677. USA: The Star-Spangled Banner (Part 1)

22:32Dominic Sandbrook:So Key would have, if he was going to write a letter, he would have folded it over and not used an envelope. So he couldn't have had an envelope. So with sealing wax, I guess, and a stamp. And Key would undoubtedly have taken a lot of blank paper with him for the negotiations for this doctor's release. And to write a letter to President Madison about how he was getting on. This would have been good paper and not scrap paper. So on some of this high quality notepaper, Key writes his poem. And finally that evening, he, what are we there, the 16th or something, he and the others are allowed to go back to Baltimore.

23:08Dominic Sandbrook:And he's got a room at the Indian Queen Hotel and he finishes his poem there. And the handwritten draft of the poem you can see at the Maryland Historical Society. And you can actually see how he's written three verses and then he's kind of running out of space. and he has to cram the fourth verse into the last kind of inch of paper it's like a sort of child's letter yeah we've all been there yeah exactly now i mean he was wasting his time because no one sings the fourth verse no one cares about the fourth verse it's the first verse that everyone sings right so it's the story oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming then there's all this stuff about the bombs and the rockets and then the final lines oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave oh the land of the free and the home of the brave it's very kind of 1800s 1810s slightly gushing romantic kind of rhetoric and not true to reiterate he shows this to his brother-in-law who commands a local militia unit and his brother-in-law takes it to a printer they run off a thousand copies and then they hand them out to the garrison of fort henry and then the really key thing his brother-in-law gives it to the Baltimore Patriot newspaper which prints it under the title Defense of Fort McHenry and then other papers copy it so as we approach the break a couple of things about this poem I've called it a poem and in fact you said it was a song and I said I know it's a poem but I was being a little bit unfair there because actually it's somewhere in between the two it's a thing called a broadside ballad and basically what a broadside ballad was you would write lyrics or you know write a poem to fit a very familiar tune you would say this tune is a banger i'm going to write new words for this tune i'm going to publish them in the newspaper and the reason you would use an old tune is that even if you wanted to write a new tune it's more expensive to print music than it is to print words and the reason is because you have to do the musical notation there has to be engraved by hand so you'd be better to reuse an old tune and also uh copyright law is not all it could be because there is no copyright law you tom might write lyrics to the uh tune of taxman by the beatles yes and you would publish them in the daily telegraph and you would put a little note saying, you know, tune Taxman by The Beatles.

25:40Tom Holland:And there'd be nothing The Beatles could do about it.

25:42Dominic Sandbrook:No. Because there'd be no copyright law. Correct. If your lyrics were a hit, you would hope that other newspapers, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Guardian. The Guardian probably not, I think. Well, it depends. Depends what I've written. These other newspapers might reprint your lyrics and they'd kind of go viral and you'd be a tremendous, you'd be the talk of the town other people people would shake your hand as they saw you go by and actually francis scott key has formed for doing this so in 1805 he'd written his first patriotic broadside ballad when the warrior returns which was celebrating u.s naval victories against the barbary corsairs in tripoli oh yeah they were the american navy was always fighting them weren't they yes exactly they're some of their first wars bizarrely against north african nominally Ottoman kind of, I don't know, the Emirates or something on the coast of North Africa.

26:37Dominic Sandbrook:They're always capturing people and taking them into slavery. Yes, exactly. This is the third verse of When the Warrior Returns. And if you know the Star Spangled Banner, you will spot the similarities. In the conflict resistless, its toil they endured till their foes fled dismayed from the war's desolation, and pale beamed the crescent, its splendor obscured by the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation, where each radiant star gleamed a meteor of war and the turban heads bowed to its terrible glare. Now mixed with the olive, the laurels shall wave and form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.

27:13Dominic Sandbrook:So the rhythm might sound familiar because this is written for the same tune as the Star Spangled Banner. And that tune, this will shock our American listeners. This will appal them and make them question existence itself. it's an english tune it's the tune is called the anacriotic song and it was written in 1775 by a man called john stafford smith now you'll sometimes read online that it was a bawdy drinking song of the kind that no doubt the author's cricket team sing to g themselves up a tea between uh between innings. Do you not sing bawdy drinking songs? No, we would sing anacreonatic songs.

27:57Dominic Sandbrook:Would you? Surely you would.

27:58Tom Holland:Because we are great fans of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon. Of course. Whose lyric poetry was designed to be sung. Well. And so there is a kind of classical model here. Yes. There's a faint hint of Emma Hamilton's attitudes about it. Attitudes. Trying to bring to life a kind of ancient Greek art form. I think that's kind of basically what's going on.

