As Baltimore celebrates the 200th anniversary of the writing of the Star-Spangled Banner next week, a rare letter from the commander of Fort McHenry setting the stage for getting the flag honored in song by Francis Scott Key will be on the auction block just up the Chesapeake Bay.
Alexander Historical Auctions of Chesapeake City, Md., is offering the historic letter from Capt. George Armistead, the so-called “Defender of Fort McHenry,” at its Sept. 9-10 online auction. It could bring $30,000 or more.
In his handwritten letter, Armistead wrote that he needed a new flag pole to replace one apparently destroyed in a lightning strike. He wanted it big enough to support one of the huge American flags he was known to fly over forts he commanded.
“I am getting up a new Flag staf,” he wrote in May 1811.
According to the auction house write up of the letter, Armistead was later sent to another fort, but returned in 1814 in time for the Battle of Baltimore. Before that fight, he ordered up “a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance.”
That was the 30 x 42 feet flag from Mary Pickersgill, at a cost of $574.45, that Key saw was still flying after the unsuccessful, two-day bombing of Fort McHenry, Sept. 13-14, 1814.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
