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Kids History of The Star Spangled Banner

The Revolutionary War against England occurred between 1775 and 1783.

The second war against the British, called The War of 1812, was fought between 1812 and 1815.

In 1814, the city of Washington had been set aflame and badly burned! The British troops moved up to the primary port at Baltimore Harbor in Maryland.

Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer and poet, visited the British fleet in the Harbor. Key sought to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes on September 13th. Dr. Beanes had been captured during the Washington raid.

The two were detained on a ship. They were ordered not to warn the Americans the Royal Navy planned to bombard Fort McHenry in Maryland. At dawn on the 14th, Key saw the huge American flag was still waving and had not been removed in defeat.

The sight of the billowing flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write a poem titled "The Defence of Fort McHenry". The poem was eventually set to music. The people loved it! It was first sung in honor of the brave armed forces fighting in the Great War (World War I) during the World Series of Baseball in 1917.

Finally, on March 3, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 116 years after it was first written. The flag now hangs in the Smithsonian American History Museum.

The Star-Spangled Banner Lyrics

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

(Listen To Whitney Houston sing the Star-Spangled Banner with heart-thumping power!)