28:19Dominic Sandbrook:I should never have opened the door to Emma Hamilton reappearing in this podcast. Anyway, she has. So basically, there was a club in London founded in 1766 called the Anachronistic Club. And this was for men who were interested in music. And basically, when they would go to the club, there would be a professional singer often who was hired to sing this song and would be accompanied on the harpsichord. So it's not really a bawdy vibe. No, no. So, you know, the men would all listen to the song and then they would sing some songs of their own. Now, Key knows about this song because versions of it are already popular in the United States.

28:58Dominic Sandbrook:So there's actually a historian at the University of Newcastle in our own country, Dr. Oscar Jensen, who has looked into this. And it had been taken up by abolitionists. So a version of it called Millions Be Free had been produced by a Liverpool abolitionist to celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Thomas Paine sang it. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about it. And it was taken by abolitionists to America in the mid-1790s. It was printed in New York and Baltimore, interestingly, under the title Freedom Triumphant. It spread. People liked the tune. American politicians used it. So there was a song supporting John Adams in the presidential election of 1796 that used it.

29:45Dominic Sandbrook:and in fact by 1820 there are 80 different songs at least using the anacriontic melody so they all follow the same pattern each verse is eight lines long there is a rhyme at the end of each line and there is also an extra rhyme in the middle of the fifth line so every verse has actually nine rhymes so francis scott key undoubtedly writes his star spangled banner to fit this pattern. And it's precisely because it's so familiar, because people really know about it, that it's a hit. People like songs they already know. So it's printed by more newspapers. By October of 1814, it's been printed in newspapers from New England to Georgia.

30:29Dominic Sandbrook:And that autumn of 1814, a shop in Baltimore, the Carr Music Store, starts selling copies of the lyrics. And the owner, Thomas Carr, is the person who gives it its title. The title we know today, The Star Spangled Banner.

30:45Tom Holland:And is he publishing that with the music or just the lyrics? And people are, you know,

30:49Dominic Sandbrook:he assumes that people will recognise the tune that goes with it. That's an excellent question. I would guess you could buy the music, but it would be more expensive because it's more expensive to produce. So that's how the thing is created. But of course, that's only half the story because there's absolutely no talk at this point that it could be the national anthem and it won't become the national anthem for more than a century and actually right from the beginning there is a shadow over this song and this is the allegation that the song is a glorification of slavery so i

31:22Tom Holland:mean i have to say that this came as a bombshell to me may come as a bombshell to many patriotic american listeners uh so please join us after the break where dominic will be justifying this claim

31:37Dominic Sandbrook:This episode is brought to you by The Times and The Sunday Times. Tom, as another summer of top international football returns, it's truly incredible, isn't it, to think about how much the world has changed between the various tournaments.

31:52Tom Holland:Looking back to when England hosted back in 1966, everyone in the crowd supporting England were waving Union Jacks. So what fascinating trends does that illustrate?

32:03Dominic Sandbrook:And I suppose the last time the United States hosted the tournament was in 1994. and the mood in America in the early 1990s, you know, the Cold War was over. Clinton was in the White House. I was there for that. I was in Boston. Really? I mean, that's an aspect of the story that's very rarely reported on your presence. I know. So you know what this reminds me of, Tom? It reminds me that the future is always uncertain. You never know what's coming, but the facts need not be uncertain. And when the world feels like it's moving too fast, The Times and The Sunday Times empower you to make smarter, more confident decisions.

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34:15Tom Holland:Hello everyone and welcome back to The Rest is History. And we, or more properly Dominic, left you with the suggestion that the Star Spangled Banner might be, as well as the glorification of America and liberty, the glorification of slavery as well. And I can only imagine we'll have thousands of Americans cancelling their subscriptions. But you were not the first to come up with this allegation, right?

34:41Dominic Sandbrook:Not at all. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. So in November 2017, this venerable civil rights group actually petitioned Congress to scrap the Star Spangled Banner as the national anthem. The president of the California NAACP, Alice Huffman said, and I quote, it's racist. It doesn't represent our community. It is anti-black. So what's going on here?

35:04Tom Holland:Because to the degree that I am familiar with the lyrics, I don't see anything about slavery in it. I mean, there's one mention of slaves, isn't there? But that's about it.

