25 at 250: Stamps and 'Star-Spangled' banners

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0:44It's Friday, January 23rd, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBR. I'm Chris Benton. The United States turns 250 years old in July, counting from the Declaration of Independence, at least. HBD, America. To mark the occasion, we're looking at 25 objects from the archives of the Smithsonian Institution that tell the story of America. Today, we'll hear about postage stamps from 1847 and the actual original Star-Spangled Banner that inspired the national anthem. Yes, it's a real flag. The fertility of the flag and the care that we provide for this flag to preserve it for another 200 years is like the care that we as Americans need to give to our democracy.

1:33You can learn a lot about American history from seemingly small items. So we'll be telling these stories every other Friday from now on till July.

1:46Make sure you click that follow button, whether you listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple, the NPR app, or somewhere else, so you don't miss any of that. But without further ado, I'll hand it over to Peter O'Dowd to get us started. We tend to think of history as something written in a speech or fought over on a battlefield, but sometimes it shows up in the corner of an old envelope. In 1847, the U.S. government produced its first official stamps, and they weren't just important for sending mail. They're among the first mass-produced images in America. Dan Piazza is chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

2:24Dan, in my business, it's dangerous to mispronounce words. Did I say that right? Philately? You did. You got it right. All right. Well, I'm impressed. That's a new word for me. We're here to talk about the first official stamps in U.S. history. This is a five-cent stamp from 1847 featuring Benjamin Franklin and a 10-cent stamp with George Washington's face on it. What's the story of how they were born? Well, the first postage stamps in the world had been issued about seven years earlier in the United Kingdom. And they pictured Queen Victoria. And there was a congressional committee, the Committee on the Post Offices and Post Roads, that was keeping an eye on how the use of postage stamps was developing in the British Post Office.

3:06And by 1847, they decided to adopt it in the U.S. Now, of course, having a monarch would not be appropriate for a U.S. postage stamp. So they went with two of the most popular and revered figures in the country's history. And that's Benjamin Franklin, who also happened to be the country's first postmaster general, and George Washington, the first president. Well, this was the mid-1800s. People were writing letters long before then. How did Americans send mail before these stamps? That's right. I mean, people were writing letters going all the way back to the first colonists in the 1620s and 30s.

3:43But before the introduction of postage stamps, it was the recipient who paid for the letter rather than the sender. And there were a number of reasons for that. Transportation was very slow. A lot of it was by ship, and a lot of ships sank. People did not want to pay the postage for letters that might never arrive at their destination. And so it was considered more convenient for the recipient to pay on the other end upon delivery. But that created a lot of problems for the post office. What if the person doesn't want the letter or doesn't pay for it? Junk mail. So the idea of a postage stamp was that the sender could prepay the letter up front.

4:22That meant the post office always got paid to carry mail. That brings the costs way, way down and allows the volume of mail to increase. So the introduction of stamps and the convenience of that stored value of postage that a stamp represents really made it easier than ever for people to write. And the volume of mail just explodes. You know better than I do, stamp collecting is a serious business. I'm sure these stamps are incredibly rare. Are there many out there? And what would they be worth? They're not as rare as you might think. And they were printed in millions of copies. And they were the first.

4:58And the first of everything is innovation, right? And it gets saved. So these stamps survive in the millions. People kept them as souvenirs. But as with all collectibles, and now we're getting into the realm of stamps as collectibles rather than as postage for the post office. It's all about condition and usage and the destination and all those sorts of things. So a really beautiful copy of the stamp on a really scarce usage is very attractive to collectors and can cost quite a lot of money. Forgive the question. Did people in 1847 have to lick the stamps to put them on the envelope? They did.

5:42And there are some people, there are some reports in newspapers at the time that some people didn't quite understand that. And so they tried to use them, I guess, almost like stickers and press them on the envelope. And they wrote to the post office complaining that they kept falling off the envelope or they didn't wet it enough. And so, you know, they might attach the stamp, but by the time they drop it in a mailbox and it gets to the post office, maybe the stamp is gone. Well, they were ahead of their time. Stamps are stickers today. And in the UK, when the first postage stamps came out in 1840 with Queen Victoria on them, a lot of people wrote amusing little poems in the newspaper about, you know, licking the queen's head.

6:25This was a whole new experience for people in the 1840s. Well, listen, this is just fascinating. I just want to leave you with this. Why do you think these stamps are so critical to telling the story of the United States? I think postage stamps really, in a very small space, capture what a country thinks is important about itself at any point in time, whether those are important people or places, events, and how what is important and what gets commemorated changes over time is really important too. So these stamps, besides being works of art collectibles in and of themselves, they're little snapshots of what a country thinks is important about itself at the time they were issued.

7:12Dan Piazza is chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Dan, it's been a pleasure speaking to you about these five-cent and ten-cent stamps from 1847. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

7:35Coming up next, the original Star Spangled Banner. Yes, the national anthem refers to a real flag that's also part of the Smithsonian exhibit. Indira Lakshmanan gets up close and personal with old glory when we return. Thank you.

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8:42That, of course, is the national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner. Many of us put our hands on our hearts and try to croak out the high notes when it plays at parades and sports events. From Oh Say Can You See to The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave, we think we know the stirring lyrics by heart. But how many of us know the true story of the battle that inspired the song or that the actual Star Spangled Banner was a real flag that still exists? It does. It's a 213-year-old flag that was originally 30 feet long by 42 feet wide, big enough to be seen from a far distance. What remains of it is displayed in an environmentally controlled chamber at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in the nation's capital.

