"The difference between Americans and other people on earth is that Americans would rather die on their feet than live on their knees."
George Washington
With how often we hear our national anthem, it is possible that sometimes we forget the true meaning behind its famous words. The story behind the Star-Spangled Banner is one that hits close to home for many other well known moments throughout American history. Our national anthem is not just our country's song, it represents America's way of life. Please listen to the following speech, a very touching and moving rendition of our national anthem's history.
The Star Spangled Banner, Like You've Never Heard It
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Wishing you the best of Hearts, Health and Happiness
The Queen of Hearts
I just wish our national anthem were singable - by someone other than a coloratura soprano or Placido Domingo!
LAW
I strongly suggest that you retitle your Star-Spangled Banner audio "The Star-Spangled Banner, Like It Never Happened!" Almost every factual statement in the audio narrative is wrong. I recently discovered the audio file being passed among home schoolers in Ohio, as if it were historically accurate and worth teaching to their kids. So I wrote a detailed rebuttal of this completely over-the-top, inaccurate "history." Here are the 20 things that are glaringly wrong in your narrative:
1) (minor point) Francis Scott Key was not a Baltimore lawyer. He was from the Washington area, and had come up to Baltimore to negotiate for the release of exactly one American prisoner, captured during the earlier fighting that led to the burning of Washington, DC. He actually detested Baltimore.
2) He was not negotiating a prisoner swap. The British had taken a Washington area doctor captive for having engaged in the arrest of straggling British troops, thereby losing his civilian immunity. Key's only mission was to win the doctor's release. Though he was prepared to make extensive legal arguments for the release, the British agreed to let the doctor go without much fuss, as Key also delivered letters from wounded British POWs and assured the British that the men they left behind as POWs from earlier battles were being treated well.
3) He did not go out to the British in a "rowboat." His boat was described as a "sloop," a small sailing boat.
4) He did not go out to the British "1000 yards offshore," but rather sailed somewhat far down Baltimore's inlet off the Chesapeake to meet them, several days before the battle. He was forced to stay with them for several days until they were done with Baltimore, because the British didn't want him telling the rest of the Americans what he had seen and heard.
5) There was no "one-for-one" exchange involved. The British held only the one American prisoner, and no British prisoners were offered in return, anyhow.
6) There were no groups of American men imprisoned in the hold of a British ship, and certainly none praying for victory there and calling up to Francis Scott Key for news on the night of the battle.
7) Though Mr. Key did actually talk and dine with the top British naval and army officers early in his days of temporary captivity, he and the released doctor and another companion actually spent the night of the attack on Fort McHenry back on their American sloop, which was not allowed to leave the company of the British ships during the battle. He wasn't talking to any British officers during the battle. He was on his own boat, and they were on theirs. And the American prisoners praying for an American victory in the hold of a British ship didn't exist at all.
8) The narrative misstates that the fort being attacked was "Fort Henry." It was, in fact, Fort McHenry. (There actually was an important "Fort Henry," though, at Wheeling, WV, in Revolutionary War days.)
9) The claim that the British thought that taking Baltimore would be the end of the war is false. It would have been important, but certainly not grounds for total U.S. surrender.
10) Though there were some dozens of British ships involved in the campaign, there were not "hundreds" of ships attacking Fort McHenry. In point of fact, there were just five main British gun ships involved in the assault on the fort.
11) The claim that there were "women and children" in the fort is nonsense. It wasn't a summer camp. It was a fort, and it had soldiers in it, plus some other men from Baltimore who had volunteered as citizen soldiers.
12) The claim that Fort McHenry "wasn't a military fort" is about as silly as it gets. It most certainly wasn't a "woolen mill fort" disguised as a "military fort," nor a "candy store fort," nor a "church fort." It was a military fort with cannon, strategically placed on a peninsula specifically for the purpose of guarding Baltimore from a sea attack. And that is exactly what it did.
13) No message about lowering the flag was sent to the Americans. By military custom of the time, though, if the flag had been seen to be taken down (as opposed to being shot down), the British would likely have regarded that as a sign of surrender and stopped shelling.