35:14Dominic Sandbrook:Well, okay. So let's get into this because it's actually, it's a fascinating subject and opens up a lot more of the history of the 1810s. So people only really sing the first verse. In the third verse, in the second half, now remember this is something that nobody ever sings, Francis Scott Key is exulting in the aftermath of the British withdrawal. 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. And the issue focuses on those words, the hireling and slave.

35:56Now, lots of commentators say, without really thinking about it, oh, well, this must be African-American slaves who were trying to escape from their owners and flee to the British.

36:10Tom Holland:You see, I would not have said that. I would have said that these are insults applied to soldiers fighting under the British crown. that dates from the years of the American Revolution. Yes. And the slaves are the British soldiers who are subjects to a king, and the hirelings are the Hessian mercenaries who were brought in. Yep. And so they're applying that rhetoric now in a new war. That's what I would say. That's what I had assumed.

36:39Dominic Sandbrook:My initial reaction was to completely agree with you. I thought that too. Francis Scott Key's biographer, Mark Clague, distinguished historian in the United States he absolutely agrees with you he says listen Americans in the late 18th and early 19th century use the words hireling and slave to refer to British subjects of King George III they use them as exactly as you say to refer to hired mercenaries and their local collaborators and he says actually when you look at American propaganda of the word slavery is often a code word for submission to the British king. Loyalists.

37:18Tom Holland:Yeah. And this is in the context of Canada as well. Yes, exactly. Which hasn't been conquered.

37:23Dominic Sandbrook:So yeah, that's what I'd have thought. And we in Britain are very used to this issue because of course there is the issue of rule Britannia. So in rule Britannia, the words Britons never, never shall be slaves or whatever it is, you You know, there was some talk in 2020 or so, oh, Royal Britannia should be cancelled. It's terrible. It's a, you know, it's very tasteless about slavery. But actually, the slavery being talked about in Royal Britannia. It's about the Vikings, isn't it? Because it's about King Alfred. It's about King Alfred. But obviously, it's a sort of, it's using submission to the Vikings as a metaphor for submission to Catholic Spain, France, etc.

37:59Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

38:00Tom Holland:But can I also ask, it derives from, the kind of poem derives from Anacron, who is an ancient Greek. and the ancient Greek ideals of liberty is obviously very current. Of course. The Roman ideals of liberty, I mean, it's part of the language of the American culture class in this period. Yeah. And the counterpoint to the liberty of the Athenians or the Romans, you know, save the Athenians, it's the slavery of those who were fighting for the Persian king at Marathon. Yeah, of course.

38:29Dominic Sandbrook:I agree with all that. I totally agree. however when you look more closely into this there is another side to the story there are reasons to think that key was talking about african-american slaves and one has to do with the context and the other to do is to do with key himself so if we start with the context in the first half we described how george coburn's objective was to raid and destroy the towns and harbors on the atlantic seaboard to guide his raiding parties he needed local intelligence and from the moment he arrived in 1813 he and the other british captains relied on one group above

39:05Tom Holland:all which was escaped slaves right and that again is something that goes back to the american war of independence isn't it because this was a british strategy to offer slaves in the south

39:15Dominic Sandbrook:their freedom if they would join the british exactly so first british ships and british parties would attract individual runaway slaves but over time they start to attract larger groups and family groups and so on and when coburn came back in 1814 he'd been wintering in bermuda but then he comes back he doubled down on this and he said to his captains i want you to go out of your way to appeal to the local slave population and i quote let the landings you make be more for the protection of the desertion of the black population than with a view to any other advantage the great point to be attained is the cordial support of the black population with them properly armed and back to 20 ,000 British troops, Mr.

39:56Dominic Sandbrook:Madison will be hurled from his throne. And as part of this, he makes a very specific promise. All runaway slaves will be welcomed by the British and under no circumstances will they be handed back.

40:10Tom Holland:When the British tried this policy in the American War of Independence, it was obviously massively compromised because the British themselves were defending the plantations in the Caribbean on which there were slaves. Slavery was not illegal. By this point, you have a British foreign secretary who is about to go to the Congress of Vienna and press for the abolition of the slave trade with the other great powers. Is that something you think that would have filtered through to black Americans?

40:43Dominic Sandbrook:Very hard to say because you wouldn't find much textual evidence.

40:47Tom Holland:Yeah, how would you find it? But maybe it's just kind of, you know, it's on the grapevine. I mean, it would be big news, I would imagine, that the British government has turned abolitionist.

