American Songbook	Star-Spangled Banner Flag National Museum of American History
#3 "Star-Spangled Banner"      NATIONAL ANTHEM	Original music by J. S. Smith; lyrics / poem by Francis Scott Key 1814	Star-Spangled Banner Flag: New Exhibit at Smithsonian

In 1777 the Flag Act created the official U.S. flag with thirteen stars and thirteen stripes. The Flag Act of 1794 authorized a second flag with fifteen stats and fifteen stripes. During the War of 1812, a Major Armistead commissioned in 1813 Mary Pickersgill to make two flags for Ft. McHenry which was guarding the city of Baltimore, MD. With help she made a smaller storm flag (17x25 ft) and a garrison flag (30x42 ft). The garrison flag was to fly from a 90 ft pole and would be seen at a great distance. During an extensive British bombardment of Ft. McHenry, American forces held fast and damaged some the British ships to cause them to retreat. In the morning of Dec. 14, 1814 Americans in the fort fired guns and raised the garrison flag as they played "Yankee Doodle". A young lawyer, Francis Scott Key was on a ship eight miles away and was able to see the garrison flag flying. Key wrote the poem in response to the American defeat of the British navy and our survival as a nation. The flag became known as the Star-Spangled Banner, but stayed in the Armistead family until her grandson, Eben Appleton donated the flag to the Smithsonian in 1912. Unfortunately the family had let dignitaries and veterans have fragment souvenirs including one star. In 1999 Hilliary Clinton initiated a "Save America's Treasures" and the flag was conserved and put in a special case where it is today. it is a huge flag (30x42) and even today garrison flags are smaller (20x38). (Flag Care and Etiquette)

The third Flag Act of 1818 reduced the flag to thirteen stripes and provide that a star be added on the Fourth of July after a state was admitted to the union.

Thus today the flag has fifty stars and still thirteen stripes for the original colonies. Francis Scott Key's poem was put to music, a tune based on a drinking song by John Stafford Smith, that had become popular in the U.S. The song is difficult to sing, since has a range of one and a half octaves. Usually only the first of four stanzas  is sung. The "Star-Spangled Banner" (originally "Defense of Ft. McHenry") was considered one of a number of unofficial American hymns along with "Hail Columbia", "Stars and Stripes Forever" and later "America The Beautiful". In 1889 the U.S. Navy made the "Star-Spangled Banner" the official song for raising the flag and in 1916 Woodrow Wilson ordered the song played at all official occasions. It was not until 3 March 1931 that Herbert Hoover signed the law adopting the Star-Spangled Banner" the National Anthem of the United States. In World War II the singing of the National Anthem before a baseball game started and now is a tradition of most sporting events. (Whitney Houston: Super Bowl)

[edit] Lyrics

 

Cover of sheet music for "The Star-Spangled Banner", transcribed for piano by Ch. Voss, Philadelphia: G. Andre & Co., 1862

1

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

2

On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in 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.

3

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

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.

4

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our Trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. ^[6]