Pod Insights The Rest Is History 677. USA: The Star-Spangled Banner (Part 1) About this episode How did the War of 1812 result in America’s national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner? Who came up with it? And, why does this origin story make the anthem so controversial?
Join Dominic and Tom as they launch into the first episode of their Football World Cup special, with the story behind America’s national anthem, and its secret story.
_______
*Father’s Day discounted gift memberships available here. Treat your dad to ad-free listening, early access to full series, bonus episodes, and much more.*
Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at therestishistory.com
To read our new newsletter, sign up at:
therestishistory.com/newsletters
_______
Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations.
Advertise with us: [email protected]
_______
Twitter:
@TheRestHistory
@holland_tom
@dcsandbrook
Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton
Social Producer: Harry Balden
Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude
Senior Producer: Callum Hill
Executive Producer: Dom Johnson
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 12,302 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Business and Commercial Banking.
0:06 Tom Holland? One of the great things about finance is that it may result in you having to pay tax and this was a constant grumble in Anglo-Saxon England, which was the most heavily taxed country in the whole of Christendom. And just when the Anglo-Saxons thought it couldn't get any worse, they got conquered by King Canute and Canute imposed a tax rate that was effectively 100%.
0:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, well, that was one very big change, Tom, but another tax change is upon us. And this is the advent of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. And if you're at all concerned about it, this is where Lloyds come in because they're here to help make that change much simpler for you with a useful HMRC recognised accounting tool that will help you stay in line with all the Making Tax Digital requirements.
0:59 Tom Holland? And the brilliant thing about this is that it is free for Lloyds Business Account customers. So when it is time to digitise your income tax, you can bank on Lloyds. Search Lloyds Business Accounts to find out more.
1:16 Speaker 02 For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremfya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremfya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremfya, proper training is required. Tremfya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.
2:00 Speaker 02 Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1 800 526 7736 to learn more or visit tremfyaradio.com.
2:19 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Tom, as you know, I spend all my time working and in a dream world, I would clone a sort of Tom Holland who would do all the work for me. But sadly, technology has not advanced to that point. If it did, I wish there was a recruiting company that I could use to hire that clone for me.
2:40 Tom Holland? Well, Dominic, you are in luck because if you are hiring, then ZipRecruiter is the great time saver. You can try it free at ziprecruiter.com/history. It shows you qualified candidates almost instantly. So save time with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
3:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/history. That's ziprecruiter.com/history. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.
4:48 Tom Holland? So that was a song originally entitled The Defence of Fort McHenry and it was written by a guy called Francis Scott Key in September 1814 and it is probably better known as the Star Spangled Banner. And Dominic, what better way to kick off our series marking the 2026 Football, or if you're in America Soccer World Cup, held in the United States in Mexico and Canada, which starts this Thursday and it will be ending in just over a month in New York. So Dominic, what we've done with this series, we have picked six competing nations in this World Cup, haven't we, whose national anthems have a fascinating
5:32 Tom Holland? backstory, tell us all kinds of things about the countries that they serve as a national anthem, and all kinds of fabulous characters in them, and lots of great myths to be busted.
5:43 Dominic Sandbrook? We love busting a myth.
5:45 Tom Holland? We love busting a myth. So on Thursday, we are going to be looking at England and Scotland, and then next week, we're going to be looking at Germany and the Netherlands, and in our third week, we're going to be looking at Brazil, and then last of all, South Africa. But, fittingly, because it is the host nation, because of its prominence in sport, because it is famously the most difficult anthem actually to sing, we are going to be starting with the Star Spangled Banner.
6:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes. So hello, everybody. A very recognizable anthem. It's been reinterpreted very controversially at times by Jose Feliciano, by Jimi Hendrix, by Whitney Houston, and by Borat Sagdiyev. It played a central role, of course, in the Black Lives Matter protests in the late 2010s and in 2020. So it was during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner that the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin First took the knee in 2016 and we'll be talking about that a bit later. There have actually always been people who don't like this anthem, Americans who don't like it. And there have been lots of alternative versions as Americans have tried to adapt it to their own political causes. So again, we'll talk about that a little bit later.
6:56 Dominic Sandbrook? But first of all, I think it would be fun to start off with the historical moment that the anthem is all about. So this is the British attack on Fort McHenry.
7:05 Tom Holland? Hooray.
7:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Which is just off Baltimore in Maryland in September 1814. And that means that we will be talking about a war that I think is genuinely never spoken about from one year to the next in Britain.
7:20 Tom Holland? Except the King did mention it, didn't he? In his recent speech, made a very good joke about it.
7:24 Dominic Sandbrook? But he didn't say that in Britain, he said it in the United States. So on British soil, I don't think it is ever mentioned.
7:30 Tom Holland? That is true.
7:31 Dominic Sandbrook? This is the War of 1812. And even for American listeners, I think, would have to concede that this war is very obscure. As in fact, reading an American historian about it. And he said, basically, we skim over this in schools. No one really talks about it. No one understands what it was about or what the point of it was. Partly, I think, because it's a draw, so no one really enjoys, you know, no one really revels in it.
7:52 Tom Holland? I think there's a certain, been a certain degree of reveling on this podcast, hasn't there? Because it does, it does see the British burn down the White House.
8:00 Dominic Sandbrook? It does. Yeah. One of the great moments in history and we will be alluding to that today. So it's, it's eclipsed in America, I think, by the independence struggle, the tax revolt. And it's eclipsed in Britain by the, you know, the, the world war against Napoleonic France. And it's basically a sequel to the American War of Independence and an offshoot of the Napoleonic Wars. And to cut a very long story short, this war, the War of 1812, broke out that summer for four reasons. So first of all, The Madison administration, so this is, I think, the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, not a terribly colourful or well-known president. He's chafing at Britain's trade embargo against Napoleonic France.
8:43 Dominic Sandbrook? And the Americans say, come on, why are we subject to this trade embargo? We want to be able to trade freely. We don't want the Royal Navy seizing our ships. Reason number two, they don't want the Royal Navy pressing American seamen into the Royal Navy. So when the Royal Navy seizes an American ship, they will take some of the Americans and force them to work on the British ship. People are sick of that. Number three, the Madison administration have expansionist ambitions. So they think, or the Brits are just distracted by what's going on in Europe, we can seize Upper and Lower Canada. So that's sort of Ontario country.
9:17 Tom Holland? And that's something they've been kind of angling to do since the War of Independence, isn't it?
9:21 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, they have. They think they've got unfinished business, basically. They want to take what becomes Canada.
9:24 Tom Holland? And it kind of rumbles on, doesn't it? Because there's that whole thing with the windmill.
9:27 Dominic Sandbrook? The windmill. We did that on a bonus episode, Great Canadian Victory. And the Americans also think there are lots of sort of Native American Indian confederations that stand in the way of westward expansion, that are allied to the British. Let's seize the opportunity to knock them out, too. And finally, they think, you know, nothing builds a nation more than a war, a successful war. Let's have a second War of Independence. We've had a lot of internal divisions recently. We can all rally around the flag.
9:53 Tom Holland? And Dominic, can I just ask, because the flag is going to be quite important in this story. At this point, it is 15 stars and 15 stripes.
10:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly right, exactly. If you take the first year or so of the war, the Americans are on the attack, the British are on the defensive. The Americans launched their invasion of Upper and Lower Canada, and they think it's going to be a walkover. Thomas Jefferson, not a great friend of the rest is history, says that it's the acquisition of Canada as far as the neighbourhood of Quebec will be a mere matter of marching.
10:23 Tom Holland? Was he ever right about anything?