14) Francis Scott Key was certainly not deafened by the constant roar of cannon that night. His sloop was about five miles to the rear of the British ships doing the shelling, and about seven miles from the fort itself. He could only see things with a telescope, and hear the distant rumble of the cannonade.
15) It is not true that Francis Scott Key could actually see the flag in the middle of the night "by the rockets' red glare." The simple fact that the British were still firing rockets and shells "bursting in air," proved that the Americans hadn't surrendered, and therefore that the flag must still have been flying through the night. It wasn't until morning that he could just barely see the flag through his telescope.
16) The quotation, "We, and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.” was made famous not by George Washington but by Franklin Roosevelt in a 1941 speech. Similar statements, though, had been made by others since sometime in the mid-1800s. The quote, though, doesn't go as far back as Washington's lifetime, and he didn't say it.
17) There were no known "direct hits" on the flag in the battle. The guns of Fort McHenry had a range of about a mile and a half, so the British parked their boats out of range, about two miles away, to shell the fort. Cannon and mortars and exploding shells weren't very accurate in those days, so relatively few shells actually hit the fort at all. The total death toll at the fort is believed to have been four Americans, and the flag was never knocked down, and probably never directly hit by a shell in the first place.
18) The flag was not in shreds after the battle. Indeed, the flag believed to have flown over the fort that day is in relatively decent shape at the Smithsonian to this day. To the extent that it looks even somewhat tattered today, much of that is due to souvenir hunters of the distant past clipping swatches out of it as keepsakes.
19) The flag was not flying at an odd angle after the battle, propped up by dead patriot bodies. Only four people at the fort died in the battle. The flag was not knocked down, and nobody had to hold it up at mortal risk to life and limb.
20) Francis Scott Key started writing The Star-Spangled Banner while still hanging out on his sloop in British custody, not after visiting the fort and hearing tales of mounds of dead bodies holding up the flag.
In short, the audio rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner's history is 90% fiction, and I really hope homeschoolers and others don't believe it, because repeating historical nonsense like that (which is akin to thinking the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor) just damages their collective credibility. The story told in the audio departs so far from the truth in just about every dimension that I would classify it as an Internet hoax.
FYI, a few years ago, I visited Fort McHenry and read the story of the British campaigns of 1814 on Washington and Baltimore, as recounted in the excellent book "The Dawn's Early Light." Fort McHenry is an absolute patriotic treat. The National Park Service has done a magnificent job of telling the actual true story of what happened there, and on a day when the sun is shining and a stiff breeze is blowing, you can't beat the emotional, patriotic rush of listening to the Marine Corps choir sing our anthem, while watching the fort's modern replica flag snap proudly in the wind against a blue sky there today.
In conclusion, I haven't meant to offend you or anyone else with this note. I just wrote up this rebuttal because I feel that the true story of our nation and its founding is absolutely worth defending against the insidious erosion of Internet misinformation and hoaxes. We owe the kids, for instance, that we're sending off to war these days something better to die for than fairy tales. The truth is good enough.
If you're going to keep this story on your blog, please label it as fiction. It's touching, but it's phony as a three-dollar bill. ;-)
Best regards.
-- Rick B.
Rick B~
While I appreciate your pointing out all that is wrong with this video, I strongly suggest you do your homework a bit better when it comes to such videos. You would know that I did NOT make this video as you seem to allude to in your first statement nor did I name it. That was the title that the author of the video gave it, so please direct your comments towards that author. Furthermore, my blog is not a teaching tool by any means, nor do I label it as such. Therefore, I will put up any video that I see fit, fiction or not and labeled as fiction or not because basically, I don't care. I think its a touching video, fiction or not, and sometimes we need stories like this, fiction or not, to raise the patriotism and hope in our country.
When I post a story about Santa Clause or the tooth fairy you can also feel free to tell me how those stories are false as well and dash the hopes and beliefs of children everywhere.
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