How a Tone-Deaf Lawyer Wrote America’s National Anthem

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Speaker 1: This is our American stories.

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Speaker 2: And as you know, we love to tell stories about everything here on this show, particularly history, and all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. For the last century, Americans have honored our country by singing words that were written by a tone deaf lawyer to the tune of a British social club song. Francis Frank Scott Key was not someone you would have picked to write our national anthem. Here’s Mark Leebsen, author of a biography on Key, what so proudly we held, to tell us more about the unlikely events that brought us our national anthem?

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Speaker 3: And here’s the story of how Francis Scott Key, the big Washington DC lawyer, the pious patriot, wrote the words that will become our national anthem, what will become known.

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Speaker 4: As the Star Spangled Banner.

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Speaker 3: This story starts during the War of eighteen twelve with the Battle of Bladensburg Bladensburg, Maryland, just outside of Washington, d C.

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Speaker 4: This is one of.

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Speaker 3: The most embarrassing defeats in US military history. The British who changed the complexion of the War of eighteen twelve after defeating Napoleon in eighteen fourteen and sent thousands of cracked troops over here. They were raiding up the Chesapeake Bay. They came to the outskirts of Washington and they overran just a pathetic group of last minute thrown together a militiamen.

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Speaker 4: On August twenty sixth overran.

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Speaker 3: Them and came into Washington, and most people remember that they burned the White House, Treasury Department, and other public buildings and embarrassing defeat. Not so much in the terms of how many were killed. There weren’t many, because the British just moved right through. So after the Battle of Bladensburg, the British left Washington. They went back to the Chesapeake Bay and they got on their ships and they had it toward Baltimore, which people didn’t know at the time, but when they did, they took prisoner a man named doctor William Beans who owned a farm in Upper Marlborough, Maryland, which was on the way out east of Washington, d c. And he made the mistake of taking a couple of British stragglers prisoner. When the Brits saw them, they were not very happy about it, and so they took doctor Bean’s prisoner.

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Speaker 4: He was an older man, he was in his sixties.

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Speaker 3: They took him away and they had it up to Baltimore, which was, like I said, not known at the time. Prisoner releases and prisoner exchanges were common during the War of eighteen twelve.

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Speaker 4: It happened all the time.

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Speaker 3: And the man who was chosen to argue for doctor Beans’s release was a man named Francis Scott Key. He was a big lawyer in Washington, d C. He was born and raised in Maryland, in what was then Frederick County, north of the city of Frederick. He went to law school. He read the law at Saint John’s College in Annapolis, and he had a thriving practice in Washington, d C. He was known for his eloquence in front of jury’s He could talk people into things. He was asked by the family of doctor Beans to arrange his release. He was a member of a prominent family in Washington. Francis Scott Key was by the way, they called him Frank, so everybody called him Frank, so we’ll call him Frank for the rest of the story. Frank Key was asked by the Beans family to arrange the release. He got permission from President Madison, and on September Tewod eighteen fourteen, he.

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Speaker 4: Got on his horse and he rode up to Baltimore.

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Speaker 3: When he got to Baltimore, he met up with a US Army lieutenant colonel named John Skinner. Now Skinner’s job was to arrange a prisoner releases in prisoner exchanges.

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Speaker 4: So he met up with Skinner.

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Speaker 3: They got on a small American ship and they went out and looked for the British fleet, and they found them, and they were welcomed on board the flagship of the British fleet. They made their case. They did it over lunch or dinner. Wine was consumed and Frank used his powers of persuasion and the British agreed. One of the things that helped his cause was that before they left Washington. Where he left Washington, he picked up a packet of letters, letters from British prisoners who had been taken prisoner during the Battle of Bladensburg in the sacking of Washington, DC, and they testified to the fact that they were being treated very well by the Americans. So that convinced the Brits and they said, we’ll let doctor Beans go. However, we have some work to do. We are going to destroy the city of Baltimore. Now, the British purposely did not burn any private homes in Washington.

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Speaker 4: They only went off public buildings, but not so in Baltimore. Why did they want to destroy Baltimore. Well, you know, we may forget. But as in the.

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Speaker 3: Case of most of our wars, before we got into the War of eighteen twelve.