10:24 Dominic Sandbrook? Sadly not. Another warhawk, Henry Clay, said to Congress, you even need to send a proper army, just send the Kentucky militia and they will lay Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet. And I'm very happy to say, especially happy on For behalf of our Canadian listeners, that this is not true at all. Because the invasions of Canada are complete and utter failure and the British actually end up occupying parts of the United States, parts of Michigan and Maine. And this is of course, a foundational moment in Canadian identity. So the one place that where people do talk about the War of eighteen twelve is in Canada because it's the the central distinctive moment that marks them out, I think.
11:02 Tom Holland? And Dominic, of course, Canada is co-hosting with the United States and Mexico, this World Cup. And so this is another very important reason why we're doing this particular topic, isn't it? It's for our Canadian listeners.
11:12 Dominic Sandbrook? This is really a Canadian story.
11:14 Tom Holland? Let them know we love them.
11:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. The following year, eighteen thirteen, the British launched a naval offensive of their own, the Chesapeake Bay Campaign. And basically, the plan is to quote Rear Admiral George Coburn, who's in charge of it. We're going to lay waste to the shore, we're going to lay waste to all these um these towns within this vast bay, including the capital, uh Washington DC. Because we want to cripple America's commerce across the Atlantic and that will turn public opinion in America against the war. And at first, the British do this in a sort of half-hearted way that, but then by eighteen fourteen, Napoleon has been beaten. So he's abdicated for the first time and he's been sent off to Elba. And so the British say, well, the Americans are still going, bizarrely.
12:00 Dominic Sandbrook? So why don't we divert resources now to knock them out of the war? So let's set the scene. It's the summer of eighteen fourteen and the British are advancing up the Potomac River from the coast. They're heading towards Alexandria and Washington DC. And this is the context for Coburn, the Rear Admiral, and Major General Robbie Ross to carry out one of the most intrepid and inspiring operations in world history. An operation I know our American listeners love hearing about, which is the occupation of Washington and the burning down of the US Capitol and the White House.
12:37 Tom Holland? Robbie Ross is an Irishman, isn't he? So it's it's a reminder of Anglo-Irish operations.
12:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, Ireland and Great Britain standing shoulder to shoulder against a common foe. I think that's how we would like to see it.
12:48 Tom Holland? Heartwarming.
12:49 Dominic Sandbrook? So they burned the White House, the Dolly Madison's dinner, and four days later, they are heading for their next target, which is Baltimore. Baltimore, Maryland, at this point is, I think, something like the third biggest city in the United States. It's a really important trading, harbor and harbor and all of that. And they are in great spirits, the British. They've been drinking a lot, unsurprisingly, and they've been helping themselves to what they see as long overdue tax returns from the American rebels. And sad to say, there's a local busybody who's called Dr Beans, Dr William Beans, and he lives in rural Maryland and he tries to stop the British from basically looting and pillaging.
13:30 Tom Holland? They're not looting and pillaging, you just said they're collecting tax arrears.
13:33 Dominic Sandbrook? That was just me putting myself in Dr Beans's head. I don't agree with him, he's obviously a terrible man.
13:39 Tom Holland? Oh, thank God, I'm on hand to provide the objectivity that
13:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly.
13:42 Tom Holland? A good history podcast should provide.
13:44 Dominic Sandbrook? So quite rightly, our brave lads arrested this bloke Beans and they took him down the river towards Baltimore. And some of his friends wanted to petition the British for Dr Beans's release. This was a very common practice during the war. He would basically go under flag of truce and say, please, can we have so and so back? And his friends decide to get a go between and the go between in question is a lawyer called Francis Scott Key.
14:09 Tom Holland? Who we mentioned right at the start of this show.
14:12 Dominic Sandbrook? We did indeed. So he's the author of the anthem. Now, American listeners, of course, will recognise his name, but they might not know loads about him. Key was born in 1779 to a fairly well off family in Maryland. His father had been in George Washington's rebel army. He'd been a judge. Francis Scott Key grew up in the family plantation.
14:32 Tom Holland? So he's from a slave owning family.
14:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Comes from a slave owning family, which will be important later on. He was a well known lawyer. He had 11 children, which I think seems a lot. He lives with his wife and 11 children in Georgetown. He does various big trials. He speaks before the Supreme Court. He's quite a well known person and the fact that he is a slave owner, Tom. I'm glad you flagged it because it is going to make this anthem controversial later on, so we'll come to that. Anyway, the 2nd of September 1814, Key writes to his mother and he says, "I'm going in the morning to Baltimore to proceed in a flag vessel to General Ross. Old Dr. Beans of Marlborough is taken prisoner by the enemy, and some of his friends have urged me to go and get him out and to procure his release.
15:17 Dominic Sandbrook? I don't know where he is, but I'll do my best." So he goes off to Baltimore. He finds the local United States agent who deals with prisoners of war. They rent a ship and they sail off towards Chesapeake Bay and they're looking for the British fleet because they think that's where this bloke Beans is being held. And on the 7th of September, they find HMS Tonon near the mouth of the Potomac in Chesapeake Bay. Now, some people may remember HMS Tonon, Tom. Do you remember it? That's the question.
15:46 Tom Holland? Well, it's the, the name is of course a French one. And we have done a series on a particular British admiral who's very good at capturing French ships.
15:54 Dominic Sandbrook? We have. Now, can anyone remember the name of that admiral? Is it Admiral Nelson?
15:59 Tom Holland? It is!
16:00 Dominic Sandbrook? Superb. So Tonon had been captured at the Nile. It had fought splendidly under Captain Charles Tyler at Trafalgar. It had captured a French ship and now the Tonon is fighting the Americans. Anyway, so Key approaches the Tonon under flag of truce and he's allowed aboard. He and this agent that he's with, they are invited for dinner by the British. They're treated very well, the British bigwigs.
16:24 Tom Holland? Well, because Ross, the Irish, Irishman, has a tremendous reputation for chivalry.
16:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Very chivalrous.
16:29 Tom Holland? Charming man.
16:30 Dominic Sandbrook? So when they say to Ross, "Can we have this bloke Dr. Beans?", Ross says, "Uh, I don't know." And Key has brought letters from wounded British soldiers, British prisoners of war, saying that American doctors as a group have been very kind to them. And Ross reads these letters and he says, "Oh, well, okay, fine. You can have, you know, maybe Beans can go."
16:53 Tom Holland? Because he's a warm-hearted man.
16:54 Dominic Sandbrook? He's a, yeah, kindly. So it looks like they're just gonna go about with this bloke Beans. However, while they've been having dinner, the Americans have overheard the British officers talking about how they're going to attack Baltimore. And so the British say, "Well, since you've heard us talking about this, you're gonna have to stay with us until the operation is over." And so Key and Beans are transferred to another ship HMS Surprise, which is towing the little ship that they'd arrived on. And they all move together up the Chesapeake towards Baltimore. And on the 11th, the Americans are allowed to go back to their own ship, which is still tethered to HMS Surprise, and they're basically under military guard. The 12th, nothing happens, they're just hanging around, a bit bored. And then
17:35 Dominic Sandbrook? at dawn on the 13th, the British open a bombardment of Baltimore, or more specifically, they open the bombardment of the fort that guards the entrance to Baltimore Harbour, which is Fort McHenry, which is the fort in the anthem. So Key and this medical busybody, this massive fun sponge, Dr Beans, who's been trying to stop our brave lads looting, they're watching this from a safe distance on their ship, they're about eight miles away, and they can see that this bombardment is a really big deal. So the attack is led by HMS Erebus, which is firing Congreve rockets. So if you know the American National Anthem, the rocket's red glare, these are the Congreve rockets being fired by HMS Erebus.
