Oh say can you see,
By the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed,
At the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars,
Through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched,
Were so gallantly streaming.
And thy rocket’s red glare,
Thy bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through thee night,
That our flag was still there.
Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free,
and the home of the brave.
Previously unknown by many, this author included, the song had a third and highly controversial verse. During the War of 1812, the British offered freedom to any slave that would join their military efforts against the colonies. And that thousands of slaves did just that, hoping that real freedom somewhere else was better than the treatment there were getting in the so-called land of the free. And so it was said that prior to the bombardment at Baltimore, there was the Battle of Bladensburg, where the British, counting freed slaves among them (known as Colonial Marines), turned back the American colonial militia with none other than Francis Scott Key in their losing ranks. It was a brutal loss for the Americans as the British went on to invade the new capitol, Washington, D.C., burning and destroying the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress and the White House, every building connected to the government.
Critics claim this verse is directed not at the British, but specifically the freed slaves that turned against the colonies. Critic’s also point to Key’s lineage as a descendant of wealthy slave owners and his record as a lawyer fighting against abolitionists to further prove he, like the men of his time, were racist and bigots of the worst kind.
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 wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
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.