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Henry Knox, the original Secretary of War, was succeeded by Timothy Pickering in 1795, who, after less than a year, was followed by James McHenry. Edmund Randolph served as Attorney-General in 1789 to 1794, then retiring for William Bradford who, after a brief year, was replaced by Charles Lee. The Postmaster-Generalship was filled from 1789 to 1791 by Samuel Osgood, and then by Timothy Pickering.
When he entered the battle on Monday morning, the Third Iowa Infantry was commanded by a first-lieutenant, all the field officers and captains having been disabled or captured. Several regiments were commanded by captains. Colonel McHenry, of the Seventeenth Kentucky, said his regiment fought a Kentucky regiment which was raised in the county where his own was organized. The fight was very fierce.
This situation was foreshadowed as early as 1798 by James McHenry, Secretary of War, when he indignantly announced to Congress: "To forbear under such circumstances from taking naval and military measures to secure our trade, defend our territories in case of invasion, and to prevent or suppress domestic insurrection would be to offer up the United States a certain prey to France and exhibit to the world a sad spectacle of national degradation and imbecility."
He got the Chink to believe he could handle the vanilla for him, and got hold of it, and then out by the vegetable garden Brown hit the poor devil of a Chink over the nut with a club." McHenry got up from the table, and with Llewellyn's walking-stick showed exactly how the blow was struck. He brought down the cane so viciously against the edge of the table that he spilled our rum punches.
But this attack gave us the inspiration of one of our finest deathless songs. A Mr. Francis S. Key, a resident of Georgetown, had gone down from Baltimore with a flag of truce to procure the release of a friend held as prisoner of war, when the bombardment of Fort McHenry began. All day long he watched the flag as it floated above the ramparts. Night came on and it was still there.
Sunday morning we squeezed the juice out of some grapes, some kind friends had sent us, and reading for our lesson where Jesus washed the disciples feet and partook of the sacrament, sister McHenry sprang to her feet after partaking of the emblems, said she saw the most beautiful cross on the wall, surrounded by a divine halo, exclaiming, "Now I know what it is to have a vision, I thought it might be imagination."
After the war Colonel Beach was for some time in command of a solitary fort near Washington. He was soon after stationed at Washington, and then at Fort McHenry. His old trouble having reappeared with more than its former violence and persistency, he was placed on the retired list, and endeavored to regain his health, but with only temporary success.
By private letters from Lieutenant Ord, I heard that the company had already started from Fort McHenry for Governor's Island, New York Harbor, to take passage for California in a naval transport. I worked all that night, made up my accounts current, and turned over the balance of cash to the citizen physician, Dr.
To James McHenry, of Maryland, he wrote in August, 1785: "I confess to you candidly that I can foresee no evil greater than disunion; than those unreasonable jealousies which are continually poisoning our minds and filling them with imaginary evils for the prevention of real ones."
So Congress on the 13th day of January, 1794, passed an act fixing the number of stripes and stars at fifteen, and such was the Star-Spangled Banner that Key saw at Fort McHenry in the "dim morning's light" when he wrote the words of our National Hymn, as a matter of fact, the war of 1812 was fought under a flag of fifteen stripes and fifteen stars.
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