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

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A Patriotic Change of Pace with Tom McMillan

Today we're switching up the format of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We usually, nearly every day, address a topic that involves Christian theology, Christian doctrine, Christian history. Today we are going to, for a change of pace, discuss something that is purely a patriotic theme.

We have as a first-time guest on the program today, Tom McMillan, and he is going to be addressing his book, Our Flag Was Still There, The Star-Spangled Banner That Survived the British in 200 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 Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, the marketing committee of the Gettysburg Foundation, and who, along with his wife, Colleen, who assists with much of the book research, are volunteer ambassadors at Antietam National Battlefield.

And as I said, Tom is going to be addressing his book, Our Flag Was Still There, with us today. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom McMillan.

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

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

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

Well, they do tests when you're in high school, Chris, and maybe 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. I ended up going into sports media, but history was always my love and it was kind of my diversion.

And about 10 years ago, 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. And 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.

And so you kind of stumble into the topics, and this one in particular grabbed me because I'm a pretty good student of history, I think. And I realized when I started researching the thing about the original Star-Spangled Banner and the Armistead family, how little I knew.

So this was a research opportunity for myself. 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. But 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, 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 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?

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

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

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

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

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

Betsy Ross, Mary Pickerskill, and the Early American Flag

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, I don't know how much of the story of Betsy Ross and how she came up with the designs and so on as folklore, how much is true, but was the original design that she intended for the American flag, the famous rattlesnake on a yellow background that says underneath it, do not tread on me or don't tread on me?

Not that I know of. One of the misconceptions that I had to clear up about this book, Chris, is this flag, the Star Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McKenry in 1814, was not made by Betsy Ross. 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, 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's, but she made the flag.

We can get into a little story of how that happened, because it took them six weeks.

And when you said she made it, did she design it as well?

No, the flag was, back to the original 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, but the design went through several phases. By the time we get to 1813, when Mary made this flag, it was the format of the stripes and the stars that we know today. 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.

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

But this flag in 1814, I'm sorry, for each new state, correct, 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.

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

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?

It's this flag that we're talking about that Mary made, the one that's on the cover of.

The book.

Yes. Yes. And that was one of the covers, the first photo that was ever taken. That was in 1873, almost 60 years after the battle. 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 at Fort McHenry, took over in 1813, a year before the battle. He was a career military man. He had this thing for big flags.

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

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. 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.

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 Revolutionary War? You're speaking of the War of 1812.

Yeah, if you look through American history, there were many different formats for the American flag. There's kind of a Washington flag, but troops as militia troops came together in the Revolutionary War.

Again, this wasn't the 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, but it started around the red and white stripes and the blue stars or the white stars on the blue shield.

So it took a while for there to be a formal American flag. And then we had a flag code and Flag day exists and June 14th still exists when the country formalized a flag. 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.

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?

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

So there were various flags that were used. At that time, the priority wasn't creating a flag for the country, 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 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. Because again, by that point, 1813, 1814, the War of 1812 wasn't going very well for the Americans.

From Fort McHenry to the Smithsonian

Well, we have a question already from Alex in Frederick, Maryland, who says, before it and obviously he's referring to the flag, before it made it to the Smithsonian, it sat in someone's house in Manhattan.

And he has that as a question, actually. Was it folded up? It must have been huge. How big was it folded up and how much did it weigh?

My question will be lengthy, but my answer will be lengthy. I can address all those topics. I can address all those topics. And Frederick, Maryland was Key's hometown. 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, big moment in his life, George Armistead took that flag down from the flagpole and took it home.

It was not given to him. He basically, it was against Army regulations. He basically stole government property. It remained, it exists today because it remained in the private possession of his family for 90 years until his grandson gave it to the Smithsonian in 1907.

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

Regarding the size, the original size was gigantic, 30 feet high by 42 feet wide. I can expand this story a little bit because it's now eight 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 Armistead ladies would cut off pieces of the flag and give them as souvenirs to battle veterans, local dignitaries.

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

So the flag that's now at the Smithsonian is eight feet shorter. It's not 30 by 42, it's 30 by 34. And we don't know exactly how it was folded. No one has a picture of that. 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. I think early on, the Armisteads weren't viewing it as this great patriotic American piece. It was their family heirloom.

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

It was their father's heirloom. But thankfully, they did that and it kept going. We tend to forget that about the anthem. I think Key would have been astonished if he knew that song became the national anthem.

He was never trying to write an anthem. 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. He wrote that song two days after the battle.

He witnessed it from a ship near the British ships. 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. 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. That's why I think if you brought him back today, he would be astonished if you told him it was the national anthem.

How Francis Scott Key’s Song Became 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?