40:57Dominic Sandbrook:there is absolutely no doubt that the news of what he is offering does you know filter through and yes they of course you could well imagine people saying well the british have already talking about scrapping it and what actually he does that really horrifies white american opinion he says all male runaway slaves will be armed they will be given red uniforms and they will be put in a special unit called the corps of colonial marines yeah because this is the nightmare

41:24Tom Holland:that haunted the original Ku Klux Klan, isn't it, in that series that we did after the Civil War.

41:28Dominic Sandbrook:Nothing ever frightens white Southern slaveholders more than the prospect of armed black men, you know, rising up against them or being emboldened against them. Anyway, this Corps of Colonial Marines did see action. They went into battle in Virginia in the end of May, and they did really well. Their British officers said, I was highly pleased by the conduct of the Colonial Marines, every individual of which evinced the greatest eagerness to come to action with their former masters and coburn himself wrote they trigger the most general and undisguised alarm among american civilians there were even former slaves involved in the burning of washington which must have been sweet revenge for them you would guess anyway the americans by contrast think this is absolutely terrible they think it's an outrage they think it's cheating but they think it's more than cheating they think it's an affront to the laws of god and of nature to arm their former slaves against them one senior officer writes in august 1814 our negroes are flocking to the enemy from all quarters which they convert into troops vindictive and rapacious with the most minute knowledge of every by-path they leave us as spies upon our posts and our strength and they returned upon us as guides and soldiers and incendiaries a guy actually from the national museum of american history the smithsonian writes christopher wilson the irony is the very point when key is writing his poem about the land of the free black african-american slaves are trying to escape the land of the free and to reach those british ships in baltimore harbor that are the antagonists of the poem and as to quote christopher wilson this guy from the museum they knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the union jack than they were under the star spangled banner he sounds an excellent curator i commend him for his objectivity this is literally the best story we've ever done on this podcast anyway the war ends in 1815 basically in a draw and coburn is true to his word he now has about 6 000 escaped slaves and the treaty called for the return of all United States property.

43:40Dominic Sandbrook:So the Americans expected to get them back, and Coburn did not give them back. Because everything has changed, because the British

43:47Tom Holland:government is now committed to abolitionism. Right.

43:49Dominic Sandbrook:Well, at least the abolition of the slave trade, let's say. Exactly. So most of these people actually ended up in Canada. But a lot of the colonial marines, so the people who'd seen action, went to Trinidad. This is an incredible story, by the way. They were given special villages under the command of their old sergeants. They settled there and they were called Americans. Wow. And they are still there today and they're still called Americans. Goodness, that's amazing. It's an incredible story. Anyway, to go back to the words of Francis Scott Key's anthem, no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

44:30Dominic Sandbrook:I think it is perfectly possible he is talking about these people whose flight has been such a big story he is saying basically we will catch up with you

44:42Tom Holland:or you will die i mean it works both ways though doesn't it of course i mean it i mean that's kind

44:46Dominic Sandbrook:of maybe the that's double meaning yeah yeah however there's one of the aspects i said there were two reasons to think it was more complicated and the other one is key himself now the rest is history ever since we started the podcast we've never been into cancelling people or or setting ourselves up as hanging judges. However, I think as an outsider, you can see why black Americans might find it difficult to celebrate Francis Scott Key as an individual. He has, at best, a very ambiguous attitude to slavery. He owns slaves himself. He bought his first slave in 1800. He owned six by 1820. When he died in 1843, he had eight.

45:30Dominic Sandbrook:He's sometimes represented as a lawyer slave owners seeking the return of their property. On the other hand, he did free some of his slaves. He represented slaves who sought their freedom. And when a friend of his liberated his slaves in his will, Francis Scott Keeb was one of the executors and he worked to get them their freedom.

45:48Tom Holland:And was he doing this before he wrote this poem?

45:50Dominic Sandbrook:After, I think.

45:51Tom Holland:Maybe his attitudes evolved.

45:53Dominic Sandbrook:Well, I think his attitudes are complicated. He is a founder member and a very keen fundraiser of something called the American Colonization Society. And the goal of the American Colonization Society is to send black men and women who have been freed to Africa. And this is the project that actually culminates in the foundation of Liberia in 1847. Now, you may look at this and say, well, that's a very nice thing to do. Actually, most of the people who backed this society were slaveholders. It was particularly popular in Maryland. It was particularly popular with the planter elite.

46:25Tom Holland:It's kind of generated by an anxiety that white and black Americans can never live together.

