The recent collapse of a bridge in Baltimore after being struck by a barge during the night has caused death for workers, destruction of the bridge and its infrastructure and created numerous headaches for local, state and federal leaders. It also caused the disruption of many services, as shipments of goods and supplies were delayed and probably will be for months.
The bridge, known as Francis Scott Key Bridge, and also known as Key Bridge or Beltway Bridge, was a steel arch continuous through truss bridge that spanned the lower Patapsco River and outer Baltimore Harbor/Port. Opened in 1977, it carried the Baltimore Beltway (Interstate 695) between Dundalk in Baltimore County and Hawkins Point, an isolated southern neighborhood of Baltimore, while briefly passing through Anne Arundel County.
Initially named Outer Harbor Crossing, the original bridge was renamed in 1976 for poet Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics to the national anthem. At 8,636 feet, it was the second-longest bridge in the Baltimore metropolitan area, after Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Its main span of 1,200 feet was the third-longest of any continuous truss in the world.
Everyone probably remembers the story of Francis Scott Key and how he came to pen the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The year was 1814 - 30 years after the United States won its independence from the British Empire - and the two powers were once again at war. The British, after torching government buildings in Washington, sailed up the Chesapeake Bay with plans to bombard Fort McHenry, at the entrance to the harbor in Baltimore, and capture the city.
Behind enemy lines, three stranded Americans watched as the British fleet threw its might at the fort, bombarding it for 25 hours. Among them was lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key.
As the smoke from the battle cleared, Key looked toward the fort and saw the American flag flying proudly, albeit battered, from the ramparts. He wrote what he titled "Defence of Fort M'Henry", which was published in numerous newspapers within a week with the suggested tune of the popular song "To Anacreon in Heaven." In 1931, it became America's official National Anthem.
But, as is usually the case, there are two sides to history, and the collapse of the bridge named in his honor has shed new light - and controversy - over the life of Francis Scott Key.
Born August 1, 1779, in Frederick County, Maryland, the son of wealthy landowners. He received his early education in Annapolis, where he studied law and later worked at his uncle’s law firm. Though he was religious and briefly considered becoming an Episcopal priest, he continued his career and rose to prominence as a lawyer. In the early 1800s, he opened his own practice in Georgetown, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. and would go on to be appointed a United States attorney by President Andrew Jackson.
In 1812, when Key was in his 30s, the United States declared war in response to Britain’s interference in American trade with France and its practice of forcefully conscripting American sailors. But the decision was deeply divisive among the American public. Some - including Key - thought the United States government should have sought to avoid war through diplomacy. Despite his opposition, however, Key served in the Georgetown Artillery in 1813.
In September 1814, Key led a mission to negotiate the release of American doctor William Beanes, who had been captured by British forces when he tried to protect his home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Key and an American officer named John Skinner boarded the flagship of the British fleet, the HMS Tonnant, and succeeded in securing Beanes’s release - but were forced to stay aboard as the British fleet bombarded Fort McHenry.
The delay in naming the song as the national anthem was caused by controversy over Key's racist views. One section of the poem’s third verse, in particular, has come under scrutiny from those who say it was intended to mock or threaten African Americans who escaped slavery to join the British forces, after being promised land in exchange for their service:
"No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And The Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Long before Baltimore’s Key Bridge - one of two in the region named after Key, the other linking Washington and Virginia over the Potomac - partly collapsed, the legacy of the American lawyer and poet was a source of controversy. Many have argued that he should not be celebrated because of what National Park Service has called his “conflicted relationship with slavery.”
Key spoke of black people as “a distinct and inferior race.” Key’s parents enslaved people on their plantation, Key himself enslaved six people, and his wife’s family were prominent enslavers in Maryland, according to National Park Service. As a lawyer, Key represented several enslavers in cases brought against enslaved people who had run away. According to the Park Service, “Key vehemently opposed abolition” and helped found a group that advocated for free people of color to emigrate from the United States.
Key purchased his first slave in 1800, freed seven in the 1830s - one of them he paid as his farm foreman to oversee the work of other slaves - and still owned eight at the time of his death in 1843, during which time abolitionists ridiculed his words, claiming that America was more like the "Land of the Free and Home of the Oppressed". As District Attorney, he suppressed abolitionists, and he lost a case against Reuben Crandall in 1836 where he accused the defendant's abolitionist publications of instigating slaves to rebel. He was also a leader and founder of American Colonization Society, which sent former slaves to Africa. He publicly criticized slavery and gave free legal representation to some slaves seeking freedom, but he also represented owners of runaway slaves. His decision to free some of his slaves in the 1830s, according to National Park Service, may have been rooted in profit, because the enslaved individuals he manumitted were of advanced age and may not have been able to provide a level of free labor that Key felt justified the cost of feeding and housing them.
The controversy over the name of the bridge in Baltimore adds fire to the growing furor over Key's legacy of slavery. In recent years, monuments built in Key’s honor have been defaced, and calls to rename institutions named after him have grown. In 2017, Francis Scott Key Monument in Baltimore was splashed with red paint, and phrases such as “Racist Anthem” and “Blood on his hands” were spray-painted on it. Last year, Montgomery County Public Schools system, the largest in Maryland, said it would consider whether several schools named after enslavers, including Francis Scott Key Middle School, should be renamed.
Our history, as bloody and racist as it is, belongs to all of us who live in its shadow.
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