No, The National Anthem Isn't Racist

By Dan O\'Donnell

September 14, 2016

(WISN) As scattered protests of the National Anthem continued on the NFL’s opening weekend (just days before the song’s 202nd birthday on Wednesday), supporters of the demonstrating players have resurrected an old misconception about “The Star-Spangled Banner” itself: That it is racist and celebrates the deaths of slaves.

Specifically, critics of the song point to two lines in its largely forgotten third verse:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

However, an interpretation of “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave” as a blanket salute to killing African-American slaves is simply incorrect given the background of the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the context of the two lines within the song itself.

In September of 1814, the British Military was seeking a decisive end to the War of 1812. After a key victory over the American Army at the Battle of Bladensburg, the British marched to Washington, D.C. and burned the new nation’s capital city to the ground.

The White House (then known as the Presidential Mansion), the U.S. Capitol, and dozens of other government buildings were badly damaged, and President James Madison’s administration was forced to flee.

With the U.S. government in disarray, the British wanted to press their advantage with a decisive victory that would allow them to recapture their former colonies end the American rebellion once and for all.

They decided on a naval assault on the key port city of Baltimore, and the only thing that stood in their way was Fort McHenry.

On September 7th, a 35 year-old lawyer named Francis Scott Key left Fort McHenry and boarded the British warship HMS Tonnant to help negotiate the release of several American prisoners.

While Key was onboard, though, he learned of the British plans to attack Fort McHenry. Naturally, the Tonnant’s officers couldn’t allow him to return to Baltimore and warn the American defenses, so Key was held captive until the British could strike.

On the night of September 13th, Key could only watch helplessly aboard the Tonnant as the British shelled the fort. The cannon fire lit up the cloudy sky, but the smoke quickly grew too thick for Key to see what was happening. For the entire agonizing night, he couldn’t see what he assumed would be the demise of both Fort McHenry and the new nation of America.

But “by the dawn’s early light,” Key saw an American flag rise from the fort as the smoke cleared, indicating that the U.S. defenses had turned back the British assault.

Key was overjoyed that the dream that was America would live for at least another day, so he wrote down his feelings in a poem that he called “The Defence of Fort M’Henry.”

After he returned to Baltimore, Key showed the poem to his brother-in-law, who noticed that its rhyme scheme fit the melody of “The Anacreontic Song”—a popular ditty in both American and British social clubs at the time—and this new patriotic song was printed in two local newspapers before spreading to newspapers across the country and becoming known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

This historical context is critical in understanding the song’s controversial third verse, as the entirety of Key’s poem was a celebratory response to the American victory at the Battle of Baltimore.

From “the dawn’s early light” to the “twilight’s last gleaming,” from the ramparts Key watched to the “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air,” it was clear he was writing about the battle he had just witnessed.

The largely forgotten second verse, too, illustrates this, as Key describes “the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep” and “the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes.” These lines describe Key’s inability to see Fort McHenry and the dread he felt after the British Navy attacked it.

But then the sun rose, and Key could see the American flag flying. As he described it:
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.