46:32Dominic Sandbrook:yes exactly so so it's complicated because on the one hand these people would undoubtedly have said themselves we're motivated by christian charity we want to find somewhere for these people to live we want to find them a home on the other hand the people who fundraise the people who are activists for this society are often explicitly racist they say we're a white country we don't want free you know black men and women as citizens among us get rid send them to africa and actually a lot of abolitionists and a lot of black people themselves hate this colonization society because they see it as i mean they see it as unambiguously racist as for abolitionism key is not a fan of abolitionism at all so you mentioned nelson we talked about nelson and slavery nelson's not a fan of abolitionism but i don't think it's something that's on his mind very much he's he's not a fan of it because he thinks it will weaken the british empire its commerce its trade and all of this but nelson never actively campaigns against abolitionism francis scott key does as district attorney for washington dc in the 1830s he is a tireless foe of abolitionism he brings a libel case against one anti-slavery activist a guy who had said yeah there's no justice for black people in this town key basically drove him out with this libel case most famously he prosecuted a guy from new york who was living in georgetown merely for having a trunk full of anti-slavery tracts key accused him of seditious libel and inciting slaves and blacks to revolt and he tried to turn this case into a massive political set piece i think because he wanted to use it to boost his own political career are you willing gentlemen he said in his closing speech to abandon your country to permit it to be taken from you and occupied by the abolitionist according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the Negro.

48:21Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, Key lost this case. Actually, the bloke went free and he ended up humiliated and his political ambitions were punctured. So when you put that alongside the issue of the context of the War of 1812, I think it is actually, it becomes more and more plausible. How is it distinguishing between the slave and the hireling? The hireling could be collaborators, paid collaborators. Okay, so white collaborators. So the Nation magazine, a very liberal journal. Key's message to the blacks fighting for freedom was unmistakable. We will hunt you down and the search will leave you in terror because when we find you, your next stop is the gloom of the grave.

48:59Dominic Sandbrook:So this is the 21st century take by a lot of kind of liberal writers. I mean, I think there's enough ambiguity though for listeners to make up their own minds. So some people may reject all of this and say, no, no, no, he's obviously just talking about using the rhetoric of the American Revolution or something.

49:14Tom Holland:I mean, I suppose that it sounds like this is a man who thinks a lot about slavery and liberty. And I guess it has many different shades of meaning. Often, particularly in America, those shades of meaning are in direct conflict with each other. So perhaps he couldn't resolve those ambiguities. I think that's a very fair-minded verdict, actually.

49:36Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, back to the song itself. Obviously, it strikes a chord in the War of 1812, and it never really fades from view afterwards. So there's an account from a diarist, George Templeton Strong. He's writing about New York City in 1837. A lot of tipsy loafers are just going past, screaming out the star-spangled banner at the top of their lungs in all sorts of diabolical discords. But it sounds gloriously. It's a glorious thing altogether, words and music, no matter how it's mangled.

50:06Tom Holland:I mean, it often is mangled, though, isn't it?

50:07Dominic Sandbrook:Because it's so difficult to sing. Exactly. It is mangled. And it's also mangled because at this point, people are often changing the words. So people would play the song at 4th of July celebrations and things, and it was well known enough for people to start parodying it and to produce political variations. So there's a temperance version, very popular in the mid-19th century. Oh, who has not seen by the dawn's early light, some poor bloated drunkard to his home weekly reeling? That'd make a great anthem. Both sides in the Civil War claim it. That's really interesting. So the Confederates have their own flag, of course.

50:43Dominic Sandbrook:They're not going to celebrate the Star Spangled Banner. Or are they? Because they see him as one of their own. A man of Maryland, which is a border state. A slaveholder. The Richmond Examiner, 1861. Let us never surrender to the North the noble song, the Star Spangled Banner. It is Southern in origin and sentiments in poetry and song. Well, they shouldn't have abolished the flag then. But they do have a Star Spangled Banner of their own. I suppose they do, yes. but not the starts back not the no but it's still not the national anthem towards the end of the 19th century it starts to become a little bit more formalized a bit more institutionalized the u.s naval academy starts playing it morning and evening in 1889 when they raise and lower the flag in 1892 the commander of fort meade in south dakota orders that it's played at the retreat he tells the state governor uh the state governor says oh what a brilliant idea i'll get the state militia to play it um whenever we you know the retreat and whatnot he tells the secretary of war the secretary of war says oh i love that idea let's get every army post to play it every evening and the flag itself by this point is becoming a sacred relic too so it stayed in the family of the bloke who was the commander of the fort armistead and this is the big one not the not the one that actually got shot at no this is the huge one and and one reason the huge one is so battered is because the family would give away pieces to friends they would say would you like a piece of the star spangled banner from the from the song and so the flag ends up having lots of holes in it and actually the smithsonian when it got hold of the um flag in 1907 tried to buy back some of the hole oh so they didn't blame it on the redcoats or well i'm sure they did blame it on the redcoats anyway then there's a huge um upsurge of patriotism during the first world war In 1916, Woodrow Wilson, we talked about him in our Ku Klux Klan episodes, of course, another Southerner, perhaps not coincidentally, he directs the display to all military occasions.

