realized how important it was and how important these symbols were, which, again, why when

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George Armistead took over at Baltimore, he wanted that symbol. He wanted the British to see that. And it would symbolize kind of defiance but also confidence for the troops who were fighting there.

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Because, again, by that point, 1813, 1814, the War of 1812 wasn't going very well for the

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Americans. Well, we have a question already from Alex in Frederick, Maryland, who says,

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Before it, and obviously he's referring to the flag, before it made it to the

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Smithsonian, it sat in someone's house in Manhattan. And he has that as a question, actually.

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Was it folded up? It must have been huge. How big was it folded up, and how much did it weigh?

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My question will be lengthy, or my answer will be lengthy. I can address all those topics.

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I can address all those topics. Frederick, Maryland was Key's hometown.

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How did it get to the Smithsonian? It got there, and this really fascinated me, a part of this story. Sometime after the battle, obviously a big victory, a big moment in his life,

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George Armistead took that flag down from the flagpole and took it home. It was not given to him.

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He basically, it was against Army regulations. He basically stole government property. It exists today because it remained in the private possession of his family for 90 years until his grandson gave it to the

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Smithsonian in 1907. And what our questioner is referring to, that did happen.

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His grandson had it in New York, and actually it was locked away. He was tired of all the requests for the flag in the late 1800s.

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He locked it away in a vault for 27 years. No one outside the family saw it. It was only when he got tired of all the pressure of questions asking for the flag that he decided to donate it to this relatively new national museum called the

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Smithsonian. Regarding the size, the original size was gigantic, 30 feet high by 42 feet wide.

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I can expand this story a little bit because it's now 8 feet shorter than it used to be. And it's shorter than it used to be because in the 1800s, this would be considered sacrilegious to us now, but the

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Armistead ladies would cut off pieces of the flag and give them as souvenirs to battle veterans, local dignitaries.

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One of the curators at the Smithsonian said, we would be aghast at that today, but don't blame them. That's kind of what happened back then.

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That was pretty well commonplace. So over time, the Armistead ladies cut away 8 feet.

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So the flag that's now at the Smithsonian is 8 feet shorter. It's not 30 by 42. It's 30 by 34.

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And we don't know exactly how it was folded. No one has a picture of that.

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In many cases, we think it was just rolled up. And these folks, in the early years, and often things become, we realize they're historic as time moves on.

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I think early on, the Armisteads weren't viewing it as this great patriotic American piece.

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It was their family heirloom. It was their father's heirloom, and that's why they were keeping it. And remember, while it was a popular song from the beginning, the

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Star -Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1931. So during the 1800s, they weren't keeping the flag that the anthem was written on.

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It was their father's heirloom. Thankfully, they did that and it kept going. We tend to forget that about the anthem.

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I think Key would have been astonished if he knew that song became the national anthem. He was never trying to write an anthem.

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He was writing. We can get a little bit to why he was out in the water, but he was writing about his experiences during the battle.

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He wrote that song two days after the battle. He witnessed it from a ship near the British ships.

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So if you read the four verses of that song and you keep that in mind, you get the context of what he was doing.

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But he didn't sit down one day and say, I'm going to write a national anthem. This was written almost immediately after the battle, purely emotional, and it took 117 years after he wrote it for it to become the national anthem.

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That's why I think if you brought him back today, he would be astonished if you told him it was the national anthem. Now, how did that poem by Francis Scott Key become so renowned, or was it unknown until it was established as our anthem in the 20th century, and how did that happen?

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Very interesting story. One myth I try to correct in the book because I believe this too.

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We read it all our lives. We're taught it. Key did not write it as a poem. He wrote it as a song.

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I had to correct myself because we all were taught that. I still read it today. One of Key's friends wrote that, and everybody bought the story.

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But I did some pretty deep research. There's a chapter in the book that really goes on the development of the anthem.

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That song, the tune that we now know as the Star Spangled Banner, and I'm not musically inclined, but it was very well known to Francis Scott Key and many

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Americans in 1814. It had been written in the 1770s over in England for an upscale

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British gentleman's club. You also hear it was a British drinking song, like it was 100 bottles of beer on the wall. These guys were aristocrats.

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They got together for sumptuous dining and fine wine, and they wanted a song that challenged their vocal range.

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They thought they were great singers. So their club was named for the legendary ancient

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Greek poet Anachrion, and it was called the Anachrionic Society, and their song was To Anachrion in Heaven, and it's written to this tune.

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That society concept spread to the U .S. There were those societies in the U .S. The song was known.

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What would happen back then, rather than continually writing new music, they would just take popular songs and rewrite lyrics.

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Just like our song, My Country Tis of Thee. Exactly.

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Which is to the melody of God Save the Queen, correct? Yes, and this song was written for political.

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There was a song written for John Adams in the late 1700s, and the reason I know that Key wrote it as a song during my research,

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Key wrote lyrics to this tune in 1805. He was given an assignment to honor a

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U .S. sailor who had done some great things in a battle, and he wrote a song called When the Warrior Returns.

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It's exactly to this pace, and he even uses a phrase called the star -spangled flag of our nation.

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So he worked on some concepts. So he wrote it as a song. Two days after the battle, he took it to his brother -in -law, and they got it printed up and passed it around in Baltimore, and people were overwhelmed.

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It became a very patriotic song, but there were many patriotic songs back then.

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There were still some left from the Revolution that were very important to people. This is only 40 years after the

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Revolution. Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia, Columbia the Gem of the Ocean, during the

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Civil War, Battle Hymn of the Republic. So these were five or six really popular patriotic songs.

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The star -spangled banner did become the official anthem of the military around the turn of the century, late 1800s, but it wasn't until 1931.

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Again, this is after World War I. That's how long it was that some veteran and patriotic groups, the

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VFW, the American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, got behind a Maryland congressman from Baltimore, and they pushed a bill through Congress in 1931 to make the star -spangled banner the official national anthem.

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So it took a long time to reach that point. But the song itself, the song was very popular from the beginning.

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The flag, other than the Armistead family's people in Baltimore, for decades, no one outside of Baltimore knew the flag existed.

