The Star-Spangled Banner
"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written by American lawyer Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814, after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort after the battle.
The poem was set to the music of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen's club in London. Smith's song, "The Anacreontic Song", with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. This setting, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", soon became a popular patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very difficult to sing, in part because the melody sung today is the soprano part. Although the poem has four stanzas, typically only the first is performed with the other three being rarely sung.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was first recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889. On March 3, 1931, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution making the song the official national anthem of the United States, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law. The resolution is now codified at.
History
Francis Scott Key's lyrics
On August 28, 1814, William Beanes, a physician who resided in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, was arrested by British forces in his home after the Burning of Washington and the Raid on Alexandria. A friend of Key's, Beanes was accused of aiding the detention of several British Army stragglers who were ransacking local homesteads in search of food.On September 2, 1814, Key wrote a letter from his home in Georgetown to his mother, ending with:
I am going in the morning to Baltimore to proceed in a flag-vessel to Genl Ross. Old Dr Beanes of Marlbro' is taken prisoner by the Enemy, who threaten to carry him off – Some of his friends have urged me to apply for a flag & go & try to procure his release. I hope to return in about 8 or 10 days, though is uncertain, as I do not know where to find the fleet. – As soon as I get back I hope I shall be able to set out for Fred –...
Under sanction from President Madison, on September 3, Key traveled by land from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, where he arrived on the morning of September 4. He located Col. John Stuart Skinner, an American agent for prisoners of war, who leased a sloop-rigged packet ship belonging to John and Benjamin Ferguson, brothers who owned a cargo and passenger service between Baltimore and Norfolk. The ship had a nine-man crew and was captained by a co-owner, John Ferguson. They sailed from Baltimore the next day out through the Patapsco River and then south, down the Chesapeake Bay. As recorded in the British ships' logs, on September 6, they had rendezvoused with HMS Royal Oak and several British troopships near the mouth of the Patuxant. There they learned Beanes was aboard HMS Tonnant further down in the bay. Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm assigned the frigate Hebrus to escort the American sloop to Tangier Island, where he thought Tonnant was located.
On September 7, around noon, they spotted Tonnant near the mouth of the Potomac. The flagship then anchored and brought Key and Skinner aboard.
It was aboard Tonnant, after dinner, that Skinner and Key secured the release of Beanes after conversing with Major-General Robert Ross and Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane. Ross initially refused to release Beanes, but relented after reading letters, brought by Key, written by wounded British prisoners of war praising American doctors for their kind treatment. Because Key and Skinner had overheard details of the plans for the attack on Baltimore, they were prevented from going ashore until after the battle, several days later.
From Tonnant, Key, Skinner, and Beanes were transferred to the frigate HMS Surprise on the morning of September 8. The fleet then slowly moved up the Chesapeake toward Baltimore. The truce vessel was in tow with Surprise. On September 11, off the North Point peninsula, Colonel Skinner insisted that they be transferred back to their own truce vessel, which they were allowed to do, under guard. It was still tethered to Surprise. Admiral Cochrane then transferred his flag to the shallow-draft Surprise so he could move in with the bombardment squadron. Having advanced into the Patapsco River, the 16-ship attack force began to fire on Fort McHenry at sunrise on September 13; the bombardment would last 25 hours.
During the rainy day and through the night, Key had witnessed the bombardment and observed that the fort's smaller "storm flag" continued to fly, but once the bomb and Congreve rocket barrage had stopped, he would not know how the battle had turned out until dawn. On the morning of September 14, the storm flag had been lowered and the large garrison flag had been raised.
During the bombardment, HMS Erebus provided the "rockets' red glare", while the heavy-mortar bomb ships HMS Terror, Volcano, Devastation, Meteor and Aetna provided the "bombs bursting in air". Around 1,500 to 1,800 bomb shells and over 700 rockets were fired at the fort but with minimal casualties and damage being done. Four men died and 24 were wounded in the fort. The ships were forced to fire from their maximum range to stay out of range of the fort's formidable cannon fire.
Key was inspired by the U.S. victory and the sight of the large U.S. flag flying triumphantly above the fort. This flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, had been made by Mary Young Pickersgill together with other workers in her home on Baltimore's Pratt Street. The flag later came to be known as the Star-Spangled Banner, and is today on display in the National Museum of American History, a treasure of the Smithsonian Institution. It was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.