52:46Dominic Sandbrook:One complication, though, at this point, there is no standard arrangement. So Wilson gets the U.S. Bureau of Education to sort one out. They get a series of experts. One of them is a quite famous American composer, John Philip Sousa. and they get a basically a government-approved version.

53:05Tom Holland:Can I just ask, do we know whether over the 19th century and up to this point, whether any eyebrows are raised over the hireling and slave comment, or do they just not pay any attention to it?

53:18Dominic Sandbrook:I don't think people massively pay attention to it, and not least because, as we will see later, there is a rival abolitionist version. Right, okay. They have complaints, and we will see in just a sec. people have a lot of objections to this as the anthem but that is not one of the principal ones and just one quick side note before we talk about how it becomes an anthem it's already being played by the end of the 1910s at baseball so it's first played at the world series in 1918 at comiskey park the chicago cubs were hosting the red sox and a game won a military band played this song though it's not at this point the national anthem and we heard it being played at a baseball game didn't we in november in la we did indeed yeah and very very exciting it was too very stirring yeah yes exactly but at the end of the first world war the united states still does not have a national anthem and this is probably a good point to just talk for a second about national anthems more generally such a complicated topic dominic it is a massively complicated topic now we did our first national anthem episode back when we did a series on the french revolution and you took us through the history of the marseillaise yes which is sometimes described as the world's first national anthem, though it sort of, it competes, doesn't it, with the subject of our next episode, which is God Save the King.

54:36Tom Holland:So in that episode on the Marseillaise, I did describe it as the world's first national anthem, but I have now repented of that opinion, as we will be discussing in our next episode on God Save the King. The Marseillaise is the first national song, but not the first national anthem. And people who find that intriguing and fascinating,

54:53Dominic Sandbrook:do tune into the next episode because we've got it all so at the early 20th century most countries don't have a national anthem the countries that do tend to be countries that have recently been invented so latin american countries above all argentina has one brazil has one as we will find out peru has one but in europe they're seen as a bit tawdry a bit gimmicky by and large and often the countries with national anthems britain and france aside tend to be made-up countries like Belgium or Italy, countries that have had to invent an identity for themselves. But in the 1920s, you've got a lot of new countries that are adopting anthems.

55:33Dominic Sandbrook:The United States doesn't want to be left out. There's a congressman, again, from Maryland, so Francis Scott Key's home state, called John Charles Linthicum. And he introduces a bill again and again to make this the anthem, and he keeps losing. And the reason he keeps losing is not because of the words hireling and slave. It's because, A, some people say it's a British melody. Why would we have a British melody as our national anthem?

56:03Tom Holland:Yeah, why would we have the English language as our language?

56:06Dominic Sandbrook:Yes, exactly. Well, that's something on which American listeners might care to reflect.

56:12Dominic Sandbrook:Pacifists, and of course there are a lot of pacifists in the wake of the First World War, don't like it because it celebrates war. So that's a big thing. and the biggest objection is musical you've already mentioned this people say it is just too high the melody is weird it's unsingable and to delve for a moment into the world of musicology the star spangled banner demands a range of 19 semitones and even some professional singers are not capable of that range and dominic what exactly does that mean 19 semitones well some members of the rest of this history club will be able to hear me explaining semi-tones in a future bonus episode i can't promise it it will come immediately but one day before the end of this podcast i will undoubtedly be doing a bonus episode on this very subject that is something for people to look forward to yeah definitely and actually some of the critics combine all those in one all those objections so there's a christian scientist called augusta emma stetson that's a great mrs stetson in june 1922 took out a massive advert in the new york tribune with the headline the star-spangled banner can never become our national anthem and she says it has its violent unsingable cadences can never express the spiritual ideals upon which the nation was based never has congress and never will congress legalise an anthem which sprang from the lowest qualities of human sentiment.