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By the way, Alex in Frederick, Maryland, you have won a free copy of Our Flag Was Still There, compliments of our friends at Post Hill Press, and if you please would email me your full mailing address in Frederick, Maryland, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship it out to you at no charge to you or to us.

21:27

And also, if you are a first -time questioner, and I think that you may be, let me know because all of our first -time questioners also always receive a free

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New American Standard Bible as well. So thank you very much for the excellent question.

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We are going to our first commercial break, folks, so please be patient with us. If you have a question you'd like to ask as well, submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And I'd like to remind my guest, Tom, to mute yourself during the station break.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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Tom McMillan, author of Our Flag Was Still There, The Star -Spangled Banner That Survived the

32:40

British in 200 Years, and The Armistead Family Who Saved It. We have a question from Christopher in western

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Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Christopher asks, when did the

32:58

American flag become something that is treated as if it is a very sacred religious object?

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The reverence with which the American flag is treated is very, very special and meticulous, and there are clear do's and don'ts when it comes to how you hang a flag and how you handle it physically and whether it touches the ground and how we should be waving it at certain times and different circumstances in our nation's history.

33:38

Has this always been the case with the severe reverence that the flag is being treated with, or is this a more modern development, and do other nations, to your knowledge, treat their flags with such meticulous reverence as if it is a sacred object?

33:59

There are a lot of questions in that question, so you may have to remind me, Chris, as we go through this. I think anybody who's under a flag or fights for a flag, it's important to them.

34:09

But for this flag in particular, I think it was Key's song that made it special and sacred and reverential to Americans because the song was about the flag.

34:21

People tend to forget that. He made it more than just an object. He made it something that we focus on.

34:29

So I think from this point on, certainly it was big in the Revolution, but we weren't even really a country yet.

34:36

We were still forming. The Constitution hadn't been created until 1787. It takes a while. Everything didn't happen

34:42

July 4, 1776. So now, War of 1812 starts 36 years after the

34:48

Declaration of Independence. We're a country, but I think this song, the focus on the flag and that particular flag, changed the way a lot of people looked at things.

34:56

But were there rules? No. We talked about the Armistead ladies cutting off pieces and giving them as souvenirs, which was very commonplace back then.

35:05

Today, you can be ridiculed and criticized for doing that. The curators at the

35:11

Smithsonian said that is what happened. They wrote on it. Armistead apparently signed the flag himself.

35:18

As time went on, you look at these things, and the flag code really came into effect in the early 1900s, and that's when the rules were established.

35:30

In a way, the way this flag had to be displayed, when it was first displayed in the

35:35

Smithsonian, people complained that it violated the flag code because, as we mentioned, the flag was 30 feet high.

35:42

Now it's fully displayed with their new display at the Smithsonian that they just did about 15 years ago.

35:48

When it first went there in the early 1900s, it was in a case.

35:53

The case was 16 feet high, which is a huge case, but the flag is 30 feet high.

35:59

It was actually folded over. For about 40 years, when people went and visited, it was folded over. You only saw eight of the stripes, and people would write that it violated the flag code.

36:08

It seemed backwards. So the flag code came into effect, and now it's followed here, but there are just some situations that you can't avoid.

36:17

So I think as time has gone on, it's become more special, and especially with the

36:22

American century, the 20th century, World War II, and I think a lot of the rallying around the flag has become so important.

36:31

I think a lot of that can be traced to Key Song in 1814, and certainly other countries, those citizens respect those flags.

36:40

I don't know if any group has a relationship with their flag that the Americans do. I think you can't quantify that.

36:47

And if you look at international sporting events, everybody waves their flags, and political events they do, but it's hard to imagine that there's more of an affection or a connection to the flag than we have here.

37:00

I hope that answered all the parameters of his question. I believe you did. Thank you,

37:05

Christopher, and you have also won a free copy of Our Flag Was Still There, compliments of our friends at Post Hill Press.

37:12

And please make sure we have your full mailing address in western Suffolk County, so that CVBBS .com,

37:20

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship it out to you at no cost to you or to us.

37:26

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, asks a similar question, not quite the same.

37:32

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, he asks, Are there any laws on the books, whether state laws or federal laws, that can make the mishandling of the

37:45

American flag criminal? For instance, is it legal to burn a flag, or is that something that goes state by state?

37:55

I'll be honest, sometimes you have to say, I don't know, I don't know that. Again, the research for this book was on this particular flag and the journey from 1813, 1814 to the

38:06

Smithsonian today and all that was encompassed. I concur a lot of flag things, but I don't know that,

38:12

I would be guessing. So I don't want to guess for your audience. It's just that's beyond the parameters of my research.

38:19

So I'll try to stay, the research is pretty wide, but it didn't deal with that. So I'm sorry I can't answer that.

38:25

But I'd rather tell you the truth than make something out of it that would mislead you. Definitely.

38:31

Well, Bobby, thanks for the question. And I hope that you weren't intending to burn the flag. I don't know if that's what you were asking it.

38:38

I doubt that that's true, though. But you've won a copy of the book as well. Our flag was still there.

38:44

Make sure we have your full mailing address in Hartsdale, New York, so CVBBS .com can ship it out to you.

38:50

Well, before I go to any more listener questions, I just would like you to continue with the story of the preservation of this flag, this specific flag of which

39:04

Francis Scott Key wrote the song, how it went from being waved in battle to something that we still have in preservation at the

39:16

Smithsonian. Yeah, it really was kind of miraculous.

39:22

I shake my head that it still survived after all those years. And the Armistead ladies did their best to protect it, but they didn't have any knowledge, any scientific knowledge of what to do with the flag.

39:33

Often it was just stuffed in a bag in their house. It was kept that way. They couldn't display it. It was too big.

39:38

The one thing that struck me was that in the first 40 or so years after the battle, it only came out in public three or four times.

39:48

The Armistead ladies really protected that, again, as their family, as their father and grandfather's heirloom.

39:55

There was a battle anniversary in Baltimore every year it was out. Once one of the Armistead relatives was running for office.

40:01

But that's about it. It really wasn't well known outside of Baltimore, which, again, in retrospect, probably helped to preserve it.

