Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Oh say, can you see by
Speaker 1: the Don's early light, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: I can't see a thing except Max's glorious visage and hairdo.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: And that is mister Noel Brown. They call me Ben
Speaker 1: Bullen ed Noel. You know we were you know what
Speaker 1: we were referencing here what so proudly we hailed at
Speaker 1: the podcast bright gleaming at It is sort of our
Speaker 1: school song here in the United States.
Speaker 2: Fight Fight Fight, fight, fight right right right four. It's
Speaker 2: like some of the House of the Dragon type stuff. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's you know what I guess he's describing.
Speaker 2: Is he describing like war or is it a fireworks display?
Speaker 2: I've always been a little ify on what the subject
Speaker 2: matter that song is about.
Speaker 1: He is describing the This is funny because we'll see
Speaker 1: this in the episode two. He is describing a real
Speaker 1: conflict that he saw. And who is he? You might
Speaker 1: be asking. It's a guy named Francis scott Key since
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, our national anthem. The official national anthem
Speaker 1: has been the infamous Star Spangled Banner written by this guy.
Speaker 1: We love national anthems. They're weird, they're frequently controversial. Check
Speaker 1: out our earlier episode on that before we get into it, Ben,
Speaker 1: what I think is so delightful and strange about the
Speaker 1: United States is that while the Star Spangled Banner is
Speaker 1: our official anthem, we have a ton of songs that
Speaker 1: could be considered unofficial national anthems, like Proud to Be
Speaker 1: an American?
Speaker 2: R No.
Speaker 1: Really is that where we are for a certain demographic.
Speaker 2: Bro, Yes, at least I know I'm free to not
Speaker 2: like that song very much.
Speaker 1: It's one of those songs where and I'm going to
Speaker 1: get some heat for this. It's one of those songs.
Speaker 1: Like to me, it's like Benny and the Jets in
Speaker 1: that it doesn't go anywhere melodically, you know. Benny and
Speaker 1: the Jets is kind of this thing for several minutes,
Speaker 1: it sort of it just goes and goes.
Speaker 2: It does have a bit of a turn. I like
Speaker 2: the part where he goes, but Benny and the Jets
Speaker 2: that one little part like downward inflection Benny in the
Speaker 2: Jets part, But You're right, it doesn't. It's a bit,
Speaker 2: it's slight, it's a minor. It's a minor outon John.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like we're at a one and a half,
Speaker 3: not like banning the Jets. I'm gonna throw my vote
Speaker 3: in here is not liking that one too or two
Speaker 3: and a half.
Speaker 1: All right, And that's how democracy works. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: no crocodile rock. Okay, let's put it that way. It
Speaker 1: is no crocodile rock or circle of it. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, guys, Proud to be an American is kind
Speaker 1: of like that. But Star Spangled Banner, right, it's a
Speaker 1: we're fans of music here. Star Spangled Banner is infamous
Speaker 1: for being kind of difficult to sing correctly. There's a
Speaker 1: ton of crazy war around the song. A lot of
Speaker 1: people and this may surprise some of our non American
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians. A ton of people in the States don't
Speaker 1: actually dig the Star Spangled Banner.
Speaker 2: As I saw that, you mentioned that it was much maligned,
Speaker 2: and I guess maybe that that just don't float in
Speaker 2: those circles. But like, who's trash talking the Star Spangled Banner?
Speaker 2: I mean, I would argue it's on its face mid
Speaker 2: at best, but like, is there really a vocal contingent
Speaker 2: out there, like like slandering the Star Spangled banner?
Speaker 1: There have been movements to change the US national anthem. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing that comes up. It's
Speaker 1: it's very it's a very American idea. Right to fix
Speaker 1: the thing, but choicing of grievances, right, But but to
Speaker 1: change the banner or the Star Spangled banner would at
Speaker 1: this point require Congress, to require an Act of Congress,
Speaker 1: and then the President would have to approve it. And
Speaker 1: so we're kind of stuck with this legacy idea, and
Speaker 1: we're not exploring this anthem in particular in today's episode. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're kind of going behind the music, as it were,
Speaker 1: and exploring the story of its creator, Francis, because, as
Speaker 1: ridiculous as it may sound, folks, we are sorry to
Speaker 1: report that Francis Scott Key was kind of a pill,
Speaker 1: kind of a heel, kind of a jerk. Not a
Speaker 1: good guy, not the best one. Nothing like if you
Speaker 1: lined up all the guys, I don't think he stopped ten.