9:27Jennifer Jones is a curator of that exhibit, and she joins us now. Welcome, Jennifer, and thanks so much for introducing us to the flag. Thank you. Very pleased to be here. So take us back to when this flag was made and why it was so massive. So in the summer of 1813, George Armistead, who was commander of Fort McHenry, wanted to have two flags made for the fortification. The government gave a contract to a woman by the name of Mary Pickersgill, who was able to make two flags, a storm flag, which is a smaller flag that would have flown during inclement weather, and this much larger oversized garrison flag.

10:06and she made it in about three and a half weeks with a team of her daughter and a number of nieces and an indentured Black woman by the name of Grace Wisher. And it was made so that the British could not fail to see this oversized flag, which would be flying from a 90-foot pole. So let's get into the story that made this flag so iconic. It's 1814. A 35-year-old American lawyer named Francis Scott Key is witnessing the Battle of Baltimore from sea. He describes a barrage as vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire and brimstone. As darkness sets in, he sees only red erupting in the night sky.

10:49He thinks all hope is lost. But in the clearing smoke of the, quote, dawn's early light, as the song goes, he sees the stars and stripes are still there, signaling an American victory. So did the story happen like Key describes it in the poem? or did he take creative liberties with the story? He actually viewed the bombardment from the ship that he was on in the harbor three miles out from the battle as it went on. And after 25 hours of bombardment by the British at Fort McHenry, he was looking to see did the British actually succeed in their efforts. And as this flag is being raised, he sees by dawn's early light, this oversized American flag.

11:36And he recognizes that the America had been able to win this battle. So it's not a myth. It's true. Tell us what happened after the Battle of Baltimore to the flag itself. After the battle, Key went to Baltimore and finished his lyrics there. And the commander of Fort McHenry kept the flag and kept it as a family heirloom until it came to the Smithsonian on loan to us in 1907 and then was gifted to the nation in 1912. Now, I understand that bits and pieces of this flag were actually cut off and given away to members of the commander's family and to other people as keepsakes. There's even legend, I don't know if it's true, that a piece of this flag was given to Abraham Lincoln himself.

12:25So tell us, if the flag was getting chopped up, how much of it did you lose before it was gifted to the Smithsonian? And have some pieces been given back? Do you stitch them together? Do you just keep them in a separate case? Tell us how that works. Sure. In the 19th century, there was no flag code. And so small pieces of the flag were given away, the first being the widow of one of the defenders of the fortification when he passed. And so there are a lot of fragments that were removed from the flag over time. We lost about eight feet off of the fly end, which was the tattered edge of the flag.

13:02We have about 13 or 14 fragments of the flag that were souvenired and given to different individuals and or organizations. And we don't put them back on because we don't know where they came from within the flag itself. We keep them so that if we want to lend a piece of the flag to another museum, we have something to lend. All right. So we all know this song, but why is this object, the flag itself, so critical to telling the story of America? One of the things I like to say is that the fertility of the flag and the care that we provide for this flag to preserve it for another 200 years is like the care that we as Americans need to give to our democracy.

13:48It's fragile. Our flag is full of holes, and there are ways that we have to preserve it so that it lasts for another 200 years. Jennifer Jones is a curator at the National Museum of American History. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having us.

14:10Many more fascinating objects where that came from. Follow Here and Now anytime every other week to hear more. Time for one more short break, and we'll be right back in a minute.

14:29While we continue our remote tour of those venerable exhibitions at the Smithsonian, we're of course still following the news, getting that so-called first draft of history scribbled down. You can find all our stories at hereandnow.org about the use of force by immigration agents in Minnesota and elsewhere, about mental health and artificial intelligence, about America's military actions in Venezuela. And those are just some of the things that came up in a focus group run recently by NPR's partner Engages, asking swing voters how they feel one year into President Trump's second term. Here's a bit of what Rich Tao from Engages told us about that.

15:10A lot of these folks like what he's doing, but they don't like how he's doing it. They wish President Trump would dial back the intensity of how he's doing it, the way he talks about what he's doing, and just focus on the things they want him to do. And what they want him to do, they want him to secure the border and bring inflation down so they're not struggling economically. That's what matters to these folks. Listen to that whole conversation and find out more about NPR's swing voter project at hereandnow.org. And while you're there, you can check out our interview with Josiah Hesse, whose new book talks about leaving the evangelical church in his native Mason City, Iowa.

15:47He writes about politics and faith in his memoir On Fire for God, Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right. Speaking of memoirs, there's also Robin Young's conversation with Emmy-winning actor Claire Foy about her new movie H is for Hawk, based on Helen McDonald's memoir about channeling grief into the training of a goss hawk, whose name in the book and film is Mabel. Don't think I'm necessarily a natural falconer. I think when it comes to work, I tend to be quite gung-ho and I'm pretty brave about what I attempt or what I do. And it seems like an opportunity to step out of my ordinary life.

16:28And so if I'm given an opportunity to learn falconry, then I'm going to enjoy it and I'm going to embrace it. And I found the concept of falconry to be quite familiar to me in the sense that you had to become invisible. the invisibility, the ability to adapt yourself to someone else's rhythm, to the hawk's rhythm, and to make your presence be the last thing that needed to happen in the room was something that was very, very familiar to me. And so that aspect of it came quite naturally. Mabel is the diva in the room. She is, but she's like most divas, the best divas, I say, she wears it very lightly and is so on her own pedestal that no one can really compare or touch her in any way.

17:16She doesn't even notice you. No, exactly. She's like, oh, look, my elaborate human perch is back. That's how she basically saw me. You can listen to all that and a lot more at hereandnow.org.

17:34That's our show for today, though. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Will Walkie and edited by Kat Welch. Micaela Rodriguez edited the podcast. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend. We'll be back with you on Monday.

18:09Thank you.