40:09

It wasn't being dragged around everywhere. It wasn't always out in public. But going back to the point, if George Armistead hadn't brought it home, it would have continued flying at Fort McHenry until it weathered out, and we wouldn't have it today.

40:21

So that little indiscretion that he created kept it going. The ladies, his wife and daughter didn't really know what they were doing.

40:29

They were just keeping it as best as they could, as best they could. It was not even photographed for the first time until 1873.

40:38

That's 59 years after the battle. That's the photo that's on the cover of the book. And if people look at that, and I've had lots of questions about this when

40:45

I do talks and even on social media, because if you look at that photo, the flag appears to be backwards.

40:52

It's because it is backwards, but it's not that I was being disrespectful or they were being disrespectful. Here's the story.

41:02

When Armistead's daughter was contacted by a Navy commodore at the Boston Naval Yard named

41:07

George Preble, who had written a book on the U .S. flag, was very interested in this, couldn't figure out what happened to the flag at Fort McHenry, finds out that the

41:15

Armisteads have it. He says, if you send it to me here in Boston, I'll hang it up and take a photo of it and send it to you.

41:21

It had never been photographed. So they did. They put it in a crate, put it on a train, sent it to him in Boston in 1873.

41:27

He takes it out. He's all excited. He's going to fly up a flagpole, and he looks at it, and he says, whoa. It's 60 years old.

41:33

It was really weak. He didn't think he could stand flying up a flagpole. It needed a backing. Well, he's in a

41:40

Naval Yard. It's the Boston Naval Yard, so they have lots of old ship sails. So he gets some of his sailors to sew a ship sail to the flag to give it strength, and they hung it from a building, and that's the photo you see on the cover of the book.

41:53

You see it's damaged already. Some of it's been cut off. A star is missing. He has a soldier standing there, so you see how massive the flag is.

42:01

But it's backwards because for reasons, Chris, that we can never explain, never written down, those sailors inadvertently sewed the sail to the front of the flag.

42:10

It's the part that we would consider was the blue shield in the upper left -hand corner. So this particular flag was displayed backwards for more than 100 years.

42:19

The unintended benefit, there is an unintended benefit of this, is that when the backings were finally taken off about 15 years ago, people go there today, and they see 209 -year -old flags.

42:33

It's really bright. It looks so bright. Well, that's why it's so bright. The front of it was covered for more than 100 years, inadvertently, just by a mistake.

42:42

So we benefit from it today, but when you see photos of that flag, when you see the photo on the cover of that book, it looks backwards.

42:49

That's why. It's just an inadvertent mistake, but another kind of amazing story on the success and preservation and survival of this particular flag.

42:59

You know, it's something that you say it's backwards, and it is backwards from what we normally think.

43:05

But it's interesting that on many military uniforms, the patch of the American flag is facing that direction.

43:13

Because the way they want to direct the stripes, yes, you'll see that. But in this case,

43:18

I've had people ask me, why is it backwards? And I've often seen, because what you do with Photoshop today,

43:24

Chris, you'll sometimes see this photo, it'll be flipped, because people see it and think the negative is backwards.

43:31

They flip it. But this is the way that it was. This is the way it was displayed for more than 100 years.

43:37

It is striking, for those of you who've seen it or if you Google it or if you have the book, how small that soldier looks compared to the flag.

43:45

Yeah, that's right. It was a brilliant idea by Commodore Preble to give everybody a sense of context of how big this flag was.

43:56

And, you know, you can see some of the pieces have been cut off by the Armistead ladies, and one of the stars is missing.

44:03

It's one of the enduring mysteries that still exists of this flag. What happened to that star?

44:08

No one knows. I have a theory. I write about it in one of the appendixes to my book, but it's just a theory. I don't have any hard evidence.

44:15

All we have is that Armistead's daughter said that her mother said it was given to, quote, some important person.

44:23

That's all we know. Now, we've been hearing a lot in the news for quite a number of months about the alleged improper and illegal confiscating, or some might put it to the extreme description of stealing,

44:46

White House documents and artifacts by former

44:51

President Donald Trump. And then, as it turns out, as more investigation goes on, nearly every single president has done the same kind of thing.

45:00

But was George Armistead considered a thief for taking this flag? Or how did he get a pass on that?

45:10

Nobody knew it happened. Nobody knew it happened. And it was only doing some of this research, and the folks at the

45:18

Smithsonian, the Armistead family, as the story was passed through the family, they said it was presented to him.

45:25

And I think they assumed that was the case. He'd won a big battle. He was a military hero. He, by the way, died four years after the battle.

45:33

It's why we have a heart attack that probably came on during this battle, or the distress.

45:38

So it's why we don't know much about him. But his family, obviously, very proud of him, and they started to tell the story that it was presented to him.

45:45

But I don't think they were purposely trying to lie. I think they just assumed that that happened, that it would be presented.

45:51

But there is no record that that happened at all. And he basically wanted it as a souvenir and took it home.

45:59

And because it remained in the private possession of his family, again, most people, this flag really wasn't well known until his grandson got it at the

46:08

Smithsonian in 1907. For almost 100 years, outside the city of Baltimore, very few people knew it existed.

46:14

So it didn't have that kind of context because people didn't know about it.

46:19

It was only when it was presented there, and they were just so happy to have it, it was only researched later.

46:25

How did he get it? Well, there's no record that it was given to him. He must have just taken it home.

46:31

He was very proud of that flag. And his wife and daughter and grandson were so proud of that flag, they continued to protect it.

46:38

But they always believed that it was given to them. In fact, when it first may have come to light, on the 75th anniversary of the battle in 1889, this is when, at a time when his grandson had it locked away in that vault in New York and no one had seen it for 27 years, the

46:57

Baltimore city fathers wanted the flag back at Fort McHenry for that ceremony. And the grandson was quite cantankerous.

47:03

He was a stockbroker from New York. He said, I'm not going to give it to you. They actually wrote a letter to the

47:08

Secretary of War in Washington, D .C. They said, you know, there's no record that George Armistead was ever given this flag.

47:16

He took it. It's government property. You could get it back. And the

47:21

Secretary said, I agree with you, but possession is nine -tenths of the law. So it wasn't that important.

