The Star-Spangled Banner

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the morning of the 14th of September 1814, a Maryland lawyer named Francis Scott Key watched a flag change over Fort McHenry. He was aboard a truce vessel among the British fleet. Through a wet night of bombardment he had no idea who was winning. Then a small storm flag came down at the fort, and a far larger garrison flag climbed up in its place. That sight produced the poem that became "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the United States.

  The anthem's origins raise puzzles that its famous opening line hides. Why was a civilian lawyer sitting among enemy warships in the first place? Whose music carries his words, and who first sang them in public? How long did the country wait before making the song official, and which rivals stood in its way? And why do some Americans still refuse to stand when it plays?

  151161

• 2. A Doctor Taken Prisoner

  ›

  On the 28th of August 1814, British forces arrested a physician named William Beanes in his home at Upper Marlboro, Maryland. The arrest followed the Burning of Washington and the Raid on Alexandria. Beanes was accused of helping to detain British army stragglers who had been ransacking local farms in search of food. He was a friend of Key's, and that friendship set the whole story in motion.

  On the 2nd of September, Key wrote to his mother from his home in Georgetown. He described the plan to seek Beanes's release by flag-vessel and wrote, "I hope to return in about 8 or 10 days." He admitted he did not know where to find the fleet. With permission from President Madison, Key travelled about 40 miles by land from Washington to Baltimore, arriving on the morning of the 4th.

  In Baltimore, Key found Colonel John Stuart Skinner, an American agent for prisoners of war. Skinner leased a 60-foot sloop-rigged packet ship from the brothers John and Benjamin Ferguson, who ran a cargo and passenger service between Baltimore and Norfolk. The ship carried a nine-man crew under John Ferguson. It left Baltimore on the 5th and headed down the Chesapeake Bay.

  On the 6th, the little vessel met HMS Royal Oak and several troopships near the mouth of the Patuxent. There the Americans learned that Beanes was held aboard HMS Tonnant, farther down the bay. Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm sent the frigate Hebrus to escort them to Tangier Island, where he guessed the Tonnant lay. Around noon on the 7th, they spotted the flagship near the mouth of the Potomac.

  After dinner aboard the Tonnant, Skinner and Key argued their case to Major-General Robert Ross and Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane. Ross at first refused. He changed his mind after reading letters Key had brought, written by wounded British prisoners who praised the kind treatment they had received from American doctors. Beanes would go free. But Key and Skinner had overheard details of the planned attack on Baltimore, so the British would not let them go ashore until after the battle.

  On the morning of the 8th, the three Americans were moved to the frigate HMS Surprise, and the fleet crept up the Chesapeake toward Baltimore.

  34567

• 3. Rockets and Bombs

  ›

  On the 11th of September, off the North Point peninsula, Colonel Skinner insisted that the Americans return to their own truce vessel. The British allowed it, under guard, and the little ship stayed tied to the Surprise. Admiral Cochrane then moved his flag onto the shallow-draft Surprise so he could join the bombardment squadron in the Patapsco River.

  At sunrise on the 13th of September, the 16-ship attack force opened fire on Fort McHenry, and the barrage lasted 25 hours. HMS Erebus supplied the rockets that Key would later call a red glare. Five heavy-mortar bomb ships, the Terror, Volcano, Devastation, Meteor and Aetna, supplied the bursting bombs. Between 1,500 and 1,800 shells and more than 700 rockets were fired at the fort.

  The damage was surprisingly small. Four men died in the fort and 24 were wounded. The fort's cannon were formidable, and the British ships had to fire from their maximum range to stay clear of them. At that distance their aim was poor.

  All through the rain and the night, Key could tell that the fort's smaller storm flag was still flying. Whether the fort would hold was a question only dawn could answer.

  Both flags had been sewn by a woman in a house on a Baltimore street.

  15897

• 4. Flag and Page

  ›

  Mary Young Pickersgill made both of the fort's flags, working with other helpers in her home on Pratt Street in Baltimore. The big one carried 15 stars and 15 stripes. It later became known as the Star-Spangled Banner, and it is on display today at the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Amelia Fowler restored it in 1914, and it was treated again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.

  Key began writing aboard ship that morning, on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. On the late afternoon of the 16th of September, he, Skinner and Beanes were released from the fleet. They reached Baltimore that evening. Key finished the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying. The manuscript had no title and no signature.

