The Star-Spangled Banner
Text: Francis Scott Key, 1779-1843
Music: John Stafford Smith, 1750-1836
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes 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 thru 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 thru 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 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!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country shall leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terrors 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.
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 heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved 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!
Francis Scott Key was a lawyer in Washington D.C. at the time of the
War of 1812. He received permission from President James Madison to
ask the British to release his friend, Dr. William Beanes, who had been
taken prisoner. On September 13, 1814, Key was rowed out to a British
ship in Baltimore Harbor to secure the release. The request was
granted, but Key was detained on-board overnight as a precaution
against his warning the garrison of Fort McHenry of the attack the
British were about to make.
During the night, Key witnessed the attack from the deck of the British
ship. The hours passed slowly as he anxiously waited for dawn. When
the sun finally rose, the sky was gray with low-hung clouds and patches
of mist. But as the day grew brighter, Key was able to make out the
enormous American Flag still flying over the fort, showing that it had
not surrendered. Key's exhilaration at the sight began to take poetic
shape; using the back of a letter he pulled from his pocket, he jotted
down a few lines and phrases.
When the British withdrew and the Americans had returned to
Baltimore, Key added to his lines and entitled the poem "The Defense of
Fort McHenry". Shortly afterward he conceived of it being sung to a
popular tune of the period, called "To Anacreon From Heaven"; this
was the tune we know today as "The Star Spangled Banner".
The song immediately caught on in Baltimore; the Fort McHenry
garrison adopted it, and the local newspapers published it. As the rest of
the nation began to realize the significance of the events at Fort
McHenry, people in other cities began putting Francis Scott Key's words
to the tune.
Contenders for the status of national anthem included such arrivals as
"Columbia the Gem of the Ocean". "The Star Spangled Banner"
eventually prevailed and was made the official national anthem of the
United States by an Act of Congress in 1931.
The flag that flew over Fort McHenry was originally 42 feet long. Each
stripe was nearly two feet wide, and the five-pointed stars were two feet
from point to point. Tattered and marred by relic-seekers, it is now
preserved at the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology in
Washington, D.C.