47:27

But Fort McHenry, people have always wanted it. But at that point, it had become so weak, it couldn't have flown from the flagpole anyway.

47:34

And I do go through, there are several iterations of how good patriotic folks over the years have done things to preserve this flag.

47:43

The most recent massive work done was an eight -year project that was completed, that was started about 15 years ago, which is why the new display at the

47:52

Smithsonian is so dramatic. And they did the work, which I get into in the book, and we can talk about it a little bit if you want to.

47:59

They wanted to make sure that it was preserved for generations upon generations and it would always be there.

48:04

It's now in a virtually airtight case. It's at a 10 -degree angle.

48:10

The light is very low. You can't take photos in there. No one touches it. It's protected by glass.

48:16

So they've really done a lot of work to preserve it. Thankfully, they have. And every time I stand, I obviously went down there a few times during this research to see it, and sometimes it would just be for inspiration to stand there and look at it.

48:27

It's just amazing. This is the flag that flew in 1814, and we still have it today. What a gift to American history, to modern

48:35

Americans to be able to see that and appreciate to tell the story. But I still think when a lot of people, even when they go through that, the story is so complex,

48:46

I don't think they quite grasp it. So hopefully this book will help people understand how amazing it is, how amazing the journey was, and how remarkable it is that that flag that's so important to our history and our national anthem still exists.

49:00

Thomas in West Islet, New York, has a comment and a question, and he says to further add to Chris Arnzen's question about why the

49:14

American flag is backwards on some military uniforms, that is to make it appear as if it is flying in battle.

49:21

Well, that makes sense. It would be reverse if you were marching forward and it was flying. And his question is, are there other

49:33

American flags that have specific historic significance that miraculously survived certain battles and things of that nature that are available in museums?

49:49

Yes, there are. The flag that is nicknamed Old Glory from Tennessee in the

49:54

Civil War still exists. There are some flags from the

50:00

War of 1812. There are a lot of fragments of flags that exist. Fort Niagara, War of 1812, there's a flag there.

50:09

I believe the Iwo Jima flag still exists. Certainly that's very iconic.

50:16

And a flag we all remember, those of a certain age, the flag that the firemen put up on 9 -11 at Ground Zero.

50:26

So there are a number of specific flags. It's just the thing about this one that separates it, and I'm also in awe of the

50:32

Iwo Jima flag as well, one of the great photos and great images of all time when you see that. But because this particular one is the flag that the national anthem is based on,

50:44

I think that puts this in a slightly – they're all great, but this puts them in a slightly different category because in a way it's still a living item because as long as the anthem is sung, it will be a living item.

50:56

And it's there that amazingly, in addition to that, it's amazing we can go see it. And I think – I was just trying to underscore that.

51:03

Again, as I mentioned, Tristan, in the very beginning, I consider myself a pretty good student of history. Most of this stuff

51:09

I've been talking to you about, I didn't know most of this when I started this research. I was astounded how much

51:14

I didn't know and kind of embarrassed because this is the kind of stuff that isn't taught. We rarely study the

51:21

War of 1812. We know Andrew Jackson in New Orleans and the Star -Spangled

51:26

Banner and that's it, but the Star -Spangled Banner story is kind of three paragraphs in a history book, and that's all you get.

51:33

It's just so remarkable how it got here. And I would think – when I talked about going down to Smithsonian, looking at that flag,

51:40

I would look at it and think all the things that it went through and all the people that had to be a part of it to get it there, working over the centuries, couldn't have known each other, obviously, and yet they all worked together.

51:51

It's why that flag is still there today. And you walk in there, and there are a lot of school groups that go in there, and they're loud and on the lobby.

51:58

They go in there, you see that flag, there's silence. You see military veterans dabbing in tears.

52:03

It's like it's on an altar. It's quite a dramatic scene to see.

52:09

If people haven't been there, I urge them to go there. You can see the flag, you know, 200 years old that our anthem was inspired by.

52:18

So we can – you know, for the title, it's still there. By the way, Thomas in West Islip, you've won

52:24

Our Flag Was Still There, the book by Tom McMillan that we're discussing. Make sure we have your full mailing address in West Islip, New York, so CBBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CBBBS .com

52:36

can ship that out to you. We're going to our midway break, folks. Please be patient with us because the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

52:46

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida, and they do so with their own public service announcements and other things.

53:00

While we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials, use this time wisely, folks.

53:06

Please write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

53:16

Always remember we need our advertisers to exist. The funding that our advertisers provide is absolutely essential to Iron Trump and Zion Radio being on the air.

53:27

And also use this time to send in your questions to Tom McMillan, to Chris Arnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

53:34

We'll be right back after these messages, so please do not go away. Back together again, yeah.

53:44

Back together again, yeah. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

53:53

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at IronSharpensIronRadio .com,

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01:05:42

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:05:53

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:06:00

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

01:06:17

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

01:06:33

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformli .net.

01:06:40

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:06:49

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:07:12

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

01:07:20

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01:07:28

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01:07:35

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frequently, and purchase generously, always mentioning that you heard about them from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:08:52

Before I return to my guest, Tom McMillan, and our discussion of his book, Our Flag Was Still There, I have a few important announcements to make.

01:09:00

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01:09:10

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01:09:32

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01:09:52

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01:10:02

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01:10:08

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01:10:21

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01:10:32

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01:10:53

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01:11:18

Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. Also, folks, do not forget about the three -day event here in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to be more specific, featuring my longtime dear friend,

01:11:33

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. He is speaking at a three -day conference, the

01:11:39

Future of Christendom Conference, sponsored by Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society.

01:11:46

There's also a very likely possibility that there will be a debate involved in this three -day conference, so keep revisiting the futureofchristendom .org

01:11:59

website for updates, and also midatlanticreformation .org for more updates, and also ironsharpensironradio .com

01:12:07

for more updates on this three -day event, September 15th, 16th, and 17th.

01:12:13

That's a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And it's going to be held at the Spooky Nook Sports and Events.

01:12:21

From what I hear, I've never been there. I've heard it's here. It's an absolutely fabulous, magnificent facility, and was even used by the gubernatorial candidate for the

01:12:31

Republican Party, Doug Mastriano, for a special fundraising event that he had in Pennsylvania.