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Speaker 4: It was a very controversial thing.

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Speaker 3: Basically, it was a North South split, with Southerners generally in favor of going to war in northerners against it.

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Speaker 4: Francis Scott Key was born in the.

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Speaker 3: North and grew up there, but you really have to categorize him as a Southerner and outlook. You know, Maryland was a state in which slavery was legal. His family owned slaves. He grew up on a plantation, and he did have a conservative Southern outlook. But he was against the Americans going into the War of eighteen twelve. But keys views changed on the war when the Brits started invading up the Chesapeake Bay.

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Speaker 4: He actually joined a Georgetown militia unit.

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Speaker 3: He went out to the Chesapeake served as a quartermaster officer. He did not serve very long, just about a week, and he got tired of the war, so he quit and he went back to Georgetown. But he did support the war after that. And why were the Brits so intent on destroying Baltimore. Well, the country was divided, but not in Baltimore. The people of Baltimore were very warhawkish in the War of eighteen twelve. And you know, the US was not prepared militarily to go into this war, especially with the navy. So the call went out to private ship owners if they wanted to use their let their ships be used.

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Speaker 4: In the cause against the Brits.

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Speaker 3: They could, and Baltimore led the country in lending private ships. They were called Baltimore Clippers. They were very fast ships and they gave the Brits a lot of trouble on the seas, and the Brits did not like this. One British newspaper writer referred to Baltimore as a nest of thieves. So Princess got Key, Doctor Beans and Skinner were taken back to their American ship. Sometimes you hear that they were held prisoner during the Battle of Baltimore.

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Speaker 4: That was not quite true.

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Speaker 3: They couldn’t leave, but They wasn’t like they were below decks, you know, on bread and water. They were on the deck and they had a bird’s eye view of what became the largest sustained bombing in military history to that time. The Brits had nineteen ships out there in Baltimore Harbor.

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Speaker 4: Four of them were bomb ships.

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Speaker 3: These were squat ships with giant two hundred and fifty pound cannons firing away. On that night of December thirteen, fourteenth, some fifteen hundred bombs, mortars and rockets were fired onto the city of Baltimore. Rockets, you know, this was only the second time in the history of war that rockets were used. They were called Congreve rockets. They looked like what we know rockets, looked like long and cylindrical with fins on the bottom.

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Speaker 4: But they didn’t have any guidance system.

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Speaker 3: The rockets red glare, and bombs were bursting in the air, but they weren’t aimed very well, and there was very very well. There was no loss of life in Baltimore or at Fort McHenry, which fired back with plenty of cannon on its own, although the people in Baltimore were terrified because the houses were shaking, I mean, that’s.

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Speaker 4: How terrifying the bombardment was.

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Speaker 3: Plus there was a giant storm that night, a thunderstorm, could have been a tornado, could have been a hurricane, we.

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Speaker 4: Don’t really know.

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Speaker 3: But it was an amazing night of fifteen hundred bombs, rockets going off, thunder lightning. And there also was a land component to the Battle of Baltimore, which not to get into very much here, but just to know that the bridge tried, under the cover of that bombing to.

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Speaker 4: Attack and they got pretty close to the city.

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Speaker 3: But their leading general was shot and killed off of his source and that sort of took the steam out of the land component. Plus Baltimore was fortified much better than Washington was. You know, the people in Baltimore could see the fires of Washington burning on August twenty sixth, so they were prepared.

00:08:53
Speaker 2: And we’re listening to Mark leaps and tell an important chapter of American history, the War of eighteen twelve. The Revolutionary War was continuing. This was chapter two and great storytelling by Mark Leapsen on the life of Francis Scott Key. When we come back, more of Mark leaps in his book, By the Way, whatso proudly we hailed, pick it up at Amazon or the usual suspects. When we come back, more of this remarkable American story, the story of our national anthem.

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Speaker 1: Here on our American.

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Speaker 2: Stories, and we continue with our American stories and the story of our national anthem, which of course means telling the story of Francis Scott Key.

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Speaker 1: Let’s return to author Mark Leapsen.

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Speaker 3: It lasted twenty five straight hours, but then in the middle of the night, at about three o’clock in.

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Speaker 4: The morning, everything stopped.