57:42Dominic Sandbrook:God forbids it. It's amazing that all that the Highlands Save stuff isn't even entering the equation here. No, not at all. She doesn't even mention that. Now, the thing is, they don't have to choose this. There are alternatives. All through the 19th century, probably the leading candidate had been another song, Hail Columbia. Hail Columbia had been composed for Washington's first inaugural as president in 1790. so there's that but that's gone into decline a bit by the 20th century so that's not going to win then by the 1920s the other big rival is america the beautiful and this was written by an english literature professor called katherine lee bates she went on a trip to colorado in the 1890s 1893 she wrote this hymn of praise to the american landscape if you look at the lyrics of america the beautiful it's not very well known outside america but americans love it it's quite generic and waffly which is you know yeah there's a kind of craze for those kind of anthems in the late 90th century isn't there yes there is they're all like that actually when you look at i mean we

58:43Tom Holland:get to brazil in a couple of weeks they're to south africa yeah they're very kind of generic a lot of these anthems anyway america the beautiful consistently very popular in the 1960s there was

58:56Dominic Sandbrook:a quite a groundswell of support for scrapping the star spangled banner and having america the beautiful instead and people have always said it's easier to sing it's a better tune you can do more fun things with it we've got the wrong anthem anyway america the beautiful didn't win the star spangled banner won precisely because of its military associations so the lobby group the veterans of foreign wars organized a petition they got five million names congress approved it and President Herbert Hoover in 1931 signed it into law. But it has never not been controversial. And obviously in the post-war years, post-Second World War, the controversies were about interpretations of the anthem.

59:40Dominic Sandbrook:So I already mentioned some of them. At the 1968 World Series, Jose Feliciano, a Puerto Rican singer and guitarist, played it. He did a kind of Latin jazz, slightly folky kind of interpretation. and people said it's terribly disrespectful it's awful blah blah blah blah blah and the disrespect

59:58Tom Holland:is because the same reverence that americans display towards the flag is now being applied

1:00:04Dominic Sandbrook:towards the anthem is that right yeah and that's something that actually i think americans some of our american listeners may not realize that not all countries have the same attitude to their national anthem so for example in britain i think it's fair to say that god saved the king made most people kind of laugh when they hear God save the king. Or indeed, God save the queen, which we will be discussing in our next episode. Exactly. The interpretations of it are seen as completely valid and fair, and people have fun with it. It's not a sacred relic. Another controversial moment, of course, Jimi Hendrix's, I was about to say, Jimi Carter's guitar solo.

1:00:44Dominic Sandbrook:That would be good money to see that.

1:00:46Tom Holland:Yeah.

1:00:46Dominic Sandbrook:He'd be sitting there ripping off his cardigan. and starting him with an acoustic guitar surrounded by peanuts or people dressed as peanuts. I think it'd be absolutely tremendous. Facking group of peanuts. Anyway, Jimi Hendrix did his guitar solo at Woodstock, obviously in 1969. That was one of 60 renditions of the Star Spangled Banner that Hendrix gave in the late 60s. But he'd been in the army, hadn't he? So perhaps he could get away with it. The issue there is, I think, as of 1968, Jose Feliciano, it's bound up with Vietnam. It's seen as, you know... Disrespectful. Disrespectful to the flag.

1:01:17Dominic Sandbrook:the star-spangled banner is playing the mexican olympics in 1968 when uh tommy smith and john carlos do their famous black power salutes in the medal ceremony my favorite controversy i don't know if you're familiar with this one tom came at a rodeo in salem virginia in 2005 and the organizers of this rodeo had agreed to feature a visiting celebrity from the republic of kazakhstan in Central Asia. He prefaced his performance with the words, with speech, we support your war of terror. May George Bush drink the blood of every single man, woman, and child of Iraq. As I remember, that was greeted with applause and cheers, wasn't it?

1:01:57Dominic Sandbrook:It was greeted with applause and cheers. And then to the usual tune, he sang the words, Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world. All other countries are run by little girls. Kazakhstan, number one, exporter of potassium. Other Central Asian countries have inferior potassium. And that was, of course, Sacha Baron Cohen playing Borat. And I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He'd done American history at Cambridge. He actually wrote his thesis on the civil rights movement, and he had the same supervisor as supervised my PhD.

1:02:30Tom Holland:Oh, really?

1:02:30Dominic Sandbrook:He learned from the rest, yeah.