01:12:38

So I look forward to seeing you there, September 15th, 16th, and 17th, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Also, if you are not a member of a biblically sound, theologically faithful, doctrinally solid church, no matter where you live on the planet

01:12:56

Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience find churches, no matter where they live in the world, sometimes even within a few minutes from where they live.

01:13:10

So if you are in that position, that you do not have a Christ -honoring church home, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:13:18

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Tom McMillan on his book,

01:13:25

Our Flag Was Still There, The Star -Spangled Banner That Survived the British in 200 Years and the

01:13:31

Armistead Family Who Saved It. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least.

01:13:37

City and state and country of residence. We have Cindy in Findlay, Ohio. Cindy says,

01:13:44

I heard your guest Tom earlier say that not much has been written or said about the

01:13:52

War of 1812. Why don't you tell Tom about your favorite biography,

01:13:59

The Pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cone, because I remember you saying on this program that Spencer Cone was a war hero in the

01:14:09

War of 1812. Yeah, that's a great comment, Cindy. I will. In fact, if Tom, after the program is over, gives me his mailing address,

01:14:19

I'll mail him a copy of that book because this book, Tom, that our guest, or should

01:14:24

I say our listener is referring to, is so fascinating about this pastor's experiences as a war hero in the

01:14:32

War of 1812 that I really believe it should become a movie. It's absolutely astonishing the things that this man went through.

01:14:40

But thanks for your recommendation, Cindy. And by the way, you've also won Our Flag Was Still There by Tom McMillan.

01:14:47

Make sure we have your full mailing address there in Findlay, Ohio. We have, let's see,

01:14:57

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania. He said, Earlier in the program, you were talking about how

01:15:04

Betsy Ross was not the designer of the star -spangled banner that we know full well and love, known as the

01:15:15

American flag. But I can't remember what you said on whether or not she designed the

01:15:21

Don't Tread on Me flag, which is also called the Gadsden flag, and why is it called the

01:15:30

Gadsden flag also? Again, Chris, we're getting into some stuff on the flag.

01:15:38

My focus was on this flag. Okay. This battle 200 years ago, the iterations of the flags in the 1700s, know a little bit of it, but that wasn't any part of my book.

01:15:49

The book is about this flag, the star -spangled banner, and its 200 -year journey.

01:15:55

So I don't want to mislead someone by guessing. Sure, I understand. But we will nonetheless give you a free copy of the book that you just won.

01:16:02

Our flag was still there by Tom McMillan. So make sure we have your full mailing address. Let's see.

01:16:08

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and he says or asks,

01:16:16

To your knowledge, during the Civil War, did the Confederacy totally get rid of the

01:16:24

American flag as we know it? Because there must have been many Confederates who were patriots, especially in regard to the fact that they fought in the

01:16:33

War of 1812 on the same side as the North. So it would be shocking to me that they would want to totally obliterate the existence of the stars and stripes, even during the

01:16:46

Civil War. I don't know anything about that. Do you? Well, yes. I write about that in the book.

01:16:52

It's during the period where the flag had to survive. There's a lot going on with this in the

01:16:58

Civil War, and rewriting the song as well. There certainly was some belief on the part of the

01:17:05

Confederates that the flag belonged to them and the song belonged to them as well, and they tried to say that.

01:17:10

But the reality was in battle, the purpose of a flag in battle is you follow your commander, you follow your troops.

01:17:17

They didn't have sophisticated communication information. You followed the flag.

01:17:23

So the Union troops had the American flag. And so the Confederates went through, again, talk about different versions of the flag.

01:17:31

There are multiple versions of the Confederate flag that happened. In fact, the early versions of it were so close to our flag, the

01:17:41

American flag, that it was confusing to the soldiers. So I write about this, and I write about in particular the song and how we talk about rewriting the song, how people took this tune.

01:17:53

Again, it's not the national anthem yet. This tune that we know as the Star -Spangled Banner, and both North and South rewrote lyrics to it during the

01:18:01

Civil War numerous times. And I have a couple of examples of those in the books that continue.

01:18:06

The lyrics have continued to be fascinating to read, and they take both sides of the war.

01:18:12

So there's a whole history of the flag and the song through that entire 200 -year history, including during the

01:18:18

Civil War. And we're in the Armistead family, as I write about as well. They were located in Baltimore in Maryland, which was a northern state, a

01:18:29

Union state, but it's also a border state, slave state. Maryland sent troops to both the Union and the Confederacy.

01:18:35

So we have a situation where the Armistead family, many of the descendants, including

01:18:42

George's daughter, were Confederate sympathizers. So they did protect this flag.

01:18:47

It was more out of family belief in their father's heirloom than it was for patriotism, but they still were able to do it.

01:18:54

In fact, the Lincoln administration was trying to do everything they could to keep Maryland in the

01:19:00

Union. This is part of the story of the 1860s. One, it would have tipped the balance of power if Maryland had gone to the

01:19:06

Confederacy, but it also would have physically cut off Washington, D .C. from the rest of the North. They had to protect the capital.

01:19:12

They took some extreme measures. The Lincoln administration suspended habeas corpus. You could arrest anyone you wanted for as long as you wanted and hold them.

01:19:21

And they arrested pro -Southern legislators, pro -Southern city officials, pro -Southern newspaper writers, and they even tried to prevent young men from leaving

01:19:32

Baltimore to join the Confederate Army. At one point they got a tip that a bunch of men were going to get on a boat and go to Richmond.

01:19:38

They arrested them, ran their names in the paper the next day. One of the names was George Armistead Appleton, the grandson of the hero

01:19:46

Fort McHenry, and he was going to be taken to a big Union prison. That first night he was taken to Fort McHenry.

01:19:54

Armistead's grandson was held prisoner there. And a week later, one of the most strident pro -Southern newspaper writers, a guy named

01:20:01

Frank Key Howard, that's Frank Key Howard, Francis Scott Key's grandson, and he also was arrested and taken to Fort McHenry as a prisoner and wrote angrily about that because he was held prisoner at the place at the fort where his grandfather saw the flag.

