From Betsy Ross to Francis Scott Key

Today in Women's History we will be discussing Revolutionary women and the nation's progress into  the early 19th century.  I tell my students that labor is a huge part of our investigation of the 19th century.  Indeed, for all my US history classes, a focus on labor through the 1800s is key to understanding motivations and consequences.  But today is the anniversary of when Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that was to become the Star Spangled Banner. 

The Star-Spangled Banner
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
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.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - “In God is our trust,” 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.1

Betsy's participation in the creation of the American flag is speculative, but positioning a picture of Betsy and some female friends sewing the flag seems like a nice entry point into the Cult of Domesticity and ideas of female labor.  The Cult of Domesticity outlined the TRUE role of women in the new Republic and created a system that treated men and women as complete opposites.  Women were to focus on a moral code focused on piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.

Allegedly, Washington wanted 6 point stars for the flag, but Betsy thought that 5 points better and easier to cut.
JJ

Sources:
1https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/the-lyrics.aspx