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Speaker 3: And Franciscot, Key, Beans and Skinner, who were pacing the deck, didn’t know what happened. It was dark, it was foggy, rainy, and all they knew that.

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Speaker 4: Was the battle was over.

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Speaker 3: So they were pacing the deck and they waited until the dawn’s early light. And Key looked out of his glass and he could see that Fort McHenry had a flag flying over it. But you know, those flags were big, they were made of wool. It had rained all night. The flag was just hanging there. He couldn’t tell what it was. That flag was taken down, another flag was put up. There was a little bit of a breeze, and what did he see? He saw that our flag was still there, and this inspired him to write the words that would become the national anthem.

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Speaker 4: You know, Franciscot Key.

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Speaker 3: Frank Key was a amateur poet.

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Speaker 4: He wasn’t a good amateur poet.

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Speaker 3: But his poetry was never meant to be shown beyond family in France, which makes it even more ironic that the words that he wrote that day. You know, hundreds of millions of Americans know those words. The other thing that people might not know about the Battle of Baltimore is that it was a turning point in the War of eighteen twelve. There were peace talks going on, but after the British slunk out of Baltimore, you know, he realized when he saw the stars and stripes, our flag was still there, the British ships were gone.

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Speaker 4: We had won. If peace talks continued.

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Speaker 3: The Treaty of Ghent was signed in January of eighteen fifteen. But Frank knew that Baltimore was saved. He had a letter in his pocket. Now people will often say that he wrote the words on an envelope. Well, you know, technically there were no envelopes back then, there were no envelopes. It wasn’t technically, but letters themselves were the envelope, so on the back of the Frank scrawled a few verses.

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Speaker 4: He and Skinner and Beams were released.

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Speaker 3: He went back to Baltimore to a hotel and finished the four stanzas in the hotel.

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Speaker 4: Now, what happened.

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Speaker 3: Next there are a lot of question marks about we don’t know the details. One reason is because even though Francis Scott Key lived for thirty more years, he spoke in public about it just once. Did not mention the flag, and all the letters that he wrote that have been uncovered, well, he mentions it only once in a letter to a friend in early October, and then he writes about that night, but he doesn’t again mention writing the words that would become national anthem. He talks about how brave the Americans were and how much he didn’t like.

00:12:42
Speaker 4: The British officers.

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Speaker 3: What we know about what happened next was from a book that came out in the eighteen fifties, and it was written by Key’s brother in law, Roger Brooke Tawney, who was married to Frank Key’s only sister. They were very close the two families, and we know Roger Brook Tawny as Chief Justice of.

00:13:05
Speaker 4: The United States. He claims that this is what Frank told him. What happened. Now, we can corroborate a lot of this with.

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Speaker 3: Good primary source evidence, such as newspaper stories and some journals and diaries.

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Speaker 4: So here’s what we think happened after that.

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Speaker 3: Somebody could have been Tawny, could have been another one of Key’s brother in laws took what Frank wrote to a printer, because we do know that the next day those verses appeared on a broadsheet and they were plastered all over Baltimore. In fact, people the Defenders of Fort McHenry had them. The title was not the star spangled banner. The title was Defense of Fort McHenry. And it said on there to be sung to the tune of an Acreon in Heaven.

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Speaker 4: So what is an Acreon in Heaven? An Acreon in Heaven.

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Speaker 3: Is a song that was the theme song of a British men’s club called the Anakreontic Society. And these men would meet at taverns for dinner and for drinks. They would play their song. They woul drink, they would discuss issues of the day. You often hear that the national anthem is sung to the tune of a British drinking song.

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Speaker 4: Not quite true.

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Speaker 3: It’s not in the category of ninety nine bottles of Beer on the Wall. It was a little more high minded than that. But it was the theme song of a kind of like a high flutin men’s book club that met in taverns. So there’s a little bit of truth to that. Now, it was not uncommon for the words of songs to be put to tunes that people knew in the early nineteenth century, and that’s exactly what happened with this one. And there the people who know this stuff have counted something like seventy five fifty to seventy five songs that were put to an acaryon in Heaven, including Adams and Liberty, which was a very popular patriotic song. We do know that in November of eighteen fourteen, the song was printed on sheet music by Carr’s Music Store in Baltimore and the title was changed to the Star Spangled Banner. And you know, there’s been controversy or just you know, historians have not agreed until relatively recently whether or not Francis Scott Key had in.

