Kill the Jellyfish: A New National Anthem?

Battle of Ft. McHenry

Recently, our USH class studied the War of 1812 and Francis Scott Key's poem "The Defence of Ft. McHenry"...eventually it was set to the melody from "The Anacreontic Song" and became our "National Anthem".

The Anacreontic Society

Although the Star Spangled Banner has been our official national anthem since 1931, I believe we should "retire" Key's version and adopt a new National Anthem. Here are my top 5 reasons why:

1. Francis Scott Key was a slave owner/ white supremacist and vigorously defended the right of white men to "own property."

2. The third verse of The Star Spangled Banner...during the War of 1812, slaves were escaping their owners and fighting with the British. The British had promised that if they defeated the Americans they would be emancipated and allowed to kill their old masters. The third verse states that the slaves would be better off with their owners (alive) than fighting with the British and facing "the gloom of the grave." Not exactly the land of the free and home of the brave!

3. As a lawyer, Key fought to suppress the ideas and speech of radical abolitionists in court...read about the Benjamin Lundy and Reuben Crandall cases for further study.

Key's final argument in the Crandall case...

“Are you willing gentleman 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 (interracial relations) with the negro? Or gentleman, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?”

4. Francis Scott Key was a member of The American Colonization Society...a group who wanted to "emancipate" the slaves and send them back to Africa.

5. Lastly, he fostered white fear, paranoia, and anger (stirring up memories of Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, etc.) by declaring that radical abolitionist rhetoric would lead to widespread slave rebellions and "lawlessness"...

“They (radical abolitionists) declare that every law which sanctions slavery is null and void…That we have no more rights over our slaves than they have over us. Does not this bring the constitution and the laws under which we live into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?”