The Tone Deaf, Bad Poet Who Wrote the National Anthem

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories. 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

(00:32):
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?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
As the Star Spangled Banner.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
This story starts during the War of eighteen twelve with
the Battle of Bladensburg Bladensburg, Maryland, just outside of Washington,
d C.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
This is one of.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
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

(01:41):
just a pathetic group of last minute thrown together a militiamen.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
On August twenty sixth overran.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
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,

(02:10):
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

(02:33):
British stragglers prisoner. When the Brits saw them, they were
not very happy about it, and so they took doctor
Bean's prisoner.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
He was an older man, he was in his sixties.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
It happened all the time.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
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,

(03:17):
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

(03:40):
by the Beans family to arrange the release. He got
permission from President Madison, and on September Tewod eighteen fourteen, he.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Got on his horse and he rode up to Baltimore.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
When he got to Baltimore, he met up with a
US Army lieutenant colonel named John Skinner.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Now Skinner's job was to.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Arrange a prisoner releases in prisoner exchanges. So he met
up with Skinner. 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

(04:21):
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

(04:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Case of most of our wars, before we got into
the War of eighteen twelve.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
It was a very controversial thing.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Basically, it was a North South split, with Southerners generally
in favor of going to war in northerners against it.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Francis Scott Key was born in the.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
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

(05:43):
keys views changed on the war when the Brits started
invading up the Chesapeake Bay.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
He actually joined a Georgetown militia unit.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
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

(06:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
In the cause against the Brits.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
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.

(06:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
That was not quite true.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Four of them were bomb ships.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
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

(07:39):
what we know rockets, looked like long and cylindrical with
fins on the bottom.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
But they didn't have any guidance system.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
How terrifying the bombardber was.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Plus there was a giant storm that night, a thunderstorm,
could have been a tornado, could have been a hurricane, we.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Don't really know.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
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
attack and they got pretty close to the city, but

(08:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
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

(09:14):
at Amazon or the usual suspects. When we come back,
more of this remarkable American story, the story of our
national anthem. Here on our American stories, and we continue

(09:40):
with our American stories and the story of our national anthem,
which of course means telling the story of Francis Scott Key.
Let's return to author Mark Leapsen.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
It lasted twenty five straight hours.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
But then in the middle of the night, at about
three o'clock in the morning, everything stopped. And Franciscott, 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 was the battle was over. So

(10:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
That flag was taken down, another flag was put up.
There was a little bit of a breeze, and what
did he see?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
He saw that our flag was still there, and this
inspired him to write the words that would become the
national anthem.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
You know, Franciscott Key. Frank Key was a amateur poet.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
He wasn't a good amateur poet. But his poetry was
never meant to be shown beyond family and friends, 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

(11:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
We had won. If peace talks continued.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
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 envelopes, so

(11:59):
on the back of the left Frank scrawled a few verses.
He and Skinner and Beams were released. He went back
to Baltimore to a hotel and finished the four stanzas
in the hotel.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Now what happened next there are a lot of question
marks about we don't know the details.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
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 will

(12:38):
become national anthem. He talks about how brave the Americans
were and how much he didn't like the British officers.
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

(12:59):
very close the two families, and we know Roger Brook
Tawny as Chief Justice of the United States. He claims
that this is what Frank told him.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
What happened.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Now, we can corroborate a lot of this with good
primary source evidence, such as newspaper stories and some journals
and diaries. So here's what we think happened after that.
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

(13:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
So what is an Acreon in Heaven? An Acreon in Heaven.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
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 would 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.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Not quite true.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
It's not in the category of ninety nine bottles of
Beer on the Wall.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
It was a little more high minded than that.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
And there were the people who know this stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Have counted something like seventy five fifty to seventy five
songs that were put to an Acreon in Heaven, including Adams.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
And Liberty, which was a very popular patriotic song.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
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

(15:16):
or not Francis Scott Key had in mind the fact.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
That he was writing a song that night.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Until relatively recently, historians believed that he wasn't because he
wasn't a songwriter.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
He did write two hymns.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
He didn't have that. He needed to make money as
a lawyer. He had.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
There's several reasons for this.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
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.

(16:34):
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

(16:54):
not become the national anthem until officially until nineteen thirty one.
We did the United States did not have it national
anthem until nineteen thirty.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
One, but it was one of the songs.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
That was played at patriotic gatherings such as Fourth of
July within 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. And it wasn't until nineteen thirty one that

(17:24):
Congress enacted a resolution that made the Star Spangled Banner
in the national anthem.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
It was controversial. There were hearings on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
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 star Stangle banner became
the national anthem in nineteen thirty one, even though it

(17:55):
was written in eighteen fourteen. And one last 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.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
You can read it online. But he also was, you know, unmusical.
There there was an article that I found when I.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Was doing research for my book What's So Probably we
hailed the biography of Francis Scott Key that I 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? Etcetera, etcetera. And the woman said, no,

(18:37):
as a matter of fact, he was a 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

(19:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
What's the name of it? So you know, it's probably apocryphal,
but it does go to show.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
That that man who wrote that song, the man who
wrote the song that so many hundreds of millions of
Americans know the.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
First verse of, was a bad poet, and he most
likely was tone deaf.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
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 on 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 the national anthem, Francis Scott Key story,

(20:03):
Frank Keyes's story. Here on our American stories.