After watching the firefight rage for 25 hours from a British truce ship, the bombardment finally began to taper off. The question was: Had the fort been captured? As Francis Scott Key anxiously awaited the outcome of the Battle of Baltimore, he wrote words that would, more than 200 years after they were written, become our national anthem. Most everyone knows that Maryland Native Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812. But where and how did this professional lawyer and amateur poet get his inspiration to develop something that would be remembered forever.
Francis Scott Key was a respected young lawyer living in Georgetown just west of where the modern day Key Bridge crosses the Potomac River. …