18:20 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, they're dangerous, aren't they? They're very dangerous. They're basically, the British use them to burn down Copenhagen. Yeah. You know, anyone who remembers our Nelson era podcasts will remember that, you know, naval bombardments are not a bundle of laughs. No. So there are, just as at Copenhagen, there are also bomb vessels, specialist bomb vessels. So in this case, they are called Terra, Volcano, Devastation Meteor and Etna. God, you wouldn't want to be attacked by ships with names like that. You wouldn't. Do we still have ships like that in the Royal Navy? I don't think we do. No, we don't have any ships, do we? Yeah, we don't have any ships. These ships are firing shells at the fort, and these are the bombs bursting in air from the anthem. And over the next 24 hours or so, they fire a total of 700 rockets, 1,500 shells. However,
19:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Although you quake at the thought of these rockets and shells, Tom, they're not very effective because Fort McHenry is equipped with very powerful artillery. So the British have to stay back at the very limit of their range and they don't really do that much damage. They kill four people, they wound 24, but they don't really have any impact whatsoever on the fort's defences.
19:29 Tom Holland? I wonder what Nelson would have done.
19:30 Dominic Sandbrook? He would have launched an operation at land that would have involved him losing an arm, surely.
19:34 Tom Holland? Falling in love with an unsuitable American adventuress.
19:37 Dominic Sandbrook? There's a good historical novel in that. Anyway, Key, Francis Scott Key is watching this. He can't tell that they're not having any effect. He's just in awe at the general spectacle. "It seemed as though Mother Earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell and a sheet of fire and brimstone," he says. Anyway, darkness falls. There's just this kind of vague red blur in the distance. More stuff is exploding on the walls of the fort. Basically, he, all night, he's kind of watching this and he's thinking like, has the fort fallen? You know, what's going on?
20:10 Tom Holland? Because he's not a military man. So he doesn't appreciate that the British Navy is operating sportingly at the limits of what it can actually do.
20:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. Dawn breaks on the 14th and the fort still stands. And as every morning, the American commander, Major George Armistead, orders his men to raise this massive national flag, which, as you said at the beginning, has 15 stars and 15 stripes. Now, this flag, which is now in the Smithsonian, actually, this flag has a history of its own. So, a year earlier, Major Armistead had actually said, you know, the British are probably going to attack Baltimore. We need a bloody big flag. We want to have a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance. So he basically wanted this flag as a sort of emblem of defiance. And he commissioned the flag, which is absolutely
21:04 Dominic Sandbrook? massive. It's 42 feet by 30 feet. He commissioned it from a Baltimore widow called Mary Pickersgill.
21:12 Dominic Sandbrook? And she took her six weeks to make it. She made it with her teenage daughter and her nieces and a servant.
21:18 Tom Holland? I don't want to do this. So boring, not another star.
21:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. And they used, they used 300 yards of English wool bunting, which is probably my favourite kind of bunting. The stars were made of cotton, they sewed them on afterwards. And she was paid $405.90 for it. And then Armistead gave her another $100 for a smaller flag called a storm flag. So during the bum bum, the storm flag was flying. And then at dawn, they raise as usual, this massive national flag.
21:51 Tom Holland? Oh, I didn't know that. So actually, I'd always thought that the flag, you know, had been hit by shell and all congreed rockets and stuff, but was still flying boldly. But that's a kind of cheat.
22:03 Dominic Sandbrook? It is a cheat, it's a total con. Yeah. So this huge flag appears. Francis Scott Key sees the flag and he says to himself, wow, this is brilliant. The fort is held out. Now, of course, he thinks this is a great underdog triumph. What he doesn't know is there was actually never really any possibility that the fort would fall because the British are too far away. But anyway, on land, the British had been advancing, and that hasn't gone terribly well either. I'm sorry to say that Major General Ross, who you were complimenting earlier on, he has been shot by a sniper at the Battle of North Point. So in this grotesque act of cowardice and cheating, he's been killed.
22:41 Tom Holland? No.
22:42 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the British have fallen back.
22:44 Tom Holland? They didn't write an anthem about that.
22:45 Dominic Sandbrook? No. So a couple of days later, the British say, well, this is too tough a nut to crack. We'll call off the operation. Anyway, while that's been going on, Key has been sitting on this ship, still kind of basically under guard, twiddling his thumbs.
22:58 Tom Holland? So what's a guy to do when you're twiddling your thumbs? Maybe write an anthem?
23:02 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, not an anthem. He decides to write a poem.
23:06 Tom Holland? Oh, right.
23:07 Dominic Sandbrook? So you will often read on the internet that he writes it on the back of an envelope that he'd found in his pocket. And it turns out that this is an untruth. He didn't write it on an envelope. And there's a historian who has dug deep into this story called Mark Clegg. And he says, no, envelopes weren't used in 1814. They were, well, or rather, they were only used on very special occasions by the rich. So Key would have, if he was gonna have to write a letter, he would have folded it over and not used an envelope. So he couldn't have had an envelope. So with sealing wax, I guess, and a stamp. And Key would undoubtedly have taken a lot of blank paper with him for
23:51 Dominic Sandbrook? the negotiations for this doctor's release and to write a letter to President Madison about how he was getting on. This would have been good paper and not scrap paper. So on some of this high quality note paper, Key writes his poem. And finally, that evening, he, it's, what are we, the 16th or something, he and the others are allowed to go back to Baltimore. And he's got a room at the Indian Queen Hotel and he finishes his poem there. And the handwritten draft of the poem, you can see at the Maryland Historical Society. And you can actually see how he's written three verses and then he's kind of running out of space and he has to cram the fourth verse into the last kind of inch of paper. It's like a sort of child's letter.
24:32 Tom Holland? Yeah, we've all been there.
24:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, exactly. Now, I mean, he was wasting his time because no one sings the fourth verse. No one cares about the fourth verse. It's the first verse everyone sings, right? So it's the story, "Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?" Then there's all this stuff about the bombs and the rockets. And then the final lines, "Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" It's very kind of 1800s, 1810s, slightly gushing, romantic kind of rhetoric.
25:04 Tom Holland? And not true.
25:04 Dominic Sandbrook? To reiterate, he shows this to his brother-in-law, who commands a local militia unit. And his brother-in-law takes it to a printer, they run off a thousand copies, and then they hand them out to the garrison of Fort Henry. And then the really key thing, his brother-in-law gives it to the Baltimore Patriot newspaper, which prints it under the title, "Defense of Fort McHenry." And then other papers copy it. So as we approach the break, a couple of things about this poem. I've called it a poem. And in fact, you said it was a song. And I said, I know it's a poem. But I was being a little bit unfair there. Because actually, it's somewhere in between the two. It's a thing called a broadside ballad.
25:47 Dominic Sandbrook? And basically, what a broadside ballad was, you would write lyrics or, you know, write a poem to fit a very familiar tune. You would say, this tune is a banger. I'm going to write new words for this tune. I'm going to publish them in the newspaper. And the reason you would use an old tune is that even if you wanted to write a new tune, it's more expensive to print music than it is to print words. And the reason is because you have to do the musical notation, it has to be engraved by hand. So you'd be better to reuse an old tune.
26:21 Tom Holland? And also, copyright law is not all it could be, because there is no copyright law.
26:27 Dominic Sandbrook? You, Tom, might write lyrics to the tune of Taxman by The Beatles.
26:33 Tom Holland? Yes.
26:34 Dominic Sandbrook? And you would publish them in the Daily Telegraph. And you would put a little note saying, you know, tune Taxman by The Beatles.
26:45 Tom Holland? And there'd be nothing The Beatles could do about it.
26:47 Dominic Sandbrook? No.
26:47 Tom Holland? Because there'd be no copyright law.
26:49 Dominic Sandbrook? Correct. If your lyrics were a hit, you would hope that other newspapers, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Guardian.
