by Joe Snyder
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It was 196 years ago this week that the National Anthem was written. During the War of 1812, on Sept. 13, 1814 at the first light of dawn, the British fleet commenced it’s bombardment of Ft. McHenry in Baltimore’s harbor. All day long and into the night the shelling continued, lighting up the sky with explosions of aerial bombs, rockets and mortars.
Watching from a British warship were two Americans, aboard under a flag of truce to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. One of these was Francis Scott Key, a lawyer who was there to secure the release of a man who had been captured during the Washington D.C. raid. As he paced the deck, he would pause and write down in a notebook the words that were coming to him. Then he would return to the rail, to see if the fort’s huge flag was still there. This flag still hangs in The Smithsonian’s American History Museum.
In the early hours of the morning of Sept. 14, a fierce storm came up, further obscuring the drama that was being played out in Baltimore’s harbor. Francis Scott Key strained to see the Stars and Stripes over Ft. McHenry. And then, at the first light of dawn, he saw it and wrote the words that have stirred our hearts ever since. The poem was first titled "Defense of Fort McHenry."
The poem was eventually set to music that had originally been written by English composer. John Stafford Smith for another song. The end result was that this inspiring song was accepted by public demand for the national anthem. During the World Series of Baseball in 1917, it was sung in honor of the brave forces fighting in World War I. It moved everyone in attendance, and after that it was repeated at every game. Finally, on March 31, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 117 years after it was first written. Let’s review it’s words.
"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, thru 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,
Where 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 vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave is no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution
No refuse 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 free men shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-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!