Aboard the ship that morning, Key began writing his lyrics on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. Late afternoon on September 16, Key, Skinner and Beanes were released from the fleet and they arrived in Baltimore that evening. He completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying. His finished manuscript was untitled and unsigned. When printed as a broadside, the next day, it was given the title " of Fort M'Henry". It was first published nationally in The Analectic Magazine.
Much of the idea of the poem, including the flag imagery and some of the wording, is derived from an earlier song by Key, also set to the tune of "The Anacreontic Song". The song, known as "When the Warrior Returns", was written in honor of Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart on their return from the First Barbary War.
Since the 1990s, the anthem has become controversial due to perceived racism in the anthem's lyrics and Key's active support of slavery. The anthem's third stanza uses the phrase "the hireling and slave", which had been interpreted by several commentators to refer to American slaves who escaped to the British military during the war, as Britain offered them freedom and the opportunity to join the Corps of Colonial Marines to fight against U.S. forces. Key was also a slaveholder throughout much of his life. According to The Nation, Key's "message to the blacks fighting for freedom was unmistakable—we will hunt you down and the search will leave you in terror because, when we find you, your next stop is the gloom of the grave". The reference to slaves, which was perceived as being racist towards Black Americans, purportedly prevented the song being adopted as the U.S. national anthem for almost a century.
Conversely, University of Michigan professor Mark Clague and Key's biographer has claimed that the poem celebrates the courage of the American soldiers, both black and white, who helped defend the fortress and the city. The controversial phrase, "the hireling and the slave", according to Clague, actually refers to British armed forces personnel and their American collaborators regardless of race, who are promised either death on the battlefield or, similarly to United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution, permanent exile once the British Empire is defeated. This interpretation is consistent with what Celticist Michael Newton has written about how, during the American Revolution, "slavery" and "oppression" were routinely used as Patriot code words for continued "British rule" over the United States.
Also according to Clague, Francis Scott Key freed four of the seven slaves he inherited and was involved in his later years with the American Colonization Society's practice of buying slaves and setting them free in what is now Liberia. Key's poem, according to Clague, "in no way glorifies or celebrates slavery." However, Clague's interpretation of the song has been criticised for going against mainstream academic historical consensus, as the majority of recent scholars who have written about slavery during the War of 1812, such as Gene A. Smith, Marc Leepson and David Roediger have alleged that Key was referencing only American runaway slaves rather than late stage American Loyalists in the passage. In 2016, The New Yorker argued that " 'The Star-Spangled Banner' racist? The short answer is yes, insofar as almost every older piece of American iconography cannot be rid of the stain of slavery."
John Stafford Smith's music
Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law Joseph H. Nicholson who saw that the words fit the popular melody "The Anacreontic Song", by English composer John Stafford Smith. This was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore, who anonymously made the first known broadside printing on September 17; of these, two known copies survive.On September 20, both the Baltimore Patriot and The American printed the song, with the note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven". The song quickly became popular; it was ultimately printed in 17 newspapers from Georgia to New Hampshire. Soon after, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store in Baltimore published the words and music together under the title "The Star Spangled Banner", although it was originally called "Defence of Fort M'Henry". Thomas Carr's arrangement introduced the raised fourth which became the standard deviation from "The Anacreontic Song". The song's popularity increased and its first public performance took place in October when Baltimore actor Ferdinand Durang sang it at Captain McCauley's tavern. Washington Irving, then editor of the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia, reprinted the song in November 1814.
By the early 20th century, there were various versions of the song in popular use. Seeking a singular, standard version, President Woodrow Wilson tasked the U.S. Bureau of Education with providing that official version. In response, the Bureau enlisted the help of five musicians to agree upon an arrangement. Those musicians were Walter Damrosch, Will Earhart, Arnold J. Gantvoort, Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa. The standardized version that was voted upon by these five musicians premiered at Carnegie Hall on December 5, 1917, in a program that included Edward Elgar's Carillon and Gabriel Pierné's The Children's Crusade. The concert was put on by the Oratorio Society of New York and conducted by Walter Damrosch. An official handwritten version of the final votes of these five men has been found and shows all five men's votes tallied, measure by measure.