10 Things You Didn’t Know About the American National Anthem

On September 14, 1814, as the Battle of Baltimore was taking place, a Maryland-based lawyer named Francis Scott Key penned those famous first lines of a lyric that would later become known around the world: “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming…”

It was, at the time, a verse called “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” And it was all about the Americans’ valiant fight to stave off the British during the battle in the War of 1812. Since then, we’ve all heard it a million times before sporting events and at official ceremonies as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Singers love the ability the anthem gives them to show off their vocal range. Olympians proudly listen to it play after basking in the glory of their gold medal wins. But how much do you really know about the song and the man who wrote it?

In this list, we’ll take a look at Key, the anthem, and some lesser-known facts behind its creation and rise. You’ll never view the anthem quite the same way again!

Related: Ten Facts about the American Civil War That Few People Know

10 Key Wasn’t Under Arrest

It’s a common misconception that Key wrote the verse that became “The Star-Spangled Banner” while he was under arrest by British forces on one of their warships in the harbor outside Baltimore. That’s not true, though. As a lawyer working in Washington at the time, he had actually been specifically dispatched by President James Madison to free another arrested person. That person was a prominent Maryland surgeon named Dr. William Beanes. He had been captured during the previous Battle of Bladensburg, and he was being held on the British ship out in the water. Key, then, went as an emissary of the United States to negotiate for Dr. Beanes’ release.

Along with a fellow lawyer named John Stuart Skinner, Key sailed out on an American ship into Baltimore Harbor. Then, on September 7—a week before he eventually penned the famous anthem—Key and Skinner went on board the warship Tonnant. There, they dined with British officials and negotiated Dr. Beanes’ release. There was but one catch: the three of them could not go ashore until after the British attacked Baltimore.

So, three days later, Key, Skinner, and Dr. Beanes all returned to the American sloop that was now sitting out in the middle of the harbor. From there, beginning on September 13, the trio watched as the British naval fleet began to bombard Baltimore from the harbor in front of them. In that way, Key was “captive” in a place from which he could not leave—but he was not at any point a formal prisoner of the invading enemy.^[1]

9 No Poetry, Please

From the very start, Key intended his verses to be sung as lyrics—and not recited as poetry. While it’s a common misconception that Key meant for his inspiring words to be a poem that was only later transposed into song, that is not the case. And while the lawyer was an amateur poet during his life, too, this one wasn’t one of his attempts at poetry. Instead, from the very start, Key linked up his work to a popular song of the day.

The song was called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and Key himself was quite familiar with it already. In fact, he had already written a verse nearly a decade before in which he also lined up the rhymes to match the melody of that old song. He even made mention of a “star-spangled flag” in that 1805 rhyme, which Key had penned to honor two naval heroes of the Barbary War.

So, suffice to say, Key very much intended for his rousing words about the War of 1812 to be sung alongside musical accompaniment, and not merely recited in poetic verse. It’s ironic, though, because Key’s anti-British message was composed to parallel a distinctly English song. The aforementioned “To Anacreon in Heaven” was an old English pub song that had been composed nearly five decades earlier and sung by a popular London pub club for decades before Key moved to Americanize it.^[2]

8 Based on a London Booze Song…

The poem that became “The Star-Spangled Banner” was in fact based on the melody of an old English drinking song. The song was called “The Anacreontic Song,” and later popularly known as “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It had been an anthem for a social club formed in London in the 1760s called the Anacreontic Society. The men who made up that club were a wide mix of noblemen, gentlemen, and even some common workers who took an enjoyment in music in general.

They would meet at London-area coffeehouses, and later at the famous Crown and Anchor Tavern, to eat, drink, sing, and be merry. The singing is the most notable part here: their meetings would always begin with a concert performed by sometimes extremely talented musicians. Johann Nepomuk Hummel reportedly performed there, and Franz Joseph Haydn even once sat in the audience for a show. After the performances, club members would sit down for a meal and some booze—and that’s when “The Anacreontic Song” would be sung.