Interesting, very interesting story. And one thing, one myth I try to correct in the book, because I believe this too, we read it all our lives, we're taught it. Key did not write it as a poem. He wrote it as a song.

He wrote it as a song. And I correct you, 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. But I did some pretty deep research.

It's a chapter in the book that really goes on the development of the anthem. That song, the tune that we now know is the Star Spangled Banner, and I'm not musically inclined, but it was very well known to Francis Scott Key and many Americans in 1814.

It had been written in the 1770s over in England for an upscale 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 and they got together presumptuous dining and fine wine and they wanted a song to challenge their vocal range.

They thought they were great singers. So their club was named for the legendary ancient Greek poet Anakrion, and it was called the Anakrionic Society, and their song was To Anakrion in Heaven, and it's written to this tune.

And that society concept spread to the U .S. There were those societies in the U .S. The song was known. And what would happen back then, rather than continually writing new music, they would just take popular songs and rewrite lyrics.

Just like our song, My Country, Tis of Thee, which is to the melody of God Save the Queen, correct? Yes.

And this song was written for John Adams in the late 1700s. And the reason I know that Key wrote it as a song during my research, Key wrote lyrics to this tune in 1805. He was given an assignment to honor a U .S. sailor who had done some great things in a battle.

And he wrote a song called When the Warrior Returns. It's exactly to this to this pace. And he even uses a phrase called the Star-Spangled Flag of Our Nation. So he'd even he'd worked on some concepts.

So he wrote it as a song. It was 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. And it became a very patriotic song.

But there were many patriotic songs back then. There were still some left from the revolution that were very important to people. This is only 40 years after the revolution. Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia, Columbia, The Gem of the Ocean, During the Civil War, Battle Hymn of the Republic.

So these were five or six really popular patriotic songs. 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.

This again, this is after World War One. That's how long it was that some veteran and political veteran and patriotic groups, the 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. So it took a long time to reach that point. But the song itself, the song was very popular from the beginning.

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

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.

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

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 Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at Gmail dot 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 USA. And I'd like to remind my guest, Tom, to mute yourself during the station break.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com is the address for all your questions.

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The Flag’s Preservation, Public Display, and Backward Photograph

We're now back with our guest today, Tom McMillan, author of Our Flag Was Still There, The Star-Spangled Banner That Survived The British in 200 Years and The Armistead Family Who Saved It. We have a question from Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

Christopher asks, when did the American flag become something that is treated as if it is a very sacred religious object? 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.

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?

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

People tend to forget that. He made it more than just an object. He made it something that we focus on, so I think from this point on, certainly it was big in the Revolution, but we weren't even really a country yet.

We were still forming. The Constitution hadn't been created until 1787. It takes a while. Everything didn't happen July 4, 1776. So now, War of 1812 starts 36 years after the 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, but were there rules? No. I mean, we talked about the Armistead ladies cutting off pieces and giving them as souvenirs, which was very commonplace back then.

Today, you can be ridiculed and criticized for doing that. The curators at the Smithsonian said that is what happened. They wrote on it. Armistead apparently signed the flag himself. 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.

In a way, the way this flag had to be displayed when it was first displayed in the Smithsonian, people complained that it violated the flag code because, as mentioned, the flag was 30 feet high, and now it's fully displayed with their new display at the Smithsonian that they just did about 15 years ago.

When it first went there in the early 1900s, it was in a case. The case was 16 feet high, which is a huge case, but the flag's 30 feet high. 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. 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.

So I think as time has gone on, it's become more special, and especially with the American century, the 20th century, World War II, and I think a lot of the rallying around the flag has become so important.

I think a lot of that can be traced to Key Song in 1814, and certainly other countries, those citizens respect those flags. I don't know if anybody has a really, any group has a relationship with their flag with the Americans.

I think you can't quantify that, 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 a affection or a connection to the flag than we have here.

I hope that answered all the parameters of his question.

I believe you did. Thank you, Christopher, and you have also won a free copy of Our Flag Was Still There, compliments of our friends at Post Hill Press, and please make sure we have your full mailing address in western Suffolk County so that CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship it out to you at no cost to you or to us.

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, asks a similar question, not quite the same. 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 American flag criminal?

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

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 Smithsonian today and all that was encompassed.

I concur a lot of flag things, but I don't know that 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, 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, but I'd rather tell you the truth than make.

Something out of it. I would mislead you. Definitely. 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. I doubt that that's true, though.

But you've won a copy of the book as well. Our flag was still there. Make sure we have your full mailing address in Hartsdale, New York, so CVBBS .com can ship it out to you. 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 Francis Scott Key wrote the song, how it went from being waived in battle to something that we still have in preservation at the Smithsonian.