Today, in the U.S., we celebrate the 250th year of our Freedom as a country, so it seemed fitting to post the story behind our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Most of us know the words by heart, and today is the perfect day to take a look at the story behind it.

It wasn’t written by a professional musician; it was written by Francis Scott Key, a stressed-out lawyer on a British warship, watching a rain of bombs fall on his countrymen. The War of 1812 (which lasted about 3 years). It was September 1814, the war was raging, and Francis Scott Key was sent on a diplomatic mission: he was to sail out to the British Fleet in Chesapeake Bay to negotiate the release of William Beanes, an American doctor who had been taken prisoner. He was successful in his negotiations, but because they had spent days on the flagship to accomplish this, Key and the men with him had overheard the British plans for a massive attack on Baltimore. There was no way the British were going to allow them to go and warn them, so they told Francis Scott Key that they would be free to go ~ right after they flattened the fort.

Francis Scott Key and his men were placed under guard on their own small boat and were forced to wait out the battle behind the British line. The target was Fort McHenry, the star~shaped fortress guarding the Baltimore harbor. On September 13, 1815, the British opened fire. For the next 25 hours, the British hammered the fort with everything they had. They fired an estimated 1,500 – 1,800 iron cannonballs and mortar shells. 

As night fell, a massive thunderstorm rolled in, mixing with the smoke of the battle. The only time Key could see if the American flag was still flying was when the sky lit up from the “rockets red glare” and the “bombs bursting in air.” Sometime around 1:00 AM, the firing stopped. The sudden silence was terrifying. Did the fort surrender? Did Baltimore fall? Francis Scott Key and his men had to wait in the pitch blackness for hours to find out…

At 7:30 AM on September 14, the sun came up, and Key peered through his telescope toward the Fort. The British had failed, and swaying in the morning breeze was not a white flag of surrender, but the enormous 30-by42-foot American flag. Major George Armistead had it made to ensure that the British would “have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance.”

Overcome with emotion, Francis Scott Key pulled a letter out of his pocket and began jotting down the lines of poetry on the back of it. He titled it the “Defense of Fort M’Henry.”  Within days of his return to shore, the poem was printed and distributed all over Baltimore. People began singing it and renamed it “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

In 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed an act of Congress officially making it the national anthem of the United States ~ 117 years after it was written! So, the next time you hear the national anthem being played at a game or possibly today, picture Francis Scott Key on that boat, pacing the deck in the dark just waiting for a single glimpse of light to know if his country survived the night.

The Star Spangled Banner

O 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 through the night that our flag was still there;

O 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 shines on the stream:

Tis the star-spangled banner, O 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 should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution,

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror 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.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand,

Between their loved home and the war’s desolation,

Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land,

Praise the power 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!

May God Bless you and keep you safe as you celebrate today!

~Janet Scott