It was one of many songs the men would sing in their pub club outings. As you might be able to imagine, they’d take long pulls off a drink, sing the song, take more pulls, sing more songs, and generally spend their nights like that. The club grew in popularity over several decades beginning in the 1760s, and while it was always exclusive, it was also well known. And so, their songs were, too. By the early 1800s, then, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was a well-recognized melody and thus relatively easily picked out by Key for an Americanized version of the London pub tune.^[3]

7 Flag Changes Affected the Song

Of course, the key moment in Key’s verse is when he saw the flag “hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.” However, as historians now note, the flag written about by the lawyer-turned-poet didn’t actually fly “through the perilous fight.” At least, not all the way! While Baltimore was being bombed by the British during the battle, there was also a serious rainstorm coming down. And the garrison that Key was watching from his sloop out in the bay had to adjust their flag-flying procedures on the, uh, fly because of it.

See, the garrison had a 30-foot-by-42-foot (9.1-by-12.8-meter) American flag that they liked to raise during regular times. But the flag was so big and so heavy that it took nearly a dozen men to raise the thing up a flagpole in dry times under perfect conditions. With the rain pouring down as it was on that fateful day Key wrote his verse, that flag would have weighed hundreds of pounds. Not only could the garrison’s men not have hoisted it, but it likely would have snapped the flagpole in the wind and rain as it became more waterlogged through the storm.

So, the American soldiers made an adjustment. While the Battle of Baltimore was raging around them, along with the actual rain, they hoisted a much smaller 17-foot-by-25-foot (5.2-by-7.6-meter) flag in its place. After that, the smaller flag made it through the night, and the storm dissipated. A group of men woke up early the next morning to lower it and raise the big, full flag during the dry second day. It was that flag—the massive one, in its re-raise—that Key saw and referenced in the soon-to-be National Anthem.^[4]

6 All About Fort McHenry

We’ve already been noting it in this list, so we might as well make it official: Key originally intended the song to be all about Fort McHenry. The Baltimore-based fort was the location of the battle Key witnessed from far out in the bay that week. And when he went to scribble those now-famous lyrics onto the back of a letter he had with him on the morning of September 14, he did so with the fort itself in mind as the central character of the work.

But even then, he didn’t title the piece just yet. As he penned the verse, he left it without a title, apparently waiting until later to choose how he wanted to reference the event. And it’s not clear he was even the one who came up with the original title itself. Less than a week after the Battle of Baltimore’s fiery events, Key’s new verse was published in Maryland newspapers and on broadsides around Baltimore under the title “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” Whether Key sent it in that way or editors applied the title afterward remains unclear.

Of course, in the decades and centuries since then, the title changed to what we know it as today. Interestingly, it appears to have been a Baltimore music store that first offered its current title, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to the public when it began selling sheet music under that name in November 1814.^[5]

5 A Long Wait for Recognition

While Key’s verse was initially very well received among Baltimore residents and soon Americans even further away, it wasn’t turned into the national anthem for a long time. For well over a century, Americans didn’t see “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the song that best depicted their nation. It was one of them, to be sure. Key’s creation was used as a patriotic song during various periods in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. But other songs were also in the mix on that front: “Hail Columbia” was one popular patriotic production, while the well-known “Yankee Doodle” was another.

During the Civil War, Union troops informally used “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a way to fire themselves up for battle and their anti-slavery cause. When those troops came home from the war, they spread the song to even further corners of the country. Over the fifty years after their push for its popularity, Key’s song was practically everywhere. By 1916, President Woodrow Wilson had seen enough: he designated it for official military ceremonies, but that order did not make it the official national anthem.

That distinction finally came in 1931, after decades of failed attempts, when Congress formally decreed that “The Star-Spangled Banner” was the national anthem of the United States.^[6]

4 Major Racial Undertones

The War of 1812 was fought for several reasons, but one of the major issues was impressment. That was the British practice of conscripting American sailors to fight in the Royal Navy. The Americans didn’t care for that, of course, and tensions had boiled over by 1812 on that front. However, with Americans resisting conscription, British authorities saw a wedge: as the war broke out, they offered refuge to enslaved people who escaped their masters and fought against the United States.

Naturally, Southern slaveholders feared a widespread revolt, while the British hoped to capitalize on a surge in Black troops. The offer did work to some extent. Several thousand Black men—mostly from Maryland and Virginia—escaped slavery and joined the British. They were placed in the British Corps of Colonial Marines and tasked with fighting against American forces, with promises of freedom and land after the war.