  The next day, the poem was printed as a broadside under the title "Defence of Fort M'Henry." It soon reached a national audience through The Analectic Magazine.

  Key had not started from nothing. Much of the flag imagery and some of the wording came from an earlier song of his own, "When the Warrior Returns." He wrote it to honor Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart on their return from the First Barbary War. Both songs were set to the same borrowed melody.

  101113142

• 5. A Borrowed Melody

  ›

  Joseph H. Nicholson, Key's brother-in-law, was the first to notice that the new words fit a famous tune. The tune was "The Anacreontic Song," by the English composer John Stafford Smith. It had been written for the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. Nicholson carried the poem to a Baltimore printer, who anonymously produced the first known broadside on the 17th of September. Only two copies are known to survive.

  On the 20th of September, the Baltimore Patriot and The American both printed the song with the note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." It spread quickly, and 17 newspapers from Georgia to New Hampshire eventually ran it. Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store in Baltimore then published words and music together. His arrangement added a raised fourth note, which became the standard departure from the original English song.

  The first public performance came in October 1814. Baltimore actor Ferdinand Durang sang it at Captain McCauley's tavern. In November, Washington Irving, then editing a magazine in Philadelphia, reprinted it.

  By the early 20th century, many competing versions were in use. President Woodrow Wilson asked the U.S. Bureau of Education to produce one standard version. The Bureau recruited five musicians to agree on an arrangement. They were Walter Damrosch, Will Earhart, Arnold J. Gantvoort, Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa.

  Their agreed version premiered at Carnegie Hall on the 5th of December 1917. The Oratorio Society of New York performed it under Damrosch, on a program that also included Elgar's Carillon and Pierné's The Children's Crusade. A handwritten tally of the five men's votes, measure by measure, has survived.

  2425262729

• 6. The Long Road to Official

  ›

  In 1889, the U.S. Navy became the first branch to formally adopt the song. A plaque at Fort Meade, South Dakota, credits that post with starting the national idea in 1892. There, Colonel Caleb Carlton made the song a ritual at retreat and at the close of parades and concerts. He later wrote that Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont ordered it played at every Army post each evening at retreat.

  In 1916, President Wilson ordered the song played at military and other appropriate occasions. Baseball took it up soon after. Game One of the 1918 World Series, during the seventh-inning stretch, is often cited as the first time. Evidence shows earlier performances, though, at a Philadelphia Opening Day in 1897 and at New York's Polo Grounds from 1898. Playing it before every game began during World War II.

  Competition was real. "Hail, Columbia" had served for most official functions through the 19th century, and "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" shared its melody with Britain's "God Save the King." Between 1918 and 1929, Maryland congressman John Charles Linthicum introduced six bills to make the song official. All six failed.

  In 1927, the National Federation of Music Clubs, doubting the song's suitability, ran a contest for a new anthem. They chose the text of "America the Beautiful." The contest drew 901 compositions and a $1,500 prize, but the judges named no winner.

  On the 3rd of November 1929, Robert Ripley drew a cartoon panel declaring, "Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem." The following year, Veterans of Foreign Wars launched a petition that gathered five million signatures. It reached the House Committee on the Judiciary on the 31st of January 1930. That same day, Elsie Jorss-Reilley and Grace Evelyn Boudlin sang the song for the committee to rebut the claim that ordinary people could not reach its high notes.

  The committee sent the bill to the House floor, and the House passed it later that year. The Senate approved it on the 3rd of March 1931, and President Herbert Hoover signed it into law. The legal text counts all four stanzas as the anthem, though only the first is usually sung.

  In 1956, when Congress weighed adopting "In God We Trust" as the national motto, supporters pointed to a motto line in the poem's fourth verse.

  1730323741

• 7. Voices and Missteps

  ›

  The song spans 19 semitones, a range of a twelfth, and the melody sung today is the soprano part. Few amateurs can manage it. Humorist Richard Armour joked in It All Started With Columbus about a young lawyer named "Francis Off Key." Even professionals forget the words. That is one reason the anthem is often pre-recorded and lip-synced, as at Boston's Fenway Park, according to the SABR publication The Fenway Project. In March 2005, a government-sponsored National Anthem Project began after a Harris Interactive poll found many adults knew neither the lyrics nor the history.

  In American sport, NFL games have opened with the anthem since the end of World War II, by order of commissioner Elmer Layden. The NHL and Major League Soccer require both the Canadian and American anthems whenever teams from both countries meet. The Buffalo Sabres play both before every home game, because of their large Canadian fan base.