Speaker 2: Let's get into why, and as you might imagine, it
Speaker 2: has something to do with hipocrisy.
Speaker 1: I was drinking coffee and let's spout it out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's let's keep that. That's perfect ol our pal. Francis
Speaker 1: is born on August first. He's a fellow August baby.
Speaker 1: It's seventeen seventy nine, so just after what we call
Speaker 1: the American Revolution. And he is born at a place
Speaker 1: called Terra Rubra. This sea is in modern day Carroll County, Maryland.
Speaker 1: His family is very wealthy.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, you're definitely coming up alongside the swells. And
Speaker 2: that's primarily because his father was a lawyer ross Key,
Speaker 2: also a Continental War veteran and a local judge, and
Speaker 2: so he had a bit of a born on third
Speaker 2: kind of upbringing. It afforded him the opportunity to enroll
Speaker 2: in Annapolis's in Maryland there Saint John's College. And imagine this,
Speaker 2: at the time, he was only ten years old, which
Speaker 2: is crazy. He's a bit of a bit of a prodigy,
Speaker 2: I guess right. I mean, if he's calling in college
Speaker 2: at ten or is this just specifically a product of
Speaker 2: his his privilege? Yeah, before we call him adoogie houser there,
Speaker 2: we're not calling him dumb folks, to be clear, but
Speaker 2: we are saying that he had family connections. He is
Speaker 2: kind of what we'll call a nepo baby in this
Speaker 2: day and age, because he was studying law under his uncle,
Speaker 2: a guy named Philip Barton Key, who was a British loyalist,
Speaker 2: which was pretty poisonous at this time, you know, post revolution.
Speaker 2: I would think, Yeah, he did graduate in seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 2: He was only seventeen years old, so I guess that
Speaker 2: means he was in college for seven seven years. That's
Speaker 2: a long time. I mean, that's all to me to
Speaker 2: graduate college, but I didn't do it right.
Speaker 1: Well, he started when he was ten, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, So he had a lot of catching up
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: He did have a little kit fair. He literally just said,
Speaker 2: take this child learned men and turn him into a
Speaker 2: learned man. Originally, young Frank yearned, he yearned to breathe
Speaker 2: free and join the Episcopal priesthood. Maybe not free he was,
Speaker 2: and this will be darkly hilarious. Later quite the pious
Speaker 2: little lad Francis decided against that. However, possibly I'm the
Speaker 2: advice of his father. Maybe there wasn't you know, there's
Speaker 2: no money in the priesthood. He said, in my imagining
Speaker 2: of this encounter, so he eschewed a spiritual path and
Speaker 2: followed the secular moneyed path. Francis went on to study law,
Speaker 2: following the footsteps of Ross his dad, under a judge
Speaker 2: by the name of Jeremiah Townsld. Chase.
Speaker 1: Yes, you can smell the mint Julep's adom. This was
Speaker 1: probably again a hookup from his father, Ross Key. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it results in our buddy Francis passing the bar. He
Speaker 1: becomes a lawyer in his own right around eighteen oh one,
Speaker 1: So for all of us playing along at home, that
Speaker 1: makes Frank about twenty two years old. Year after that,
Speaker 1: it's New Year's Day and he gets hitched to a
Speaker 1: lady named Mary Taylor Lloyd. This is important because Mary
Speaker 1: comes from a family that's even more moneyed than the
Speaker 1: Key family. She is Aristocracy. Her dad is Edward Lloyd
Speaker 1: four the fourth. At anytime, anytime somebody gets past the
Speaker 1: third in their name, I always wonder, right if they're
Speaker 1: old money.
Speaker 2: Well, sure you know you don't get a middle name
Speaker 2: like Taylo unless you come from some old money either,
Speaker 2: Because at first I thought you had misspoke. No, it
Speaker 2: is t a y l Oe not Taylor Taylo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, old money or someone who can't spell or both,
Speaker 1: so so not mutually exclusive. There's a ven diagram, there's
Speaker 1: a Van diagram. The United States has proven that time
Speaker 1: and time again. So yeah. So this guy Eddie, who
Speaker 1: was kind of a side character in our story, he is,
Speaker 1: as we said, he's an elite plantation owner. He was
Speaker 1: a delegate to the Congressional Congress. He himself had married
Speaker 1: into a lot of money earlier in life. And at
Speaker 1: this point we talk about this often. In this juncture
Speaker 1: of history, the United States is still trying to figure out, like, hey,
Speaker 1: how does an upper crust work in our new nation
Speaker 1: which is ostensibly founded upon meritocracy. So they're saying, look,
Speaker 1: these public proclamations of equality and liberty, they're great for
Speaker 1: the press, they're great for the larger public and the
Speaker 1: hoi poloi. But then privately, these folks who go to
Speaker 1: the Congress, and these folks who have these big decision
Speaker 1: maker meetings, they get together in back rooms and they
Speaker 1: all feel something akin to a later concept of social Darwinism.
