The Star Spangled Banner

How many of us go through the motions of singing the anthem at sporting events without really knowing the story behind the poem that is the foundation of what later become our national song? The Arizona Republic tells that story very well:

Perhaps you've wondered what prompts all those goose bumps when the singer hits the high notes of The Star-Spangled Banner.

Oh, one reason is simple admiration for a Whitney Houston-class singer who can manage the octave-and-a-half range of a difficult tune.

But there is another reason for all those goose bumps - for the racing blood and pounding heart. The national anthem - The Star-Spangled Banner - is a song of defiance in the face of malevolence. And there is no demeanor more essentially American than defiance when staring down the barrel of mortal danger.

The fact is, most Americans don't really appreciate just how defiant - how very "in your face, Great Britain!" - The Star-Spangled Banner truly was when written by the young lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key on Sept. 13, 1814.

And the reason for that is pretty straightforward: The anthem does not end where Ms. Houston, et al, typically end it. There are four stanzas to The Star-Spangled Banner, not just the one belted out before sporting events.

Most of us know the essential outline of how Key wrote his song - or, more precisely, his poem, since others would later set the poem to music.

The War of 1812, a cruel fight over control of trade routes between the United States and Great Britain, had been raging hot and cold for two years. A new British strategy called for breaking the back of the fledgling nation by splitting it in two. And, to accomplish that, the British planned to attack Baltimore, then the most important American port south of Boston.

To get to Baltimore, though, the British had to get past Fort McHenry. And the commander of Fort McHenry, Maj. George Armistead, was nothing if not defiant himself. Knowing the British likely would be on their way, he commissioned a Baltimore widow, Mary Young Pickersgill, to sew an utterly enormous flag measuring 30 feet by 42 feet. He wanted the attackers to know exactly who was home at Fort McHenry.

It was for that flag that Francis Scott Key searched the horizon "by dawn's early light" from the deck of H.M.S. Minden on that September morning.

The young lawyer had successfully argued with the British squadron commander for the release of a friend who recently had been taken prisoner in Washington, D.C. Together, Key and Dr. William Beanes watched the fierce, two-day bombardment, never certain whether the British or Americans had prevailed. Key's defiant heart soared when he saw the equally defiant gesture by Armistead - raising his monster flag over the battered fort "by twilight's last gleaming." Shortly afterward, the British gave up the attack and withdrew.

Begun on an envelope in Baltimore Harbor, the poem Key titled The Defence of Fort M'Henry was completed later that day in a hotel, and within days was printed on pamphlets. Not much later, it was put to music to the tune of a British drinking song called To Anacreon in Heaven. And as they say, the rest is history.

Lesser-known history tells us much about the point of view of the young poet, Mr. Keys, on that fateful wartime day.

The third stanza of Key's poem is generally judged so virulently anti-British and gore-besotted that it was dropped from recitation long before the song became the national anthem in 1931. It revels in British blood that "has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution."

So, portions of the poem-song were dropped out of political politeness. A big deal? Actually, yes. Losing the later stanzas impacts the meaning of the surviving stanza for one significant reason: The first stanza is largely a set of questions that are answered later on.

Key - an ardent opponent of the war, by the way - asked, "What so proudly we hailed?" And, of course, "does that star-spangled banner yet wave?"

It is not until the second stanza that Key invites us to share in his joy of discovery, to join with him and Dr. Beane at that riveting, heart-pounding and, yes, fist-pumpingly defiant moment when they learn the flag does indeed yet fly.

What a moment that was. And how fortunate that Key was present, so that his spellbinding poetry could take us there nearly 200 years later:

"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!"