26:57 Tom Holland? The Guardian, probably not, I think.
26:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, it depends. Depends what I've written. These other newspapers might reprint your lyrics. And they'd kind of go viral and you'd be a tremendous, you'd be the talk of the town. Other people, people would shake your hand as they saw you go by. And actually, Francis Scott Key has form for doing this. So in 1805, he'd written his first patriotic broadside ballad, When the Warrior Returns, which was celebrating US naval victories against the Barbary Corsairs in Tripoli.
27:27 Tom Holland? Oh, yeah. They were, the American Navy was always fighting them, weren't they?
27:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. They're some of their first wars, bizarrely, against North African, nominally Ottoman, kind of, I don't know, the Emirates or something on the coast of North Africa.
27:41 Tom Holland? They're always capturing people and taking them into slavery.
27:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. This is the third verse of When the Warrior Returns. And if you know the Star Spangled Banner, you'll spot the similarities. "In the conflict resistless its toll they endured, till their foes fled dismayed from the war's desolation and..." Pale beamed the crescent, its splendour obscured by the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation. Where each radiant star gleamed a meteor of war, and the turbaned heads bowed to its terrible glare. Now, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave, and form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave. So, the rhythm might sound familiar, because this is written for the same tune as the Star Spangled Banner. And that tune, this will shock our American listeners. This will
28:28 Dominic Sandbrook? appall them and make them question existence itself. It's an English tune. It's, the tune is called The Anachryonitic Song. And it was written in seventeen seventy-five by a man called John Stafford Smith. Now, you'll sometimes read online that it was a bawdy drinking song, of the kind that no doubt the author's cricket team sing to gee themselves up, a tea between, uh, between innings. Do you not sing bawdy drinking songs?
28:58 Tom Holland? No, we would sing anachryonatic songs.
29:01 Dominic Sandbrook? Would you? Surely you would.
29:03 Tom Holland? Because we are great fans of the ancient Greek poet, Anachryon.
29:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course.
29:08 Tom Holland? Whose lyric poetry was designed to be sung.
29:11 Dominic Sandbrook? Well.
29:11 Tom Holland? And so there is a kind of classical model here.
29:14 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
29:14 Tom Holland? There's a faint hint of Emma Hamilton's attitudes about it.
29:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Attitudes.
29:18 Tom Holland? Trying to bring to life a kind of ancient Greek art form. I think that's kind of basically what's going on.
29:23 Dominic Sandbrook? I should never have opened the door to Emma Hamilton reappearing on this podcast. Anyway, she has. So, basically, there was a, a club in London, founded in seventeen sixty-six, called the Anachryonitic Club. And, uh, this was for men who were interested in music. And basically, when they would go to the club, there would be a professional singer often, who was hired to sing this song, and would be accompanied on the harpsichord. So it's not really a bawdy vibe.
29:52 Tom Holland? No, no.
29:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, the men would all listen to the song, and then they would sing some songs of the rain. Now, Key knows about this song because versions of it are already popular in the United States. So there's actually a historian at the University of Newcastle in our own country, Dr. Oscar Jensen, who has looked into this. And it had been taken up by abolitionists. So a version of it called Millions Be Free had been produced by a Liverpool abolitionist to celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Thomas Paine sang it. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about it. And it was taken by abolitionists to America in the mid 1790s. It was printed in New York and
30:34 Dominic Sandbrook? Baltimore, interestingly, under the title Freedom Triumphant. It spread. People liked the tune. American politicians used it. So there was a song supporting John Adams in the presidential election of 1796 that used it. And in fact, by 1820, there are 80 different songs, at least, using the anachronic melody. So they all follow the same pattern. Each verse is eight lines long. There is a rhyme at the end of each line, and there is also an extra rhyme in the middle of the fifth line. So every verse has actually nine rhymes. So Francis Scott Key undoubtedly writes
31:15 Dominic Sandbrook? his Star Spangled Banner to fit this pattern. And it's precisely because it's so familiar, because people already know about it, that it's a hit. People like songs they already know. So it's printed by more newspapers. By October of 1814, it's been printed in newspapers from New England to Georgia. And that autumn of 1814, a shop in Baltimore, the Carr Music Store, starts selling copies of the lyrics. And the owner, Thomas Carr, is the person who gives it its title, the title we know today, The Star Spangled Banner.
31:50 Tom Holland? And is he publishing that with the music or just the lyrics? And people are, you know, he assumes that people will recognise the tune that goes with it.
31:57 Dominic Sandbrook? That's an excellent question. I would guess you could buy the music, but it would be more expensive because it's more expensive to produce. So that's how the thing is created. But of course, that's only half the story, because there's absolutely no talk at this point that it could be the national anthem. And it won't become the national anthem for more than a century. And actually, right from the beginning, there is a shadow over this song. And this is the allegation that the song is a glorification of slavery.
32:26 Tom Holland? So I mean, I have to say that this came as a bombshell to me, may come as a bombshell to many patriotic American listeners. So please join us after the break where Dominic will be justifying this claim.
32:42 Dominic Sandbrook? This episode is brought to you by The Times and The Sunday Times. Tom, as another summer of top international football returns, it's truly incredible, isn't it, to think about how much the world has changed between the various tournaments?
32:57 Tom Holland? Looking back to when England hosted back in 1966, everyone in the crowd supporting England were waving Union Jacks. So what fascinating trends does that illustrate?
33:08 Dominic Sandbrook? And I suppose the last time the United States hosted the tournament was in 1994. And the mood in America in the early 1990s, you know, the Cold War was over, Clinton was in the White House.
33:17 Tom Holland? I was there for that. I was in Boston.
33:19 Dominic Sandbrook? Really? I mean, that's an aspect of the story that's very rarely reported on your presence. So you know what this reminds me of, Tom? It reminds me that the future is always uncertain. You never know what's coming, but the facts need not be uncertain. And when the world feels like it's moving too fast, The Times and The Sunday Times empower you to make smarter, more confident decisions.
33:42 Tom Holland? Click or tap the banner now to learn more or visit thetimes.com.
33:50 Speaker 03 Born from the intensity of a night in the Eternal City, introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand.
34:24 Speaker 04 With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network and no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.
34:53 Tom Holland? Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest Is History. And we, or more properly Dominic, left you with the suggestion that the Star Spangled Banner might be, as well as the glorification of America and liberty, the glorification of slavery as well. And I can only imagine we'll have thousands of Americans cancelling their subscriptions. But you were not the first to come up with this allegation, right?
35:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Not at all. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. So in November 2017, this venerable civil rights group actually petitioned Congress to scrap the Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem. The president of the California NAACP, Alice Huffman, said, and I quote, "It's racist. It doesn't represent our community. It is anti-black."
35:40 Tom Holland? So what's going on here? Because to the degree that I am familiar with the lyrics, I don't see anything about slavery in it. I mean, there's one mention of slaves, isn't there? But that's about it.
35:51 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, okay. So let's get into this because the essay is a fascinating subject and opens up a lot more of the history of the 1810s. So people only really sing the first verse. In the third verse, in the second half, now remember, this is something that nobody ever sings, Francis Scott Key is exulting in the aftermath of the British withdrawal.
36:15 Dominic Sandbrook? 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. And the issue focuses on those words, the hireling and slave. Now, lots of commentators say, without really thinking about it, oh, well, this must be African American slaves who were trying to escape from their owners and flee to the British.
36:47 Tom Holland? You see, I would not have said that. I would have said that these are insults applied to soldiers fighting under the British crown.
36:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Right.
36:56 Tom Holland? That dates from the years of the American Revolution.
36:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes.
36:59 Tom Holland? And the slaves are the British soldiers who are subjects to a king and the hirelings are the Hessian mercenaries who were brought in.