Speaker 2: Do as I say, not as I do, A bit
Speaker 2: of a who's got time for all? That this is
Speaker 2: for others for others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they don't want to publicly call themselves aristocrats
Speaker 1: or royalty, but they very much privately agree that some
Speaker 1: people are just better than others. So that's the the
Speaker 1: echelon the sphere in which Francis Scott.
Speaker 2: Key is moving, planting the seeds for further elitism. He
Speaker 2: did have his whole life path kind of set before him.
Speaker 2: He is living high on the socioeconomic hog, coming from money,
Speaker 2: marrying rich. He didn't have to do a thing if
Speaker 2: he didn't want to. He could have rested on his
Speaker 2: laurels there his family fortune for the rest of his life. Possibly.
Speaker 2: They did have quite a few kids. Eleven if I'm
Speaker 2: not mistaken, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eleven kids is a lot even back then. And Francis
Speaker 1: and Mary were also living in an expensive neighborhood. They
Speaker 1: relocated to the Georgetown area of Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Still fancy, right, very much so, even.
Speaker 1: More now, And they were residing this I almost say coven.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say coven, this large collection of children. They
Speaker 1: were in the Key House, which is now a famous
Speaker 1: part of Georgetown. Look again, we kind of overemphasized this, folks.
Speaker 1: Francis Franny whatever you want to call him. He is
Speaker 1: a clever guy. Fran Man, Yeah, the frand Reno. This
Speaker 1: is pardon us key to really understanding the dissonance at
Speaker 1: play and why we think he's, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a pill.
Speaker 2: A bit of a pill. Like any young man, he
Speaker 2: had his share of folks he looked up to the
Speaker 2: rock stars of the day, chief of those, the equally
Speaker 2: morally complicated Thomas Jefferson, who we've discussed at length. Got
Speaker 2: to remember that Francis was born after the actual action
Speaker 2: of the revolution, so he was too young to experience
Speaker 2: any of that firsthand. But he came up in the
Speaker 2: aftermath of this new nation, and like the very young nation,
Speaker 2: continues to be relatively young compared to other civilizations. Francis
Speaker 2: was also grappling with sort of an existential crisis. How
Speaker 2: could a country, the champion liberty and equality also practice
Speaker 2: industrial scale and laveman of other human beings? What a quandary, Ben,
Speaker 2: What a quandary? How do you reconcile these things?
Speaker 1: I didn't, not really, not successfully, because majority of his
Speaker 1: adult life Francis was always trying to tread some sort
Speaker 1: of moral middle ground and put diplomatically, he had a
Speaker 1: best mixed results. I mean, you can, of course see
Speaker 1: his legal career in DC. Luckily nepotism aside. He was
Speaker 1: quite a talented lawyer. He was known as an extraordinary orator.
Speaker 1: He was blessed with what the Irish and you know
Speaker 1: will call the gift of gab. To his credit, he
Speaker 1: argued against the Irish Actually, okay, all right, I'll write
Speaker 1: to the ambassador to credit oh right, to the President
Speaker 1: of Ireland, because I want an excuse to talk about
Speaker 1: his dog. Have you seen those clips of the president?
Speaker 2: Is it a cute Is it a cute boy's cute?
Speaker 1: Kind of a ceremonial position. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: guy is still president, but he is most well known
Speaker 1: for taking his dog with him everywhere. So he's giving
Speaker 1: he's given serious speeches, and the dog is always next
Speaker 1: to him, like sniffing the treats in his pocket.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's a Bernice Mountain dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a big boy, uh Max with
Speaker 1: the facts.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, well, and to keys credit, if we're going
Speaker 2: to give him, we're going to give it to him
Speaker 2: now publicly at least. He argued against enslavement as a concept.
Speaker 1: Yeah ye, And he even defended enslaved people in court.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, in eighteen twenty five, he
Speaker 1: explicitly stated, by the law of nature, all men are free.
