Key’s story adds intrigue to national anthem’s lyrics

Today’s question: I heard the national anthem was written by a racist and the racist lyrics deleted over time. How true is that? I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Francis Scott Key wrote the “Defense of Fort McHenry” after witnessing the unsuccessful British bombardment of that edifice during the War of 1812. Set to the tune of a popular drinking song, it eventually became our national anthem.

Key was a Maryland slave owner, but later in life called slavery “a bed of torture.” As district attorney of Washington, D.C., he prosecuted abolitionists, but later worked with a group trying to help freed slaves found a colony in Africa.

The problem with the anthem comes in the third stanza:

“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./No refuge could save the hireling and slave/from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”

Some historians say “hireling and slave” referred to black slaves who fled servitude and fought for the British.

Other historians say it referred to German troops the British rented to build up their army.

There is this: Key’s military unit, the Georgetown Light Field Artillery, had earlier in the war faced black British troops and got whumped by them. So Key made have had a sort of grudge.

So if the third stanza really bothers you, you’ll have to decide for yourself to sing the anthem or not.