1:02:32Tom Holland:Yeah. So Borat, very controversial, but not the most controversial take on the Star Spangled Banner right because um I guess not there's an even more famous one that you alluded

1:02:42Dominic Sandbrook:to at the start of this episode yeah so this is in 2016 San Francisco 49ers are playing their third pre-season game uh the quarterback Colin Kaepernick takes the knee during the anthem and he says he wants to do it to protest police brutality towards African Americans this kicks off this firestorm of argument Kaepernick played out the season but he then became a free agent at the end of the season and no team signed him basically no team wanted to touch him and he sued the nfl but the case was settled out of court and the whole gesture of the taking the knee obviously became a huge thing after george floyd was killed in 2020 so people may remember british listeners may remember that keir starmer yes and angela rayner and angela rayner they posted a photograph of themselves very solemnly taking the knee in Starmer's House of Commons office.

1:03:35Dominic Sandbrook:And meanwhile, activists in the United States actually toppled the statue of Francis Scott Key in Golden Gate Park. So that statue had stood in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, since 1887, and it has subsequently been replaced with 350 black steel figures that represent the Africans that were on the first slaveship to Virginia in 1619.

1:04:00Tom Holland:And presumably that is because the controversy around the Star-Spangled Banner has now expanded from the fact that it is simply the national anthem of the United States. Yeah. And that people are now more aware of the context in which it was written, I suppose.

1:04:15Dominic Sandbrook:Yes. And I think if you are on the sort of, if you're on the left or if you're on the left of that particular argument, the sort of slightly reflex thing to say now is, oh, it's an anthem that glorifies slavery. And I think, as we've established, there is at least ambiguity there. I mean, I think it's actually, I think it's impossible to be, you know, no one knows what was in Francis Scott's head when he wrote that. I mean, my personal view is, well, first of all, it's not my anthem. American listeners should not, you know, they can do what they like. It's no business of ours what anthem they have.

1:04:48Dominic Sandbrook:I don't think it's entirely groundless to say that there's a slavery connection. We know that Keown's slaves. We know that he was a very, very determined foe of abolitionism. And personally, I think his text probably is aimed at slaves who are trying to escape and are helping the British. However, I think we've generally always had the position on the show that you can separate the art from the artist. And I think this is actually quite a nice example because we've already mentioned how temperance activists wrote their own version of it. But so did abolitionists. So this is the irony. The very people that Francis Scott Key was trying to suppress actually wrote their own version of his anthem.

1:05:30Dominic Sandbrook:It was in 1844. It was in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. And it was by an activist called E.A. Attlee. And it ran as follows. Oh, say do you hear at the dawn's early light, the shrieks of those bondsmen whose blood is now streaming from the merciless lash while our banner in sight with its stars mocking freedom is fitfully gleaming do you see the backs bare do you mark every score of the whip of the driver trace channels of gore and say doth our star-spangled banner yet wave oh the land of the free and the home of the brave so kind of bitterly ironic final lines now obviously i think it would be deranged to suggest that americans might like to adopt that text rather than the one they have but it's nevertheless worth bearing in mind that key's text is not the only text of that anthem and that anthems often tell more than one story and as we'll see in the rest of this series even the most bombastic song can tell very surprising and unexpected stories and we'll

1:06:38Tom Holland:be hearing one of those next time won't we we will because we will be looking at god save the king the anthem of both england and scotland who have qualified for the world cup finals and the story of that song is actually framed by many of the same issues and controversies that we've been talking about with reference to the star spangled banner and then after that we will be looking at the German, the Dutch, the Brazilian and the South African national anthems. Members of the Rested History Club, of course, can get immediate access to all of them. So if you like national anthems, I mean, this is your lucky day.

1:07:16Tom Holland:National anthems, we've got them. But for now, Dominic, thanks so much for that. Goodbye, everyone. Bye-bye.

1:07:33Tom Holland:The dawn with thee veiled at the twilight's last gleaming,

1:07:40Dominic Sandbrook:Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

1:07:49Tom Holland:O 'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming, And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave For the land of the brave And the home of the brave

1:08:52Tom Holland:Hello everybody. Now, as those of you who are good children will know, here in Britain, on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day.

1:09:02Dominic Sandbrook:But not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States, in Canada, and in the United States. and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to The Rest is History.

1:09:18Tom Holland:And that is why we are offering an amazing 25 % Father's Day discount on the subscription price to The Rest is History Club, because we are all heart.

1:09:33Dominic Sandbrook:So treat the Peter the Great in your own life this Father's Day to early access to full series you get say early access that you get that with a membership you get bonus episodes you get ad-free listening you get access to tickets for live shows basically you get an entire host of supplementary benefits and that i think is what a lot of patriarchs want

1:09:56Tom Holland:it absolutely is because i think nothing says happy father's day quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours ad-free about the First World War.

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