The British Navy had brought their most terrifying weapons to bear, the “bomb ships” - those “bombs bursting in air” - and if Fort McHenry were to be neutralized, British troops would freely enter Baltimore, and surely burn it to the ground. The British, having already burned much of Washington, D.C., had turned to Baltimore. The lyrics were composed by the lawyer, politician and amateur poet Francis Scott Key while held prisoner by the British in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. The question, which this immensely interesting and readable history sets out to answer, is how that victory was earned.
When Congress proclaimed the song America’s official national anthem in 1931, almost 120 years after its composition, it was acknowledging a battle that had been won long before. That was deliberate.”Ĭlague, an associate professor of musicology and American culture at the University of Michigan, has produced a work so encyclopedic, its chapters can be read per your inclination - if you are most interested in, say, what the anthem has represented to African Americans, turn to Chapter 8, “The Anthem and Black Lives.” But I recommend reading them in order, because doing so also proves the book’s thesis: that, contrary to popular myth, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was not forced on Americans by some imperious authority, but chosen by us, en masse and over decades. He set the word ‘free’ to a note so high nobody can reach it. He knows of every tribute, genuine and forced, and he’s read all the criticisms of the national anthem’s jingoism, its triumphant militarism and its original lyrics’ inclusion of the word “slave,” but not the word “America.” In fact, his knowledge of the song’s history and its uses, benign and otherwise, is so comprehensive that I was surprised he didn’t quote my personal favorite, delivered by Belize in “Angels in America,” when he claims the slaveholder who wrote the national anthem “knew what he was doing. Mark Clague knows everything about “The Star-Spangled Banner,” including how you feel about it. O SAY CAN YOU HEAR? A Cultural Biography of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by Mark Clague
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