The Star-Spangled Banner becomes the National Anthem

History Pic of the Day

Today 93 years ago, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution to turn the “Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key into America’s official national anthem. Key was apparently inspired to compose its lyrics in 1814 when he witnessed the large American flag flying over Fort McHenry, after the Americans countered the British in the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. The song steadily gained in popularity since then, culminating in the act of Congress.

Originally published as “Defence of Fort M’Henry”, Key’s lyrics to this thoroughly anti-British song were ironically set to a melody by the British composer John Stafford Smith, though it may have originated as a drinking song. Smith’s tune was called “To Anacreon in Heaven”, and was the official song of a London singing club, the Anacreontic Society. Incidentally, the melody was set to a number of different lyrics throughout the 18th and 19th century by various people.

While the martial tone of his song seems strangely fitting to a country which has been at war for most of its history, the third stanza is the most controversial, containing the lines ‘’No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”. This has been understood to refer to a group of freed slaves who enlisted under the British as the Colonial Marines. Key himself, at least in his work as a prominent lawyer, had a somewhat ambiguous relationship to slavery: he defended both slaves seeking freedom and slave owners seeking to recover “property”. Yet, in the end he himself owned several slaves. As such, the historical aspects of the song may be taken to present a microcosm of the country’s history with war and racism.