37:07 Dominic Sandbrook? Yep.
37:08 Tom Holland? And so they're applying that rhetoric now in a new war. That's, that's what I would say. That's what I had assumed.
37:16 Dominic Sandbrook? My initial reaction was to completely agree with you. I thought that too. Francis Scott Key's biographer, Mark Clegg, distinguished historian in the United States, he absolutely agrees with you. He says, listen, Americans in the late 18th and early 19th century used the words hireling and slave to refer to British subjects of King George III. They use them as exactly as you say, to refer to hired mercenaries and their local collaborators. And he says, actually, when you look at American propaganda, the word slavery is often a code word for submission to the British king.
37:54 Tom Holland? Loyalism, yeah. And this is in the context of Canada as well.
37:58 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly.
37:59 Tom Holland? Which hasn't been conquered. So, yeah, that's what I'd have thought.
38:02 Dominic Sandbrook? And, and we in Britain are very used to this issue because of course there is the issue of rule Britannia. So in rule Britannia, the words Britons never, never shall be slaves or whatever it is. You know, there was some talk in 2020 or so, oh, Royal Britannia should be cancelled. It's terrible. It's a, you know, it's very tasteless about slavery. But actually, the slavery being talked about in Royal Britannia.
38:25 Tom Holland? It's about the Vikings, isn't it? Because it's about King Alfred.
38:27 Dominic Sandbrook? It's about King Alfred, but obviously it's a, it's a sort of, it's using submission to the Vikings as a metaphor for submission to Catholic Spain, France, et cetera.
38:37 Tom Holland? Yeah. But can I also ask, it derives from, the kind of poem derives from Anachron, who is an ancient Greek, and the ancient Greek ideals of liberty is obviously very current. The Roman ideals of liberty. I mean, it's part of the kind of the language of the American culture class in this period.
38:56 Dominic Sandbrook? Yep.
38:56 Tom Holland? And the counterpoint to the liberty of the Athenians or the Romans, you know, save the Athenians, it's the slavery of those who were fighting for the Persian king at Marathon.
39:06 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, of course. I agree with all that. I totally agree. However, when you look more closely into this, there is another side to this story. There are reasons to think that Key was talking about African American slaves. And one is to do with the context and the other to do, is to do with Key himself. So if we start with the context, in the first half, we described how George Coburn's objective was to raid and destroy the towns and harbors on the Atlantic seaboard. To guide his raiding parties, he needed local intelligence. And from the moment he arrived in 1813, he and the other British captains relied on one group above all, which was escaped slaves.
39:44 Tom Holland? Right. And that again, is something that goes back to the American War of Independence, isn't it? Because this was a British strategy to offer slaves in the South their freedom if they would join the British.
39:55 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. So first, British ships and British parties would attract individual runaway slaves. But over time, they start to attract larger groups and family groups and so on. And when Coburn came back in 1814, he'd been wintering in Bermuda, but then he comes back. He doubled down on this and he said to his captains, I want you to go out of your way to appeal to the local slave population. And I quote, "Let the landings you make be more for the protection of the desertion of the black population than with a view to any other advantage. The great point to be attained is the cordial support of the black population. With them properly armed and backed with 20,000 British troops, Mr. Madison will be hurled from his throne." And as part of this, he makes a very
40:38 Dominic Sandbrook? Specific promise, all runaway slaves will be welcomed by the British and under no circumstances will they be handed back.
40:47 Tom Holland? When the British tried this policy in the American War of Independence, it was obviously massively compromised because the British themselves
40:57 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
40:57 Tom Holland? were defending the plantations in the Caribbean on which there were slaves. Slavery was not illegal.
41:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
41:04 Tom Holland? By this point, you have a British Foreign Secretary who is about to go to the Congress of Vienna and press for the abolition of the slave trade.
41:12 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
41:13 Tom Holland? With the other great powers. Is that something you think that would have filtered through to black Americans?
41:20 Dominic Sandbrook? Very hard to say because you wouldn't really have, you wouldn't find much textual evidence.
41:25 Tom Holland? Yeah, how would you find it? But maybe it's just kind of, you know, it's on the, on the grapevine. I mean, it would be big news, I would imagine that.
41:32 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, it's possible.
41:33 Tom Holland? The British government has turned abolitionist.
41:35 Dominic Sandbrook? There is absolutely no doubt that the news of what he is offering does, you know, filter through. And yes, they, you could well imagine people saying, well, the British are already talking about scrapping it. And what actually he does that really horrifies white American opinion. He says all male runaway slaves will be armed, they will be given red uniforms, and they will be put in a special unit called the Corps of Colonial Marines.
42:00 Tom Holland? Yeah, because this is the nightmare that haunted the original Ku Klux Klan, isn't it? In that series that we did after the Civil War.
42:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Nothing ever frightens white southern slaveholders more than the prospect of armed black men, you know, rising up against them or being emboldened against them. Anyway, this Corps of Colonial Marines did see action. They went into battle in Virginia in the end of May, and they did really well. Their British officers said, "I was highly pleased by the conduct of the Colonial Marines, every individual of which evinced the greatest eagerness to come to action with their former masters." And Coburn himself wrote, "They trigger the most general and undisguised alarm among American civilians. There were even former slaves involved in the burning of Washington, which must have been sweet revenge for them, you would guess.
42:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, the Americans, by contrast, think this is absolutely terrible. They think it's an outrage. They think it's cheating. But they think it's more than cheating. They think it's an affront to the laws of God and of nature to arm their former slaves against them. One senior officer writes in August 1814, "Our Negroes are flocking to the enemy from all quarters, which they convert into troops vindictive and rapacious with the most minute knowledge of every by path. They leave us as spies upon our posts and our strength, and they return upon us as guides and soldiers and incendiaries." A guy actually from the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian, writes, Christopher Wilson,
43:29 Dominic Sandbrook? "The irony is, the very point when Key is writing his poem about the land of the free, black African-American slaves are trying to escape the land of the free and to reach those British ships in Baltimore Harbor that are the antagonists of the poem." And to quote Christopher Wilson, this guy from the museum, "They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the Star Spangled Banner." He sounds an excellent curator. I commend him for his objectivity. This is literally the best story we've ever done on this podcast. Anyway. The war ends in 1815, basically in a draw, and Coburn is true to his word. He now
44:10 Dominic Sandbrook? has about 6,000 escaped slaves, and the treaty called for the return of all United States property. So the Americans expected to get them back, and Coburn did not give them back. Because everything has changed, because the British government is now committed to abolitionism. Right. Well, at least the abolition of the slave trade, let's say. Exactly. So most of these people actually ended up in Canada. But a lot of the colonial marines, so the people who'd seen action, went to Trinidad. This is an incredible story, by the way. They were given special villages under the command of their old sergeants. They settled there, and they were called Americans. And they are still there today and they're still called Americans.
44:54 Tom Holland? Goodness, that's amazing.
44:56 Dominic Sandbrook? It's an incredible story. Anyway, to go back to the words of Francis Scott Key's anthem. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave. I think it is perfectly possible he is talking about these people whose flight has been such a big story. He is saying basically, we will catch up with you or you will die.
45:21 Tom Holland? I mean, it works both ways though, doesn't it?
45:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Of course.
45:23 Tom Holland? I mean, I mean, that's kind of maybe the, that's poetry.
45:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Double meaning.
45:27 Tom Holland? Yeah.
45:28 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah. However, there's one of the aspects, I said, there were two reasons to think it was more complicated and the other one is Key himself. Now, the rest is history. Ever since we started the podcast, we've never been into cancelling people or, or setting ourselves up as hanging judges. However, I think as an outsider, you can see why black Americans might find it difficult to celebrate Francis Scott Key as an individual. He has at best a very ambiguous attitude to slavery. He owned slaves himself. He bought his first slave in 1800, he owned six by 1820, when he died in 1843, he had eight. He's sometimes represented as a lawyer slave owners seeking the return of their property.
