The Analectic Magazine’s introduction hints at the song’s rapid rise in popularity, saying, “These lines have already been published in several of our newspapers. . .
Some printed editions of the song omit that verse altogether. This publication includes all four verses of the song, including the controversial lines in the third verse, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” Key was most likely referring to the more than 4,000 enslaved people who joined the Corps of Colonial Marines during the War of 1812 to fight for the British to gain their freedom. This document, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” is from the Analectic Magazine, published by Moses Thomas in Philadelphia. President Woodrow Wilson signed an executive order to make it the national anthem for the military in 1916, and in 1931, Congress passed legislation making it the national anthem. Within a few months, the song’s title, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” was replaced with its more recognizable name, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” (It is believed that Thomas Carr, a Baltimore publisher, coined the new title.) In the 1890s, the US Navy and Army made “The Star-Spangled Banner” an official song of the military. By October, seventeen newspapers had spread the song up and down the East Coast. A local printer first published the lyrics in a broadside and shortly after, two Baltimore newspapers picked it up as well. “Defence of Fort M’Henry” grew to be one of the most recognized songs in the United States. Once he returned to the city, he drafted three more verses, completing what was then titled “Defence of Fort M‘Henry.” The words were put to the tune of a popular British song, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Upon seeing the American flag still aloft, he wrote, on the back of a letter, the first verse of what would eventually become the national anthem of the United States. After twenty-five hours of heavy bombardment, Key was sure that, come dawn, the British flag would be flying over Baltimore. Key had been negotiating the release of an American captive during the War of 1812 when the British attacked the fort. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,Īnd this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”Īnd the star-spangled banner in triumph shall waveIn September 1814, Francis Scott Key, an attorney and DC insider, watched the American flag rise over Baltimore, Maryland’s Fort McHenry from a British ship in the harbor. Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! O thus be it ever when freemen shall standīetween their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!īlest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
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O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. No refuge could save the hireling and slaveįrom the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,Īnd the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusionĪ home and a Country should leave us no more? O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!Īnd where is that band who so vauntingly swore, ’Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave
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In full glory reflected now shines in the stream, Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,Īs it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there, O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?Īnd the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, Here’s all four verses, via The Smithsonian: In fact, Key had used the “Anacreon in Heaven” tune for an 1805 poem. Although Key was a poet, he always intended for “The Star Spangled Banner” to be accompanied by music, notes. The song’s tune is derived from the tune for “ Anacreon in Heaven” by John Stafford Smith. Each verse ends with the familiar line “O’er the land of the free and home of the brave.” While the only verse of “The Star Spangled Banner” performed today is the first, Key actually wrote four that went on to describe the scene at Fort McHenry.
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