01:20:16

So American history is complicated. It's complex. It's messy. And a lot of that I thought was really a fascinating part of the story of this flag and this song through the mid -1800s.

01:20:27

We have another question from a listener. Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, one of our most loyal listeners and most generous listeners who supports

01:20:37

Iron Shark and Zion Radio monthly. Grady says, Greetings, brothers.

01:20:42

I know the subject is the flag from Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, but I was wondering if you know how many different flags we've had in the history of our country.

01:20:56

I don't know that you could count them. I don't know the answer to that question, but think, every time a new state came in, a star was added to the flag.

01:21:03

So the flag, if you look at the flag at the time of the Civil War, I think it had 34 stars.

01:21:10

And not until Hawaii and Alaska come in in the 1950s or 1960s, it had 50 stars.

01:21:16

So every time a new state was added, a star was added, the configuration of that blue field on the flag changed.

01:21:25

So we've had multiple flags. But the design has remained the same, the concept, since 1818.

01:21:33

As I mentioned, this flag in 1814 was 15 stars and 15 stripes. We're such a young country, we thought we had a star and a stripe for each new state.

01:21:42

1818, Congress decides we can't keep doing this, 13 stripes for the original colonies, one new star for each flag.

01:21:50

So from that point on, that was the concept. There was no more circle of stars. The stars were arranged in the same way.

01:21:58

But since 1818, every time we've added a state, there's a slightly new version of our flag.

01:22:05

Grady, guess what? You've also won a free copy of Our Flag Was Still There by Tom McMillan. Make sure we have your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina, so cvbbs .com.

01:22:15

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that out to you. Before I go to any more listener questions,

01:22:21

I want to really make sure that you address all the highlights of your book that you want to make sure were included in this interview, because if I keep taking listener questions,

01:22:33

I don't want to run out of time before you have a chance to mention those things. Well, I love the listener questions, but I appreciate that.

01:22:44

One thing we haven't talked about, Chris, is once the grandson, Ebenezer Appleton, donates the flag to the

01:22:50

Smithsonian, what happens? What's the story there? Again, it's 1907. He's in his 60s.

01:22:56

He'd been in a vault in New York City for 27 years. The public had not seen it since 1880.

01:23:02

But he's tired of the pressure of people asking for the flag, so he decides he's going to loan the flag. You can do that. You can loan it.

01:23:08

You still retain possession. But it gets to Washington in the summer of 1907, and the first thing they do is they take it out and they hang it from the side of the original

01:23:17

Smithsonian building. That building still exists today. It's called the Castle. If you go there, it's a visitor's center. And they took a photo, and that photo was published in papers across the country.

01:23:27

And that in 1907, almost 100 years after the battle, is the first time that most Americans realize that this flag exists, the

01:23:35

Fort McHenry flag that the anthem was written about, or the song was written about, exists. It touches off a wave of patriotism and visitation.

01:23:44

And Ebenezer Appleton is so excited that five years later in 1912, he makes that gift permanent with one stipulation.

01:23:52

It will never leave the Smithsonian. Because he knew people were going to be asking to take it here, take it there. He never wanted it to leave.

01:23:59

So the Smithsonian agreed. And that was only violated once. It was during World War II. In 1942, we were worried that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

01:24:08

We were worried about our most iconic items. So they took items from Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln and the

01:24:14

Star -Spangled Banner to a warehouse in rural Virginia. And they all remained off campus for about two years.

01:24:20

In 1944, we decided everything was safe, brought them back to the Smithsonian. And that flag has been on display in some way, shape, or form every day since then for the

01:24:32

American public. There's one story I did want to get to about the preservation. So I'll take that opportunity now because I think your listeners will enjoy it.

01:24:42

When they were working on the flag, this most recent rehab project 15 years ago, they wanted people to still be able to see it, so they did all the work in front of the public.

01:24:53

So if you went to the Smithsonian, you could still see a part of the flag. It was important to them. And one of the things they had to do was if there had been the sale was replaced by a large piece of linen, but it had been attached with 1 .7

01:25:07

million stitches. And one of the curators said, I can't believe they put 1 .7 million stitches in the flag, but that was the methodology of the time in the early 1900s.

01:25:17

So they had to have workers remove that backing stitch by stitch.

01:25:22

It took them 10 months. They were suspended over the flag as ladies mostly cut these stitches without damaging the flag.

01:25:30

And the chief conservator, a lady named Suzanne Thomason Krauss, they knew the public was watching them.

01:25:36

She said she looked up one day and she saw a family with about multiple generations, where the older gentleman seemed to be of the

01:25:43

World War II era. She went back to her work, looked up about 20 seconds later, and he's standing there at attention saluting.

01:25:50

And she stopped and paused and said, you know, when you've been doing this for five or six hours and your back's aching, your shoulder's aching, your knees are aching, that's why you do it.

01:25:58

You do it for the American public. So that had a profound effect on her, and that's how people react to the flag.

01:26:04

That's what this gentleman did. He was saluting them as they were removing those stitches. And the flag is now cared for very well with modern techniques.

01:26:13

Very cool. We have another listener question.

01:26:20

And the listener is Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

01:26:30

And Susan Margaret says, is there any protocols that differ between the military and the average civilian citizen on how the

01:26:45

American flag must be handled, must be stored, and must be waived publicly?

01:26:53

Again, folks, I appreciate these questions, but I didn't – my book wasn't about the totality of the

01:26:58

American flag. That wasn't my level of research. This was history of one flag. There certainly are strict and well -defined military rules that are different from those of the public, and they handle the flag.

01:27:11

Anytime you see one of those ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and the way the

01:27:18

Marines and Navy fold that flag so briskly, so they have – yes, they handle it. They have their own rules.

01:27:26

And it's always been – the Star -Spangled Banner, the song, long before it became the national anthem of the country, was the national anthem of the military.

01:27:36

So this whole story is tied into military service. But I didn't get into those things.

01:27:41

Again, this was about one flag, the astonishing story of this one flag surviving over 209 years.

01:27:48

So I'm sorry I can't answer some of those questions, but my research was kind of focused – it was a lot of research, a lot of years, but just on this one story, this 200 -year story of this flag.