46:12 Dominic Sandbrook? On the other hand, he did free some of his slaves. He represented slaves who sought their freedom. And when a friend of his liberated his slaves in his will, Francis Scott Key was one of the executors and he worked to get them their freedom.
46:25 Tom Holland? And was he doing this before he wrote this poem?
46:27 Dominic Sandbrook? After, I think.
46:28 Tom Holland? So maybe his, his attitudes evolved.
46:31 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I think his attitudes are complicated. He is a founder member and a very keen fundraiser for something called the American Colonisation Society. And the goal of the American Colonisation Society is to send black men and women who have been freed to Africa. And this is the project that actually culminates in the foundation of Liberia in 1847. Now, you may look at this and say, well, that's a very nice thing to do. Actually, most of the people who backed this society were slaveholders. It was particularly popular in Maryland, it was particularly popular with the planter elite.
47:02 Tom Holland? It's kind of generated by an anxiety that white and black Americans can never live together.
47:09 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly so. So it's complicated because on the one hand, these people would undoubtedly have said themselves, we're motivated by Christian charity. We want to find somewhere for these people to live. We want to find them a home. On the other hand, the people who fundraise, the people who are activists for this society are often explicitly racist. They say, we're a white country. We don't want free, you know, black men and women as citizens among us. Get rid, send them to Africa. And actually, a lot of abolitionists and a lot of black people themselves hate this colonisation society. Because they see it as, I mean, they see it as unambiguously racist. As for abolitionism, Key is not a fan of abolitionism at all. So you mentioned Nelson. We talked about Nelson and slavery. Nelson's not a fan of abolitionism, but I don't think it's something that's on his mind very much.
47:54 Dominic Sandbrook? He's, he's not a fan of it because he thinks it will weaken the British Empire, its commerce, its trade and all of this. But Nelson never actively campaigned against abolitionism. Francis Scott Key does. As district attorney for Washington DC in the 1830s, he is a tireless foe of abolitionism. He brings a libel case against one anti-slavery activist, a guy who had said, yeah, there's no justice for black people in this town. Key basically drove him out with this libel case. Most famously, he prosecuted a guy from New York who was living in Georgetown merely for having a trunk full of anti-slavery tracts. Key accused him of seditious libel and inciting slaves and blacks to revolt.
48:37 Dominic Sandbrook? And he tried to turn this case into a massive political set piece. I think because he wanted to use it to boost his own political career. Are you willing, gentlemen, he said in his closing speech, to abandon your country, to permit it to be taken from you and occupied by the abolitionist? According to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro. Anyway, Key lost this case. Actually, the bloke went free and he ended up humiliated and his political ambitions were punctured. So when you put that alongside the issue of the context of the War of 1812. I think it is actually, it is, it becomes more and more plausible.
49:16 Tom Holland? How is it distinguishing between the slave and the hireling?
49:18 Dominic Sandbrook? The hireling could be collaborators, paid collaborators.
49:21 Tom Holland? Okay, so white collaborators.
49:23 Dominic Sandbrook? So, The Nation magazine, a very liberal journal. Key's message to the blacks fighting for freedom was unmistakable. We will hunt you down and the search will leave you in terror because when we find you, your next stop is the gloom of the grave. So this is the 21st century take by a lot of kind of liberal writers.
49:41 Tom Holland? Right.
49:41 Dominic Sandbrook? I mean, I think there's enough ambiguity, though, for listeners to make up their own minds. So some people may reject all of this and say, no, no, no, he's obviously just talking about, using the rhetoric of the American Revolution or something.
49:51 Tom Holland? I mean, I suppose that it sounds like this is a man who thinks a lot about slavery and liberty. And I guess it has many different shades of meaning. Often, particularly in America, those shades of meaning are in direct conflict with each other.
50:08 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
50:08 Tom Holland? So perhaps he couldn't resolve those ambiguities.
50:11 Dominic Sandbrook? And that's a very firm-minded verdict, actually. Anyway, back to the song itself. Obviously, it strikes a chord in the War of 1812 and it never really fades from view afterwards. So there's an account from a diarist, George Templeton Strong, he's writing about New York City in 1837. A lot of tipsy loafers are just going past, screaming out the Star Spangled Banner at the top of their lungs in all sorts of diabolical discords. But it sounds gloriously, it's a glorious thing altogether, words and music, no matter how it's mangled.
50:43 Tom Holland? I mean, it often is mangled though, isn't it? Because it's so difficult to sing.
50:46 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly, it is mangled. It's also mangled because at this point, people are often changing the words. So people would play the song at 4th of July celebrations and things. And it was well-known enough for people to start parodying it and to produce political variations. So there's a temperance version, very popular in the mid 19th century. Oh, who has not seen by the dawn's early light some poor bloated drunkard to his home weekly reeling?
51:13 Tom Holland? That'd make a great. Anthem.
51:15 Dominic Sandbrook? Both sides in the Civil War claim it. That's really interesting. So the Confederates have their own flag, of course, they're not going to celebrate the Star Spangled Banner. Or are they? Because they see him as one of their own. A man of Maryland, which is a border state, a slaveholder. The Richmond Examiner, 1861, let us never surrender to the North, the noble song, the Star Spangled Banner. It is southern in origin and sentiments in poetry and song.
51:40 Tom Holland? Well, they shouldn't have abolished the flag then.
51:42 Dominic Sandbrook? But they do have a Star Spangled Banner of their own. I suppose they do, yes. But not the Star Spangled Banner.
51:47 Tom Holland? Not the, no.
51:49 Dominic Sandbrook? But it's still not the National Anthem. Towards the end of the 19th century, it starts to become a little bit more formalized, a bit more institutionalized. The US Naval Academy starts playing it morning and evening in 1889 when they raise and lower the flag. In 1892, the commander of Fort Meade in South Dakota, orders that it's played at the retreat. He tells the state governor, uh, the state governor says, oh, what a brilliant idea. I'll get the state militia to play it whenever we, you know, the retreat and whatnot. He tells the Secretary of War, the Secretary of War says, oh, I, that, I love that idea. Let's get every army post to play it every evening. And the flag itself by this point is becoming a sacred relic too.
52:31 Dominic Sandbrook? So it stayed in the family of the bloke who was the commander of the fort, Armistead.
52:36 Tom Holland? And this is the big one, not the, not the one that actually got shot at.
52:39 Dominic Sandbrook? No, this is the huge one. And, and one reason the, the huge one is so battered is because the family would give away pieces to friends. They would say, would you like a piece of the Star Spangled Banner from the, from the song? And so the flag ends up having lots of holes in it. And actually the Smithsonian, when it got hold of the, um, flag in 1907, tried to buy back some of the holes.
53:02 Tom Holland? Oh, so they didn't blame it on the redcoats or?
53:04 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, I'm sure they did blame it on the redcoats. Anyway, then there's a huge, um, upsurge of patriotism during the First World War. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson, we talked about him in our Ku Klux Klan episodes, of course, another Southerner. Perhaps not coincidentally, he directs that is played at all military occasions. One complication though, at this point, there is no standard arrangement. So Wilson gets the US Bureau of Education to sort one out. They get a series of experts, one of them is a quite famous American composer, John Philip Sousa, and they get a basically a government approved version.
53:42 Tom Holland? Can I just ask, do we know whether over the 19th century and up to this point, whether any eyebrows are raised over that, the hiring and slave comment? Or do they just not pay any attention to it?