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Speaker 4: Mind the fact that he was writing a song that night.

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Speaker 3: Until relatively recently, historians believed that he wasn’t because he wasn’t a songwriter. He did write two hymns. You know, he was a very religious man. He almost went into the episcopal priesthood. There’s a letter that he wrote to the Isshop of Baltimore in which the bishop had asked him to join the priesthood, and Frank said he really wanted to, but you know, he had a family and he needed to feed his family.

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Speaker 4: He didn’t have that. He needed to make money as a lawyer. He had.

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Speaker 3: He went wound up having eleven children. He was very active in his church. He was a lay minister, and he was very religious, as the words the star spangle banner indicate. So was he writing a song or not. Historians have changed their mind in the last four or five years, and the people who studied this now belief that he did have the song in mind, even though he wasn’t a musical man.

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Speaker 4: There’s several reasons for this.

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Speaker 3: One is that he wound up writing these words in rhyme and meter that fit exactly the song. And also that you know a few years earlier, there was a dinner given in Washington, d c for Stephen Decatur, the hero of the Tripolitan Wars, and a song was written for that and played that night by Francis Scott Key. There’s an article in the newspaper in Georgetown that describes it, and it includes the words and in those words are the words star Spangled Banner. So, putting it all together, stories do believe that Frank had in mind that he was writing a song, even though he was just a poet, an amateur poet that night. The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until officially until nineteen thirty one. We did the United States did not have national anthem until nineteen thirty one, but it was one of the songs that was played at patriotic.

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Speaker 4: Gatherings such as Fourth of July.

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Speaker 3: But in a few years after he wrote it, all throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century became more and more popular, but still it was only one of many songs that were played, including Yankee Doodle Dandy and others.

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Speaker 4: And it wasn’t until nineteen.

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Speaker 3: Thirty one that Congress enacted a resolution that made the Star Spangled Banner in the national anthem. It was controversial there were hearings on Capitol Hill. People argued against it, saying it was hard to sing, which people still argue today. They’re said it was written by a brit the tune and others said it glorified war. The proponents of it brought in a soprano to sing it on Capitol Hill during the hearings, and that sort of turned the tide, and the Starstangle banner became the national anthem in nineteen thirty one, even though it was written in eighteen fourteen.

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Speaker 4: And one last.

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Speaker 3: Thing, talking about little bit of irony here, I told you that Francis Scott Key was not a good poet, and if you don’t believe me, just read his poetry.

00:18:08
Speaker 4: You can read it online. But he also was, you know, unmusical.

00:18:13
Speaker 3: There there was an article that I found when I was doing research for my book What’s So Probably we hailed the biography of Francis Scott Key that had it was an interview with a Philadelphia newspaper man with one of Francis Scott Key’s granddaughters. And you know, they always would ask, you know, tell us about your grandfather, tell us about your father, Well, you know, did he play an instrument?

00:18:35
Speaker 4: Etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 3: And the woman said, you know, as a matter of fact, he was on musical And then she told an anecdote which may or may not be true. She said that he was in Alabama in eighteen thirty three. He was doing some legal work for President Andrew Jackson, and he was at some kind of gathering, and as would happen, a band was there and they played the Star Spangled Banner, and so Scott Key was sitting with some people the band was playing, and after it was over, the granddaughter told this newspaper reporter, my grandfather turned to the woman next to him and said, that was a beautiful air, beautiful tune.

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Speaker 4: What’s the name of it?

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Speaker 3: So you know, it’s probably apocryphal, but it does go to show that that man who wrote that song, the man who wrote the song that so many hundreds of millions of Americans know the first verse of, was a bad poet, and he most likely was tone deaf.

00:19:39
Speaker 2: And beautiful work on that piece by Robbie as always, and a special thanks to Mark Leipsen, author of What So Proudly We Held? A tone deaf bad poet ends up writing our national anthem as always, our stories. Our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. The story of the tone deaf, bad poet who wrote at the National Anthem, Francis Scott Key’s story, frank Keyes story.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: Here on our American stories.