Hearing the national anthem so much in the last few years got me to thinking. I have sung and heard it so many times but never really broken it down.
A bit of background first. Francis Scott Key wrote it on September 13, 1814 while he was stuck aboard a British ship. The Brits detained him whilst they shelled the tar out of Fort McHenry. Fort McHenry was defending Baltimore and Key was defending Dr. William Beanes. Beanes had been captured after the burning of Washington D.C. After the shelling, Keyes put pen to paper. As an added bonus, Dr. Beanes made it out OK.
The first stanza (there are four but we only sing the first) consists of four sentences three of which are questions.
O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Question Number 1: Can you see the flag this morning?
Whose broad strips and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
Question Number 2: Really, it was there last night. It was a striped flag with some stars on it that was madly flapping from the shock waves of bombs. Is it still there?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
The only line not in question form.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Question Number 3: By far everyone’s favorite part.
Officially adopted as the national anthem by Congress in 1931, it is a poem about the flag of a fledgling nation sung to the tune of an English drinking song.
The flag Francis Scott Key saw and wrote about is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
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