We give all that backstory because that dynamic was central to Key’s views and opinions entering the War of 1812. Key, who was himself a slaveholder and supporter of the institution of slavery, penned this lesser-known portion of the third verse as part of his original work: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Those lyrics are widely interpreted as referencing, at least in part, the Black Colonial Marines whom Key viewed as traitors.

For years afterward, that verse sat uncomfortably with many Americans. Not only did escaped enslaved people fight for Britain, but many Black men also fought on the American side. Later generations were also uneasy about celebrating a national anthem written by a pro-slavery figure who used such language. As a result, the verse is rarely performed today and has largely faded into obscurity.

One final footnote: Britain did make good on its promises. After the war, many former Colonial Marines were resettled in Trinidad and Tobago, where they were granted land. Their descendants, known locally as Merikins, still live there today.^[7]

3 Key Owned Slaves Himself

Even with the most charitable reading of the lyrics in that third verse, Key’s background and family upbringing were deeply problematic by modern standards. As a Maryland slaveholder, he came from a family that had enslaved Black people for generations and continued the practice himself.

At one point, he publicly described Black Americans as “a distinct and inferior race.” He later advocated emancipation only if freed people were sent to Africa and helped found the American Colonization Society, which relocated thousands of freed Black people to Liberia. He also used his legal career to assist slaveholders in recapturing escaped enslaved people. Not great, to say the very least.^[8]

2 Key’s Personal Life Was Unique

Aside from his pro-slavery views, Key’s personal life was remarkably unique. For one, he was a very good lawyer—and not a very good poet. He hoped to make money writing poetry at some point in his life, but that never really paid the bills for him. Had it not been for “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it’s almost certain he would have died in anonymity, at least as far as the art world is concerned. And if that isn’t crazy enough, try this shocking fact out: Throughout his life, Key’s family believed him to be tone-deaf. The man supposedly couldn’t even carry a tune, and yet he wrote the most famous American song ever produced. Fame works in mysterious ways.

But that’s not to say he wasn’t a good lawyer. In fact, he was one of the best barristers in Washington during his life. He rose to become a prominent political insider in Washington, DC throughout his law career. Historians now consider him to be an important part of the early days of the American experiment, even if his work was done relatively behind the scenes compared to presidents and other politicians.

At one point, Key became one of Andrew Jackson’s most trusted informal advisors in the president’s infamous “Kitchen Cabinet.” Nearly two decades after penning “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1833, he was appointed to become a U.S. Attorney. In that job, he prosecuted hundreds of notorious and high-level cases—including one against Richard Lawrence over the attempted assassination of Jackson in January of 1835. In all, Key argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court before dying in Baltimore in 1843.^[9]

1 Don’t Change It, Igor!

By this point, we’ve talked about Francis Scott Key quite a bit. How about we wrap this list with something that happened more than a century after he penned the anthem? In 1917, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed a law that tried to curtail any non-traditional or experimental performances of the national anthem within that state. The law stated this in part: “Whoever plays, sings, or renders the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ or any part thereof, as dance music, as an exit march, or as a part of a medley of any kind, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars.”

Fast forward 27 more years, to 1944, and famed composer Igor Stravinsky found himself in Boston for a series of shows. He had been working on an arrangement to play with the Boston Symphony for a while at that point. And his arrangement included a unique rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” that he first worked through back in 1941. Well, during his 1944 concert run with the city’s symphony, Boston cops got wind that Stravinsky was going to have his musicians perform the anthem in an unacceptable manner. So, they showed up to the concert hall and warned Stravinsky that any unique anthem renditions could violate state statutes and get him on the wrong side of the law.

Stravinsky considered altering the anthem anyway, but eventually, he decided to back down and play it as it was always intended. Boston cops who showed up at the concert hall to hear it were then forced to walk away after listening to the “normal” anthem. They couldn’t arrest the composer on the (very, very minor) infraction, and the city never wound up with $100 in fine money from it. Years later, a pic of Stravinsky appearing in what seemed to be a mugshot infamously circulated. But that was not from this non-incident. Instead, it was the standard pic taken by federal officials for his 1940 visa application. The more you know! Anyway, regarding the anthem issue, perhaps Igor’s experience served as some type of lesson to future miscreants who considered altering the anthem.^[10]