Our National Anthem
The song we know today as our
National Anthem,
“The Star-Spangled Banner”, was not adopted as such until 1931 when the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution making it the official national anthem of the United States. Prior to that there was no official anthem.
"Hail, Columbia”
Composed by
Philip Phile in 1789 for the first inauguration of
George Washington and titled
"The President's March", it became the song
“Hail, Columbia” in 1798 when it was combined with lyrics by
Joseph Hopkin. Used as a de facto national anthem through the 19
th century, it lost popularity after WWI. For many years it was used to announce the arrival of the President but was ultimately replaced by
“Hail to the Chief”. It is now the official Vice President's personal anthem. To hear a rendition of “Hail, Columbia”, click
here.
Francis Scott Key and the “Defence of Fort M’Henry”
Francis Scott Key was an
American Lawyer and
Patriot and
amateur poet. On September 13, 1814, amid the
War of 1812 with England and but a month after they had torched the
White House, Key found himself aboard the
HMS Surprise where he had negotiated the release of several prisoners of war. When they attempted to return to shore, they were detained because they had learned too much regarding the upcoming attack on
Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor.
Because of the formidable guns of the fort, the British fleet was forced to fire from their
maximum range.

Over the next
25 hours, the British fired over
700 rockets and up to
1800 bombs, included air burst shells, on Fort McHenry. Hampered by the weather and because of the distance and resulting inaccuracy of the British guns, the Americans suffered only
28 casualties, including
four killed in action. As night closed on Key, he observed that the small
“storm flag”, a 17 by 25 foot banner continued to fly above the fort.
Through the night Key observed the
red glare of the rockets launching as well as the
bursting shells above the fort. On the morning of the 14
th, he arose to find that the storm flag had been lowered and the large 30 by 42 foot
garrison flag had been raised with the dawn. This flag, later to be known as the
Star-Spangled Banner, had been made by
Mary Young Pickersgill and consisted of
15 stars on a blue field with fifteen red and white stripes. (Later the official American flag was defined as a blue field with one star for each State and 13 stripes to represent the original Thirteen States ratifying the Constitution.)
Key was so inspired by the sight of the flag flying above the fort that he immediately began to pen the lyrics to his tribute poem on the back of a letter that he had kept in his pocket. Late in the afternoon of September 16, he and his POWs were released by the British. They arrived in Baltimore and that evening took a room at the
Indian Queen Hotel where he completed the untitled poem.
"The Anacreontic Song"
Key handed his poem to this brother-in-law,
Joseph H Nicholson. The next day, September 17, Nicholson took the poem to a Baltimore printer where it was printed the as a
broadside and was given the title
"Defence of Fort M'Henry".

Today only two copies of the broadside are known to exist. The song was first published nationally in
The Analectic Magazine.
It was Nicholson who put the words to the popular melody
"The Anacreontic Song". Written by English composer
John Stafford Smith, the song was the official song of the
Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of
amateur musicians in London. Although it was described as a
“drinking song”, it was not a barroom ballad as is commonly repeated. In the early 20
th century, President Woodrow Wilson asked the
US Bureau of Education to provide an official version of the song. This version, that we know today, first premiered at
Carnegie Hall on
December 5, 1917.
"The Star-Spangled Banner"
In 1889, the
U.S. Navy officially adopted "The Star-Spangled Banner". The "The Star-Spangled Banner" was first proposed as our national anthem by
Col Caleb Carlton at
Fort Meade, South Dakota, in 1892 and in 1916,
President Woodrow Wilson ordered that it be played at military and other appropriate occasions. The anthem was first played at a
baseball game during the seventh-inning stretch of Game One of the
1918 World Series. Between 1918 and 1929,
John Charles Linthicum, the U.S. congressman from Maryland at the time, introduced a series of six unsuccessful bills to officially recognize "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem and on November 3, 1929,
Robert Ripley published a cartoon in
Ripley's Believe it or Not!, saying
"Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem".
In 1930, the
Veterans of Foreign Wars initiated a petition for the United States to officially recognize "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem and received
five million signatures! Finally, the US House of Representatives passed the bill later that year and on March 3, 1931 Senate passed the bill. On
March 4,
President Herbert Hoover signed the bill officially adopting
"The Star-Spangled Banner" as the
National Anthem of the United States of America.
In recent years, some “Americans” have called for replacing our blessed anthem for a number of reasons including its war-oriented imagery and its perceived elitism, sexism and racism. Unfortunately, our country was conceived in the bosom of war; after all, England was not about to give up the resources and promise of this great land without a fight. As for the other, while our early foundations included social norms that are no longer acceptable, the words still define our nation and the fact that, despite all of our shortcomings, this is still the freest and most promising nation to ever exist on this earth.
When I hear "The Star-Spangled Banner" played I'm proud to say that I still get a
lump in my throat and
goose bumps on my arms. And when played at the
Olympic Games, I do not find that any other country’s anthem contains the dignity and grandeur of our National Anthem.
In the following video, the
U.S. Army Field Band and Chorus presents the
“The Star-Spangled Banner” on the
Battlements and Field of Fort McHenry.