Ask Gramps.org

Do you know how our National Anthem came to be? Do the lyrics describe an actual event?

Gramps,
Do you know how our National Anthem came to be? Do the lyrics describe an actual event?
Peter

Dear Peter,
The lyrics to the National Anthem do indeed describe an actual event. It was during the War of 1812 with Britain. The British in 1814 had captured Washington D.C., had set fire to the National Capitol Building and to the White House. Their flotilla had sailed into Chesapeake Bay and they had begun an assault on Baltimore, 40 miles to the northeast of Washington, D.C., at that time with a population of about 40,000 people. The people of Baltimore, in an act of defiance, sewed together a great flag that measured 40 by 32 feet. The points on the 13 stars were two feet apart. And they planted the flag on the shore of Chesapeake Bay in full view of the British Navy.
In one of the assaults against Baltimore the British captured an elderly and beloved physician, Dr. William Beanes. The townsfolk feared that he would be hanged, and they asked Francis Scott Key for his help. He agreed, and asked Col. John Skinner, an American agent for prisoner exchange to accompany him. They sailed for four days in Key’s sloop before they found the British flagship, Tonnant, to confer with Gen. Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane. At first they refused to release Dr. Beanes, but when Key and Skinner produced a pouch of letters written by wounded British soldiers praising the care they had received from Dr. Beanes, they decided to release him. But they would not release the three Americans immediately because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the attack on Baltimore. So they were required to wait out the behind the British fleet. On the morning of September 13, 1814 at 7:AM the British bombardment began. The bombs, requiring fuses to be lit before being shot from cannon, were not too dependable, many blowing up before reaching their target. From special small boats the British fired the new Congreve rockets that traced wobbly arcs of red flame across the sky.
That evening the firing ceased, but started again about 1 AM on the 14th and lasted until 5 AM, when it suddenly stopped. What the three Americans wondered was if the stopping of the bombardment had signaled the defeat of Baltimore. What they did not know was that both the British land assault on Baltimore and the Naval bombardment had been abandoned, as being too costly a prize, and the British officers had ordered a retreat.
Waiting in the pre-dawn darkness, Key wondered if Baltimore had been taken by the enemy. If that huge flag were still flying they would know that Baltimore had not capitulated. As the daylight dawned they were able to see that the flag was still there! While sailing back to Baltimore, Key began to write in poetic form his feelings on the back of an envelope, and these are the words that he wrote—

Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stars and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh 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 shins on the stream’
‘Tis the star spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh, thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heaven rescued land
Praise the pow’r that has made and preserves 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!

This poem was printed for the first time in the Baltimore Patriot on September 20, 1814. To the verses was added the tune, “Anacreon in Heaven.” In October of that year a Baltimore actor sang Key’s new song in a public performance and called it The Star-Spangled Banner. It was adopted as the National Anthem on March 3, 1931. It is my concerted opinion that every school child in America should be required to be able to recite from memory all three verses of The Star Spangled Banner!
Gramps