01:27:58

Now is there any possibility, because I'm not sure what this flag is made out of, but is there any realistic possibility of it eventually disintegrating?

01:28:12

What is it made out of and how durable is it? Well, it was mostly of wool bunting, which ironically back in the 1800s

01:28:19

Mary Pickerskill purchased from England for fighting England in the war. It's English bunting.

01:28:25

So it is – so, yes, it's a textile. I mean, eventually all these things eventually erode, but they have – that's why they did such a massive rehab, such massive rehab work on it in the early 2000s, about 15 years ago.

01:28:42

There have been three major rehab projects on the flag over time, and obviously what they did in 1914 was through the methodology of that time.

01:28:52

And so that preserved it for about 100 years. But it was – they were looking at it.

01:28:59

The folks at the Smithsonian were looking at it. It was displayed in the new National Museum of American History for about 30 years between 1960 and 1990.

01:29:09

It was hung vertically, and it was a dramatic scene. They would hold presidential inaugural balls.

01:29:14

There's one from Nixon's inauguration that's there. It was pretty well protected, but they would look at it and say, you know, there's dust and dirt and threads from people's blue jeans.

01:29:22

So they decided late 1990s that they needed a major modern rehab project, and it took them eight years, millions of dollars, and lots of work from the public to preserve it.

01:29:36

And they're convinced that what they've done will preserve it for hundreds of years, but can it preserve forever?

01:29:41

No, but I think they've done the best they can to this point. I think that's the last major rehab project they'll have to do for a while.

01:29:47

And down the road, I'm sure they will have more techniques. When you and I are gone, Crystal, I have more techniques to do these things.

01:29:54

A textile will always wear out, but they're very confident with this recent work that we're talking a long time that this thing will be on display.

01:30:03

And, again, that's why it's in virtually an airtight chamber right now. It's only at a 10 -degree angle to make it no stress on the flag.

01:30:11

There's not much light in there. People can't take photos. So they do everything they can to preserve it for the very long term.

01:30:17

That was the purpose. B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania wants to know, forgive me if you've already said this, but did

01:30:27

Francis Scott Key live long enough to hear the Star Spangled Banner sung as a national anthem?

01:30:36

No, he didn't. The song was written in 1814.

01:30:42

Key lived until the middle part of that century. It does not become the anthem until 1931.

01:30:49

117 years after he wrote it. That's why I did mention earlier, and I know we get listeners coming on and off, that I do think that Key would be astonished to find out that his song was a national anthem because, again, he did not, and people don't really understand this, he did not set out to write a national anthem.

01:31:07

He was writing about his experience of witnessing a battle. He was on a ship out behind the

01:31:13

British. He'd been sent out there. The British had captured an elderly doctor from Maryland, and the family was terrified of what would happen to this elderly doctor, and they hired

01:31:25

Key to go out and try to negotiate his release. And Key was out there. He and another man found the

01:31:30

British fleet, and they did successfully negotiate the release, but it was several days before the attack on Baltimore.

01:31:38

The British knew they were going to attack. They weren't going to send Key back into the city with details of the attack, so he wasn't really a prisoner.

01:31:45

You hear that? He's detained on his own ship, under guard, probably tethered to the Admiral's ship, and they were going to keep him.

01:31:51

The British were overly confident they would win this battle. As soon as we win the battle, we'll let you go, Key. So that's why he was out there.

01:31:59

He was right among the British ships, right behind the bomb ships. So the attack on Fort McHenry from those

01:32:05

British naval ships was 25 hours. They did 1 ,500 bombs and 700 rockets.

01:32:11

You hear the rockets red glare for 25 hours. So Key was a close witness to all that, and the next morning the whole story of the song is it's misty, and they're not sure which flag's going to be flying over the fort, and they see an

01:32:23

American flag. So Key is released two days later. The battle ends on September 14, 1814.

01:32:30

He's released on September 16. He had taken some notes. That night, September 16, two days after the battle, he takes a room in a hotel in Baltimore, and he writes the four verses of his song.

01:32:42

So he was writing about the context of a battle he had just witnessed. Imagine if any of us were virtually in the midst of a battle.

01:32:50

If you read his four verses and you understand it, that's what he's writing about. In fact, there's a question mark.

01:32:57

A lot of people, when they see, we sing the first verse of the anthem. We don't sing all four. We just sing the first.

01:33:03

And when they put them on scoreboards at stadiums, the song ends with a question. The first verse ends with a question, and people are sometimes upset.

01:33:11

What are you saying? Well, Key was writing sequentially. He wasn't sure whose flag he was going to see.

01:33:18

It purposely ends with a question. He actually doesn't declare victory until the second verse, which nobody ever sings.

01:33:24

So if you go back and you read those four verses, you'll see what he's doing, but we have to keep that in mind. It was never an attempt to write a national anthem.

01:33:32

It was a very patriotic song. Key was proud of it. But there were many patriotic songs during that era, some left over from the

01:33:40

Revolution, Battle Hymn of the Republic during the Civil War, not until 1931 that it becomes a national anthem, long after Key is gone.

01:33:48

And, again, I started this by saying, I think he'd be astonished to find out that it became the national anthem. Did he live long enough to recognize any national renowned status for the song at all or the popularity?

01:34:03

It was a very popular song. It was a popular patriotic song.

01:34:09

As soon as that battle was over, it spread up in papers up and down the East Coast, printed it, and it kind of became – there were a couple of songs left over from the

01:34:21

Revolution, including Yankee Doodle. It kind of became the unofficial official anthem of the

01:34:27

Union Army during the Civil War. They would play it as they marched into Confederate cities to liberate them.

01:34:32

But it didn't have that special status over other songs. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was also very powerful during the

01:34:38

Civil War. We just didn't think back then. People didn't think we needed a national anthem.

01:34:44

And a couple of folks – I read about this. A couple of folks in New York thought we needed one, and they tried to have a contest.

01:34:52

Submit your proposals for a national anthem. And there weren't any that were any good.

01:34:57

And so we never had an official anthem, even during World War I.

