Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Known to American children as the commencing of the school day to football fans as a declaration of their strength and permanence on the pitch, The Star-Spangled is the famous chant of American stability in the face of adversity.
With renditions including: Whitney Houston, Beyonce, Mariah Carey and Jimi Hendrix, the anthem has embedded itself at the centre of American identity and culture, from humble beginnings of a poem written in 1814 about the British twenty five hour military bombardment of Baltimore. In August of that year, British troops began an all-out invasion of Washington D.C, setting fire to the White House, Capitol and numerous other prominent government buildings. In early September, they had trained their sights on the Baltimore, a seaport with strategic benefits. Fort McHenry managed to sustain a colossal bombardment from the British… one morning after the infliction they hoisted a huge American flag over the fort. Thus, marking a key victory for them as well as acting as a catalyst for the turning point in the war that was later coined the second war of American independence.
The writer of the famous song, Francis Scott Key, was born Maryland in 1779. Key was an attorney, with a successful practice based in Washington D.C. With his own eyes, he watched on as the bombardment of Fort McHenry was waged. Instrumental in the negotiation of the release of an American civilian, Dr. Willliam Beanes, the British (as part of these ‘negotiations’) ordered that the Americans were not to return to shore during the bombardment. Ironically, despite this song speaking of ‘the land of the free’ it would appear Key himself would be emblematic of suppression. Coming from a well-established Maryland plantation family, he was a slave holder throughout his life and never made any opposition to the cruelties inflicted by the slave trade. In fact, Key was only ever vocal about the deportation of black slaves back to Africa, where the modern nation of Liberia was created.
It seems an unlikely time to be exercising any sort of linguistic muscle or dipping a toe in literary waters; he did. The first known scrawling of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ were inked onto the back of a letter, as Key watched the American flag rise above the fort in the morning after the twenty five hour attempted siege. When he returned to Baltimore, he resumed his writing and completed four more verses.
The song caught on like wildfire. It began with a local printer issuing the song… where it was initially named ‘Defence of Fort M’Henry’. Subsequently, two Baltimore newspapers printed the lyrics, resulting in its melody spreading to the East Coast.
After the calamities of the Civil war, Key’s song surpassed others that had been prominent in the 19th century, such as ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’. However, after four years of fighting, times were changing. ‘The Star Spangled Banner’s focus on the American flag embodied a deeper meaning, in an age where national unity was paramount, the song could act as the necessary binding agent.
As the 1890’s drew in, the U.S military decided to include the song on a ceremonial basis, using it to accompany the raising and lowering of the colours. Woodrow Wilson signed an executive order in 1916 which stipulated it as ‘the national anthem of the United States’.
It wasn’t for another fifteen years, in 1931, when Congress passed the bill making it the official national anthem. Herbert Hoover signed it into law and ever since, Americans have been putting their right hand on their chest and chanting, ‘That our flag was still there’, a declaration of permanence, resilience and the unequivocal might, that makes America the symbol of power that it is.
