“It isn’t going to happen again anytime soon,” he said. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is as much a patriotic song as it is a diss track to black people who had the audacity to fight for their freedom. Following this custom, Francis Scott Key used a popular English drinking song as the basis of The Star-Spangled Banner. For example, Maryland, My Maryland is sung to the same tune as O Tanenbaum (Oh Christmas Tree). And he called putting the manuscript and flag together a “very, very special moment.” During the 1800's, the tunes of popular songs often were used for another set of lyrics. He compared the song to a church hymn, something that has become so familiar that what Key was trying to say can get lost. And in 2013, the museum brought the manuscript to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Md., where Key is buried.īurt Kummerow, the president of the Maryland Historical Society, said he hopes this summer’s exhibit will be a chance for people to study the song’s words. The Star-Spangled Banner, national anthem of the United States, with music adapted from the anthem of a singing club and words by Francis Scott Key. In 2011 it was taken by armored vehicle, with a police escort, to the state’s capital in Annapolis and to Fort McHenry. The words are from a poem that was written by Francis Scott Key. Key’s manuscript has traveled only slightly more often since being purchased for the historical society in the 1950s. The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem, or national song, of the United States. Armistead was the commander of Fort McHenry and the man who commissioned the banner with 15 stripes and 15 stars, representing the number of states in the Union at the time.Įxcept for a period during World War II, when it was housed in Virginia for safekeeping, the flag hasn’t traveled outside of Washington since coming to the Smithsonian. The flag has been at Smithsonian for more than a century after being given to the institution by the family of Maj. And, second, Key wrote, “Oh say can you see through the dawn’s early light,” but crossed out “through” and wrote “by.”Īmericans may be more familiar with the flag, which gets millions of visitors a year at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. First, Key’s poem is actually four stanzas, though the first stanza is the only one that’s traditionally sung. Key’s original manuscript, written with quill and ink, has two surprises for viewers who know the song.
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