  On the 12th of September 2001, the day after the September 11 attacks, Queen Elizabeth II let the Band of the Coldstream Guards play the anthem at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard. The next day at a memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral, she joined in singing it, which had never happened before. During the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests, demonstrators sang it outside the U.S. consulate-general.

  In 1968, José Feliciano strummed a slow, blues-style version at Tiger Stadium in Detroit before game five of the World Series. Many Americans in the Vietnam War era reacted with anger. Yet his performance opened the way for countless later interpretations.

  Jimi Hendrix played the anthem solo at concerts from 1968 until his death in 1970. With distortion and his guitar's vibrato arm, he imitated rockets and bombs where the lyrics would be. His Woodstock performance in 1969 appeared in the festival's documentary and entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. Asked about the criticism, he said, "I'm American so I played it... Unorthodox? I thought it was beautiful, but there you go."

  Marvin Gaye gave a soul-influenced version at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. Whitney Houston sang before Super Bowl XXV in 1991, and her recording reached number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year and number 6 in 2001. Some performances went badly. Roseanne Barr screeched her way through it at a San Diego Padres game on the 25th of July 1990, and her gestures afterward offended President George H. W. Bush. Christina Aguilera sang the wrong words before Super Bowl XLV. Steven Tyler changed lyrics in 2001 and again in 2012.

  At Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014, Renée Fleming became the first opera singer to perform it at a football game. That year, Baltimore marked the bicentennial with a new arrangement by John Williams and a Defenders Day visit to Fort McHenry by President Barack Obama. In 2016, Aretha Franklin sang for more than four minutes, full of improvisation, before a Thanksgiving Day football game. Fergie's jazzy version at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game drew criticism, and she later apologized, saying, "I'm a risk taker artistically, but clearly this rendition didn't strike the intended tone."

  On the 8th of February 2026, Charlie Puth sang it at Super Bowl LX, and many music critics judged that he had nailed it.

  4950556466

• 8. The Hireling and Slave

  ›

  The third stanza of the anthem includes the words "No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave." Since the 1990s, many commentators have read that line as a threat to enslaved people who escaped to the British. Britain had offered them freedom and a place in the Corps of Colonial Marines. Key also held slaves for much of his life. The Nation described his message to those fighting for freedom as unmistakable. The line is also said to have kept the song from adoption for almost a century.

  Mark Clague, a University of Michigan professor and Key's biographer, argues the opposite. In his reading, the poem honors the courage of Black and white defenders of Baltimore. The "hireling and slave" are British troops and their American collaborators, who face death or permanent exile. Celticist Michael Newton notes that Patriots in the Revolution routinely used "slavery" as code for British rule. Clague adds that Key freed four of the seven slaves he inherited and later supported the American Colonization Society, which bought enslaved people and freed them in what is now Liberia.

  Most recent scholars disagree with Clague. Gene A. Smith, Marc Leepson and David Roediger say Key meant runaway slaves. In 2016, The New Yorker argued that the song is racist, to the extent that nearly every older piece of American iconography bears the stain of slavery.

  In 1861, near the start of the Civil War, the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote an unofficial fifth verse that looked hopefully toward the emancipation of slaves.

  Protest at the anthem has a long history. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200 meters, turned to face their flag as the anthem played. Each raised a black-gloved fist. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman wore a human rights badge, as did both Americans. Smith later called the gesture a "human rights salute."

  Colin Kaepernick, then with the San Francisco 49ers, sat for the anthem in the first two preseason games of 2016 and went unnoticed. Before the third, he knelt. In 2017, after President Donald Trump condemned the kneeling, many NFL players protested that week. After the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, most NBA players and coaches kneeled when the 2019-20 season resumed in July 2020.

  On the 19th of June 2020, protesters in San Francisco toppled the statue of Key, the nation's first memorial to him. In June 2021, 350 black steel sculptures replaced it, honoring the first 350 Africans forced onto a slave ship from Angola in 1619. In November 2017, the California chapter of the NAACP had called on Congress to drop the anthem. Its president, Alice Huffman, said, "It's racist; it doesn't represent our community, it's anti-black."

  In 2025, after Donald Trump's tariff announcements on Canada and Mexico, Canadian crowds booed the anthem at NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS games featuring American teams.

  1820212219