The Missing Verse of The Star Spangled Banner That May Change Your View Of Our Anthem.

[thomhartmann]

[63splitwindow]

1. To pursue this avenue of attack is totally misdirected and a disservice to the cause IMHO...

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=398841

[tonyt53]

2. So, a verse that is never sang takes down the entire song?

How about the hauntingly beautiful state song of KY - My Old Kentucky Home? Stephen Foster wrote it in the early 1850's. KY was not associated with the North or South during the civil war, but most Kentuckians that fought, fought for the North. Ky didn't have a high number of slaves as compared to the state directly south of it (TN). But oddly, the song was about a slave that was sold of to a southern slave owner and he was having to leave.

That song had was changed in 1986. Why? In it there was a reference that was offensive. That line goes like this "Tis summer, the people are gay". The original wording, until 1986 mind you, was "Tis summer, the darkies are gay".

I'm a lifelong Kentuckian and proud of it. But I always hated that one word in our beautiful song. That song has been played. and sang, before every Ky Derby since the 30's. Everybody gets up and sings along, even before the wording was changed. No matter the race, they all get up. I've been a a few of Ky Derby's and the only people that sit during that song are those that are too drunk to get up or those that are physically unable. Double standard? Big time.

[Urchin]

3. Snopes

I quote from Snopes.com:

"It doesn't appear that Francis Scott Key ever specified what he did mean by the phrase, nor does its context point to a single, definitive interpretation."

Link: http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/29/star-spangled-banner-and-slavery/

[packman]

4. This is total BS

The poem was written on September 14, 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large American flag, the Star-Spangled Banner, flying triumphantly above the fort during the American victory.

It has/had NOTHING to do with black slavery - the "slaves" were references to imposition of implied slavery the British would reinstate on their former colonies or to the sailors on the British ships who were "slaves and hirelings"

Read that 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 washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. (the blood of Patriots fighting in the Revolution - pollution=British rule)
No refuge could save the hireling and slave (reference to British bombarding the fort - they are paid hirelings and slaves)
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: (We'll kick their ass - chase them and kill them)
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Gotta lighten up on this crap - that guy Shawn is ringing the wrong bell and doesn't understand the circumstances of the poem.
Why in the hell would Scott even inject something to do with American slavery in a poem written whose entire focus is on the shelling of the fort.
Shawn King is an idiot and obviously failed Poetry 101.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. It's the most inspiring national anthem I've heard. I like the rousing French 'Marseillaise',

but it's neither as beautiful nor as moving.

The British national anthem is very lame aesthetically, insipid and banal, although it does have the virtue of being a prayer, if a curiously belligerent one.