![](media/image1.jpeg){width="6.495833333333334in"
height="1.3194444444444444in"}

**\"The Star-Spangled Banner\"**

+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| ![](media/image2.                 | The Star-Spangled Banner          |
| jpeg){width="2.015277777777778in" |                                   |
| height="1.6590277777777778in"}    | This is the flag that inspired    |
|                                   | Francis Scott Key to write "The   |
|                                   | Star-Spangled Banner." The flag,  |
|                                   | which flew over Fort McHenry in   |
|                                   | Baltimore during the 1814 battle  |
|                                   | at the fort, is a 15-star,        |
|                                   | 15-stripe garrison flag made in   |
|                                   | 1813 and loosely woven so that it |
|                                   | could fly on a 90-foot flagpole.  |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

This patriotic song, whose words were written by Francis Scott Key on
Sept. 14, 1814, during the War of 1812 with Great Britain, was adopted
by Congress as the U.S. national anthem in 1931. For many years before
Congress made this choice, the song was popular and regulations for
military bands required that it be played for ceremonies.

Though Key wrote the words during the British bombardment of Fort
McHenry at Baltimore, the melody was an English tune well known in
America by the 1790s. It was the music for a poem, "To Anacreon in
Heaven," written about 1780 as the official song of a British social and
musical organization, the Anacreontic Society. In fact, Key had used the
music in 1805 to accompany another poem he wrote to honor Commodore
Stephen Decatur.

**Key Detained While Negotiating**

Key was a well known 34-year-old Washington, D.C., lawyer-poet. The
British had captured Washington and taken William Beanes, a physician,
prisoner. They were holding him aboard ship in their fleet off the
Baltimore shore. Friends of Beanes persuaded Key to negotiate his
release. Key went out to the British fleet and succeeded in gaining
Beanes' release but, because the British planned to attack Baltimore at
that time, both were detained.

During the night of Sept. 13-14, Key watched the bombardment of
Baltimore from the deck of a British ship. Although rain obscured the
fort during the night, at daybreak he could see the American flag still
flying from Fort McHenry. The fort still stood after the British had
fired some 1,800 bombs, rockets and shells at it, about 400 of them
landing inside. Four defenders were killed and 24 wounded. Key drafted
the words of a poem on an envelope. The American detainees were sent
ashore, the British fleet withdrew, and Key finished the poem and made a
good copy of it in a Baltimore hotel the next day.

**Poem an Instant Hit in Baltimore**

According to some accounts, Key showed the poem to relatives of his wife
in Baltimore who had it printed immediately and distributed throughout
the city on a handbill, entitled "The Defense of Fort McHenry." Within a
couple of weeks, Baltimore newspapers published the poem. It gained
instant popularity and was renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner." An actor
sang it to the popular British tune at a public performance in
Baltimore.

Only with the start of the Civil War did "The Star-Spangled Banner"
become a nationally popular song. During World War I, a drive began in
Congress to make it the official anthem of America's armed forces. There
were other contenders for the title, including "America the Beautiful"
and "Yankee Doodle." Maryland legislators and citizens were among the
most active groups and individuals who pressed to get Francis Scott
Key's words and accompanying English tune ratified into law as the
country's first national anthem. That finally happened when President
Herbert Hoover signed legislation on March 3, 1931.

The anthem has four verses, each ending with the line, "O'er the land of
the free and the home of the brave."