53:55 Dominic Sandbrook? I don't think people massively pay attention to it, and not least because, as we will see later, there is a rival abolitionist version.
54:02 Tom Holland? Right, okay.
54:03 Dominic Sandbrook? They have complaints, and we will see in just a sec. People have a lot of objections to this as the anthem, but that is not one of the principal ones. And just one quick side note before we talk about how it becomes an anthem. It's already been played by the end of the 1910s at baseball. So it's first played at the World Series in 1918 at Comiskey Park. The Chicago Cubs were hosting the Red Sox. And again, one, a military band played this song, though it's not at this point the national anthem.
54:33 Tom Holland? And we heard it being played at a baseball game, didn't we, in November in LA?
54:37 Dominic Sandbrook? We did indeed, yeah. And very, very exciting it was too.
54:40 Tom Holland? Very stirring, yeah.
54:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. But at the end of the First World War, the United States still does not have a national anthem. And this is probably a good point to just talk for a second about national anthems more generally.
54:52 Tom Holland? Such a complicated topic, Dominic.
54:54 Dominic Sandbrook? It is a massively complicated topic. Now, we did our first national anthem episode back when we did a series on the French Revolution. And you took us through the history of the Marseillaise.
55:02 Tom Holland? Yes.
55:03 Dominic Sandbrook? Which is sometimes described as one of the world, as the world's first national anthem, though it's sort of, it competes, doesn't it, with the subject of our next episode, which is God Save the King.
55:14 Tom Holland? So I, in that episode on the Marseillaise, I did describe it as the world's first national anthem. But I have now repented of that opinion, as we will be discussing in our next episode on God Save the King. The Marseillaise is the first national song, but not the first national anthem. And people who find that intriguing and fascinating, do tune into the next episode, because we've got it all.
55:34 Dominic Sandbrook? So at the early 20th century, most countries don't have a national anthem. The countries that do tend to be countries that have recently been invented. So Latin American countries above all, Argentina has one, Brazil has one, as we will find out. Peru has one. But in Europe, they're seen as a bit tawdry, a bit gimmicky by and large. And often the countries with national anthems, Britain and France aside, tend to be made up countries like Belgium or Italy, countries that have had to invent an identity for themselves. But in the 1920s, you've got a lot of new countries that are adopting anthems. The United States doesn't want to be left out. There's a congressman, again from Maryland, so Francis Scott Key's home state,
56:18 Dominic Sandbrook? called John Charles Lythicum. And he introduces a bill again and again to make this the anthem, and he keeps losing. And the reason he keeps losing is not because of the words "hiring and slave", it's because, A, some people say it's a British melody. Why would we have a British melody as our national anthem?
56:40 Tom Holland? Yeah, why would we have the English language as our?
56:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, exactly. Well, that's something on which American listeners might care to reflect. Pacifists, and of course, there are a lot of pacifists in the wake of the First World War, don't like it because it celebrates war. So that's a big thing. And the biggest objection is musical, you've already mentioned this. People say it is just too high. The melody is weird, it's unsingable. And to delve for a moment into the world of musicology, the Star Spangled Banner demands a range of 19 semitones, and even some professional singers are not capable of that range.
57:18 Tom Holland? And Dominic, what exactly does that mean? 19 semitones?
57:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Well, Tom, if members of the Restless District Club will be able to hear me explaining. Semi tones in a future bonus episode. I can't promise it will come immediately, but one day before the end of this podcast, I will undoubtedly be doing a bonus episode on this very subject.
57:40 Tom Holland? That is something for people to look forward to.
57:41 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, definitely. And actually, some of the critics combine all those in one, all those objections. So there's a Christian scientist called Augusta Emma Stetson.
57:50 Tom Holland? That's a great name.
57:53 Dominic Sandbrook? In June 1922, took out a massive advert in the New York Tribune with the headline, "The Star Spangled Banner Can Never Become Our National Anthem." And she says, "It has, its violent, unsingable cadences can never express the spiritual ideals upon which the nation was based. Never has Congress, and never will Congress legalize an anthem which sprang from the lowest qualities of human sentiment. God forbids it."
58:21 Tom Holland? It's amazing that all that, the Hiling safe stuff, isn't even entering the equation here.
58:25 Dominic Sandbrook? No, not at all. And she doesn't even mention that. Now, the thing is, they don't have to choose this. There are alternatives.
58:33 Dominic Sandbrook? All through the 19th century, probably the leading candidate had been another song, "Hail Columbia." "Hail Columbia" had been composed for Washington's first inaugurals as president in 1790. So there's that, but that's gone into decline a bit by the 20th century. So that's not going to win. Then by the 1920s, the other big rival is "America the Beautiful." And this was written by an English literature professor called Catherine Lee Bates. She went on a trip to Colorado in the 1890s, 1893. She wrote this hymn of praise to the American landscape. If you look at the lyrics of "America the Beautiful", it's not very well known outside America, but Americans love it. It's quite generic and waffly, which is, you know.
59:14 Tom Holland? Yeah, there's a kind of craze for those kind of anthems in the late 90th century, isn't there?
59:18 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes, there is. They're all like that, actually. When you look at, I mean, we get to Brazil in a couple of weeks.
59:22 Tom Holland? They're to South Africa.
59:23 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, they're very kind of generic, a lot of these anthems. Anyway, "America the Beautiful." Consistently very popular. In the 1960s, there was quite a groundswell of support for scrapping the Star Spangled Banner and having America the Beautiful instead. And people have always said, it's easier to sing, it's a better tune, you can do more fun things with it. We've got the wrong anthem. Anyway, America the Beautiful didn't win. The Star Spangled Banner won precisely because of its military associations. So the lobby group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, organised a petition. They got five million names, Congress approved it, and President Herbert Hoover
1:00:03 Dominic Sandbrook? in 1931 signed it into law. But it has never not been controversial. And obviously, in the post-war years, post-Second World War, the controversies were about interpretations of the anthem. So I already mentioned some of them. At the 1968 World Series, Jose Feliciano, a Puerto Rican singer and guitarist, played it. He did a kind of Latin jazz, slightly fukie kind of interpretation. And people said, it's terribly disrespectful, it's awful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:00:34 Tom Holland? And the disrespect is because the same reverence that Americans display towards the flag is now being applied towards the anthem. Is that right?
1:00:43 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, and that's something that actually, I think Americans, some of our Americanists may not realise, that not all countries have the same attitude to their national anthem. So, for example, in Britain, I think it's fair to say that God Save the King, I mean, most people kind of laugh when they hear God Save the King.
1:01:01 Tom Holland? Or indeed, God Save the Queen, which we will be discussing in our next episode.
1:01:05 Dominic Sandbrook? Exactly. The interpretations of it are seen as completely valid and unfair, and people have fun with it. It's not a sacred relic. Another controversial moment, of course, Jimi Hendrix's, I was about to say Jimmy Carter's guitar.
1:01:22 Dominic Sandbrook? I'd pay good money to see that.
1:01:23 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:01:24 Dominic Sandbrook? He'd be sitting there ripping off his cardigan.
1:01:26 Tom Holland? Yeah.
1:01:26 Dominic Sandbrook? Cardigan with an acoustic guitar, surrounded by peanuts or people dressed as peanuts. I think it'd be absolutely tremendous.
1:01:32 Tom Holland? A fucking group of peanuts.
1:01:33 Dominic Sandbrook? Anyway, Jimi Hendrix did his guitar solo at Woodstock, obviously in 1969. That was one of 60 renditions of the Star Spangled Banner that Hendrix gave in the late 60s. But he'd been in the army, hadn't he? So perhaps he could get away with it. The issue there is, I think, as of 1968, Jose Feliciano is bound up with Vietnam. It's seen as, you know.
1:01:52 Tom Holland? Disrespectful.
1:01:53 Dominic Sandbrook? Disrespectful to the flag. The Star Spangled Banner is played in the Mexican Olympics in 1968 when Tommy Smith and John Carlos do their famous Black Power salutes in the medal ceremony. My favourite controversy, I don't know if you're familiar with this one, Tom, came at a rodeo in Salem, Virginia in 2005. And the organisers of this rodeo had agreed to feature a visiting celebrity from the Republic of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. He prefaced his performance with the words, with speech, "We support your war of terror. May George Bush drink the blood of every single man, woman and child of Iraq."
1:02:31 Tom Holland? As I remember, that was greeted with applause and cheers, wasn't it?
1:02:34 Dominic Sandbrook? It was greeted with applause and cheers. And then to the usual tune, he sang the, the words. Kazakhstan is the greatest country in the world. All other countries are run by little girls. Kazakhstan, number one, exporter of potassium. Other Central Asian countries have inferior potassium. And that was, of course, Sacha Baron Cohen playing Borat. And I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He'd done American history at Cambridge. He actually wrote his thesis on the civil rights movement and he had the same supervisor as supervisor in my PhD.
1:03:07 Tom Holland? Oh, really?
1:03:08 Dominic Sandbrook? He learned from the best, yeah.
1:03:09 Tom Holland? Yeah. So Borat, very controversial, but not the most controversial take on the Star Spangled Banner, right?
1:03:16 Dominic Sandbrook? Because. I guess not.
1:03:18 Tom Holland? There's an even more famous one that you alluded to at the start of this episode.
1:03:22 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, so this is in 2016. San Francisco 49ers are playing their third pre-season game. The quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, takes the knee during the anthem. And he says he wants to do it to protest police brutality towards African Americans. This kicks off this firestorm of argument. Kaepernick played out the season, but he then became a free agent at the end of the season and no team. Signed him. Basically, no team wanted to touch him and he sued the NFL, but the case was settled out of court. And the whole gesture of the taking the knee obviously became a huge thing after George Floyd was killed in 2020. So people may remember, British listeners may remember that Keir Starmer.
1:04:05 Tom Holland? Yes, and Angela Rayner.
1:04:06 Dominic Sandbrook? And Angela Rayner. They posted a photograph of themselves very solemnly taking the knee in Starmer's House of Commons office. And meanwhile, activists in the United States actually toppled the statue of Francis Scott Key in Golden Gate Park. So that statue has stood in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco since 1887, and it has subsequently been replaced with 350 black steel figures that represent the Africans that were on the first slave ship to Virginia in 1619.
1:04:38 Tom Holland? And presumably that is because the controversy around the Star Spangled Banner has now expanded from the fact that it is simply the national anthem of the United States.
1:04:48 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah.
1:04:49 Tom Holland? And that people are now more aware of the context in which it was written, I suppose.
1:04:52 Dominic Sandbrook? Yes. And I think if you are on the sort of, if you're on the left, or if you're on the left of that particular argument, the sort of slightly reflex thing to say now is, oh, it's an anthem that glorifies slavery. And I think, as we've established, there is at least ambiguity there. I mean, I think it's actually, I think it's impossible to be, you know, no one knows what was in Francis Scott's head when he, when he wrote that. I mean, my personal view is, well, first of all, it's not my anthem. American listeners should not, you know, they can do what they like. It's not, no business of ours what anthem they have. I don't think it's entirely groundless to say that there's a slavery connection. We know that he owned slaves. We know that he was a very, very
1:05:34 Dominic Sandbrook? determined foe of abolitionism. And personally, I think his text probably is aimed at slaves who are trying to escape and are helping the British. However. I think we've generally always had the position on the show that you can separate the art from the artist. And I think this is actually quite a nice example because we've already mentioned how temperance activists wrote their own version of it, but so did abolitionists. So this is the irony. The very people that Francis Scott Key was trying to suppress actually wrote their own version of his anthem. It was in 1844. It was in the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, and it was by an activist called E.A. Atlee, and it ran as follows.
1:06:16 Dominic Sandbrook? "Oh, say, do you hear at the dawn's early light the shrieks of those bondsmen whose blood is now streaming from the merciless lash, while our banner in sight with its stars mocking freedom is fitfully gleaming? Do you see the backs bare? Do you mark every score of the whip of the driver traced channels of gore? And say, doth our star-spangled banner yet wave, O, the land of the free and the home of the brave?" So kind of bitterly ironic final lines. Now, obviously, I think it would be deranged to suggest that Americans might like to adopt that text rather than the one they have, but it's nevertheless worth bearing
1:06:56 Dominic Sandbrook? in mind that Key's text is not the only text of that anthem and that anthems often tell more than one story. And as we'll see in the rest of this series, even the most bombastic song can tell very surprising and unexpected stories, and we'll be hearing one of those next time, won't we?
1:07:18 Tom Holland? We will, because we will be looking at "God Save the King", the anthem of both England and Scotland, who have qualified for the World Cup finals. And the story of that song is actually framed by many of the same issues and controversies that we've been talking about with reference to the Star Spangled Banner. And then after that, we will be looking at the German, the Dutch, the Brazilian and the South African national anthems. Members of the Rest is History Club, of course, can get immediate access to all of them. So if you like national anthems, I mean, this is your lucky day. National anthems, we've got them. But for now, Dominic, thanks so much for that. Goodbye, everyone.
1:07:59 Dominic Sandbrook? Bye-bye.
1:09:31 Tom Holland? Hello everybody. Now, as those of you who are good children will know, here in Britain, on the 21st of June, it's Father's Day.
1:09:39 Dominic Sandbrook? But not just here in Britain. It's also Father's Day on the 21st of June in the United States, in Canada, and in the Republic of Ireland. So those are four countries that are united by dads who love to listen to The Rest Is History.
1:09:55 Tom Holland? And that is why we are offering an amazing 25% Father's Day discount on the subscription price to The Rest Is History Club, because we are all heart.
1:10:11 Dominic Sandbrook? So treat the Peter... The Great in Your Own Life, this Father's Day to early access to full series. You get say early access that you get that with a membership. You get bonus episodes, you get ad free listening, you get access to tickets for live shows. Basically, you get an entire host of supplementary benefits. And that, I think, is what a lot of patriarchs want, isn't it?
1:10:34 Tom Holland? It absolutely is because I think nothing says happy Father's Day quite like the chance to listen to six solid hours ad free about the First World War.
1:10:47 Dominic Sandbrook? Yeah, that's what most fathers want. So head to therestishistory.com and click on the word gifts. And that gift, membership of our much loved Rest is History Club, will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day itself.
1:11:07 Tom Holland? So if you want to give the best Father's Day gift there's ever been in history, ever, and we say this as the presenters of the Rest is History, you know what to do.
1:11:19 Speaker 05 Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 Jeep Cherokee, a Carnival Cruise vacation, gift cards from DoorDash and Best Buy. You'll then play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag.
1:11:37 Speaker 06 No purchase necessary. 50 US and DC age 18 plus. See playatmcd.com for rules and playatmcd.com/amoe for info on playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd. Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro.
1:11:50 Speaker 04 We just moved into our new house and I didn't realise just how close we were to the neighbours. That's when my friend told me about blinds.com. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Customers who shop at blinds.com experience excellent customer service from consultation to installation. Side effects include increased privacy and better sleep. Talk to your partner today and see if blinds.com is right for you.
1:12:14 Speaker 05 Shop Black Friday all month long at blinds.com. Don't miss huge deals dropping every week.
Previous 676. The First World War: Churchill’s Calamity (Part 6) Next 678. Britain: God Save the King (Part 2) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