01:35:02

I think it was coming off World War I. The VFW and the American Legion were thinking we needed something, and they got together with the

01:35:10

Daughters of the American Revolution, the Daughters of 1812. It was a massive effort over years to try to get this.

01:35:17

And a Maryland congressman finally got the bill pushed through Congress, the House and the Senate, in 1931 when it officially became our national anthem.

01:35:26

There's quite an interesting story of the anthem, which, again, I think most Americans don't know, and I certainly didn't know.

01:35:33

It was one of the many things I learned, how long it took and all the challenge that it took for that song to become the national anthem.

01:35:40

But Keith's song certainly was hailed. He was known as the – wrote the lyrics to that song.

01:35:46

So he had some fame, but not like he would have had today because it wasn't yet the anthem.

01:35:53

And beyond a love for history, beyond curiosity and fascination for things like this, do you have a driving force behind the writing of this book?

01:36:10

Why do you believe knowledge of the history of this flag must be preserved and more widely known?

01:36:17

Yeah, I think all history needs to be taught more. I think we don't teach enough history. I think people don't know our history.

01:36:26

And even someone like me who studied it didn't know this story. I think we can all – even those of us who are really into history and know a lot, we can always learn.

01:36:33

And I think that's the pleasure I've gotten of writing all of my books. You get to research and learn yourself and then share these stories with other people.

01:36:42

And I think this one, because this flag is so important and it still exists – I would have liked to have written this book even if the flag didn't exist anymore.

01:36:49

But because you can go visit it, I think people need to know. And it kind of informs some of our opinions today, too.

01:36:59

I think it's so important for all of us and students and high school students and middle school students and college students to learn this and pay attention to it.

01:37:10

And if you can contribute in any small way – and someone like me is not a famous author. I'm not going to sell a million books.

01:37:16

But if you contribute in any small way and you teach just a few people about this, I think there's some value to that.

01:37:24

So that's been the pleasure of it for me, particularly for this one. And, again, we can get into a little bit.

01:37:30

I know we're going to get some more questions. But I did get to meet some of the direct Armistead descendants still living now in Philadelphia and got to their house and saw some of the names that they had.

01:37:40

So that really made this kind of a personal story for me, getting to know those folks. I'm still in touch with them.

01:37:46

We e -mail on occasion. They're very excited that this book has been written about their ancestors. Very cool.

01:37:52

Well, we're going to our final break right now. And if you do intend to send in a question, we urge you to send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:38:02

Once again, the e -mail address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:38:09

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:38:15

U .S .A. We'll be right back with Tom McLellan and more of our discussion of Our Flag Was Still There right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Joining Chris Arnzen's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

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01:46:00

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio and thanks for listening. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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01:49:01

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

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Visit historicalbiblesociety .org. That's historicalbiblesociety .org.

01:53:55

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

01:54:20

The church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And please remember, folks, that the new website for Grace Covenant Baptist Church of Flemington, New Jersey is gcbc -nj .org.

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So disregard the website that was in that commercial. The new website is gcbc -nj .org.

01:55:54

We're now back with Tom McLennan, author of Our Flag Was Still There, The Star -Spangled Banner That Survived the

01:56:01

British in 200 Years, and The Armistead Family Who Saved It. If you could, please summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today when it comes to Our Flag Was Still There.

01:56:22

Sometimes we sing the anthem, we don't really think about the words. And that phrase,

01:56:27

Our Flag Is Still There, sums it all up because that flag still exists.

01:56:33

And I think the anthem is about a specific flag. And that was this story, and I was just astounded by the fact, and it was at the

01:56:41

Smithsonian, but everything it took to get there. One of the most iconic pieces of early

01:56:47

American history that will now be with us for probably hundreds of years more because of the tremendous rehab work that they have done.

01:56:55

So people have a chance to get there. I think this is the story behind the story of what

01:57:00

I consider the most famous flag in U .S. history. And it's something that I wish all

01:57:06

Americans could learn, because as I said earlier, I'm a pretty good student of history, and I knew very little of this before I researched the book.

01:57:13

I was fascinated by what I found. It was a learning process for me, and I hope the readers find the same thing.

01:57:20

Well, can you please tell us how, if a listener wants you to speak at their church, at their school, at their civic organization, wherever they want you to speak, number one, do you do that?

01:57:35

And if so, how would they go about getting ahold of you to do that? Absolutely. I'm on Facebook at author

01:57:41

Tom McMillan, on Twitter at TomMcMillan63. So, sure, if it's plausible travel -wise,

01:57:51

I love to speak about this subject. I like to speak about this book. I'm doing a lot of talks this summer, various places, so I enjoy that.

01:57:58

Great. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all the information they need to get ahold of you, get ahold of your book.

01:58:06

One very valuable website to go to is authorTomMcMillan .com.

01:58:14

That's right. I'm sorry. We get e -mails through the website too, authorTomMcMillan .com.

01:58:20

Yes, and McMillan is spelled M -C -M -I -L -L -A -N, M -C -M -I -L -L -A -N .com,

01:58:30

authorTomMcMillan .com. And you can also find out about the book that we have addressed today.

01:58:36

And I'm assuming they can order the book from your website as well. Yes, well, there are links straight to Amazon and Barnes &

01:58:44

Noble too, so it makes it very easy. It just takes you right to those pages. All right. Well, also, folks, please do not forget about the three -day conference with Dr.

01:58:51

James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at the

01:58:57

Spooky Nook Sports and Events in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, to be specific.

01:59:03

That's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, September 15th, 16th, and 17th. A world -renowned scholar,

01:59:09

Dr. James R. White, will be the featured speaker. And for more details, go to futureofchristendom .org,

01:59:16

futureofchristendom .org. You can also go to midatlanticreformation .org, midatlanticreformation .org,

01:59:23

the ministry putting on this event, and also ironsharpendesignradio .com, ironsharpendesignradio .com.

01:59:30

Tom, you've been a wonderful guest. I really enjoyed every minute of our discussion. I hope to get to meet you face -to -face at some point, and that is not such an unlikely thing because you live in Pittsburgh.

01:59:40

So I live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is a few hours away, but who knows? Hopefully, we'll be able to get to meet.

01:59:47

I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater