Whose stripes and bright stars thro’ the perilous fight, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, Oh! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural AddressĪ pleasant sentiment - but is it true? Would EVERY man “fly to the standard” in wartime? Would even enslaved African Americans, for example, really fight to defend their masters’ property… or might they prefer to join an invading army and fight against the country that held them in bondage? The British army’s capture of Washington City in 1814 put Jefferson’s notion to the test. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.” I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth.
#The star spangled banner song sir francis scott key poem full#
But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear, that this government, the world’s best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to protect itself? I trust not.
“I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong–that this government is not strong enough. The quote, from the First Inaugural Address of a slave-owning president, seems to speak directly to the historical moment of the Civil War: This period songsheet also bears a quote entitled, “Jefferson’s Idea of Government”: Presently, it is almost never performed beyond its first verse, so few US citizens and singers are aware of its militant anti-Abolition slant. The song was popular during the Civil War, but did not become the United States’ national anthem until 1931.
Francis Scott Key wrote his poem “The Defense of Fort McHenry” to commemorate an 1814 battle with the British.