Speaker 1: And he went all the way to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: to go to bat for some people who wanted manumission,
Speaker 1: wanted emancipation. But the thing is, folks, we're making him
Speaker 1: sound really good, and like we said, it's important to
Speaker 1: get give credit where due. The thing is. In his
Speaker 1: personal life, Francis was the opposite of an abolitionist. This
Speaker 1: dude literally owned slaves himself. When he was twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, he bought his first enslaved person. By eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty he owned wish wish again, no less than six
Speaker 1: human beings. So like the sheer hypocrisy, the profound paradox
Speaker 1: of going all the way to the Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: the United States to argue for freeing people and then
Speaker 1: heading home and going, well, you know not you guys though, right,
Speaker 1: like not not the six.
Speaker 2: Of you, No, no, because that would be convenient for me,
Speaker 2: right exactly, how was gonna do all the chores? Guys?
Speaker 1: You get it? Like I can't cook, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: So I don't do baseboards. No, this is sorry.
Speaker 3: About your life.
Speaker 1: He did arguably try to make a difference. We know
Speaker 1: he held something this complicated. We know he held something
Speaker 1: like anti slavery views because he was a co founder
Speaker 1: of a group called the American Colonization Society, and they
Speaker 1: saw themselves as very progressive.
Speaker 2: See how you could claim to have anti slavery views
Speaker 2: while simultaneously on these slaves and these things just do
Speaker 2: not track. It doesn't really you know, you know again, hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: It just could screams do as I say, not as
Speaker 2: I do, And it really is giving image over reality.
Speaker 1: Very much. So his crew, the ACS American Colonization Society,
Speaker 1: founded in eighteen sixteen, had had a whole pitch that
Speaker 1: they thought was edgy and radical and very much a
Speaker 1: greater good thing. They said, here's what we should do.
Speaker 1: We should take everybody who, by hook or by crook,
Speaker 1: has been enslaved and then later freed, and we should
Speaker 1: let them stay free, because we think that's fundamentally the
Speaker 1: right thing to do. But we should also ship them
Speaker 1: the hell out of the United States. We'll make special colonies.
Speaker 1: We'll make colonies where we segregate them on the African continent.
Speaker 2: I mean it's sort of like, you know, administrations in
Speaker 2: different local areas and in the United States and Canada
Speaker 2: dealing with the unhoused problem by shipping them elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Hawaii had a big problem with that too.
Speaker 2: A lot of them get shipped to Vancouver, which is
Speaker 2: a real tough place because of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let us not forget that in our home
Speaker 1: HQ of Atlanta, Georgia, when the Olympics came in, a
Speaker 1: lot of unhoused people got one way bus tickets. This
Speaker 1: is this was then is now seen as a moral
Speaker 1: middle ground. They said, Okay, we're going to hold true
Speaker 1: to the letter of the American law that all people
Speaker 1: are created equal, but we're still going to bend the
Speaker 1: need to this patriarchal agrarian system. And obviously folks mixing
Speaker 1: the races, mixing the races here in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: that is uncivilized.
Speaker 2: Isn't that That's why they used a really gross term
Speaker 2: for that, ben wasn't it misiingen imagination. Yeah, it just
Speaker 2: has it's icky mouthfield to it. Just you can tell
Speaker 2: that it's bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how early in
Speaker 1: the career of this show, you and I learned that
Speaker 1: Oregon never allowed slavery, not because they believed in equality,
Speaker 1: but because they were so racist. They genuinely hated. The
Speaker 1: idea of black people living in their area in any form.
Speaker 2: Still blows my mind and blows the minds of most
Speaker 2: people I share this with at parties because we're fun
Speaker 2: there that you know, Oregon was founded as like this
Speaker 2: white soulenly paradise, kind of intentional anti black community, especially
Speaker 2: given what people know about Portland and it being so
Speaker 2: kind of stereotypically let's call it liberal. A lot of
Speaker 2: the rest of the state very much still to this
Speaker 2: day quite backwards, and often is the home of a
Speaker 2: breeding ground for a lot of white supremacist groups. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I find it interesting because one place that is not
Speaker 3: surprised about that fact are people in Portland.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you get outside of Portland. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a it can change, it changes very fast.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not that far off from Atlanta being
Speaker 2: sort of a liberal bastion in Georgia, you know, surrounded
Speaker 2: by not no casting any e spersions on the people
Speaker 2: of Georgia. But it is a very different world out there.
Speaker 3: Well to jump to follow up on this, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is africane anywhere, but part
Speaker 3: of the state at one point was trying to quit
Speaker 3: Oregon and join Idaho.
Speaker 2: Idaho.
Speaker 3: They disagree with the views of Portland, but since Portland
Speaker 3: is such a large population center of the state, it
Speaker 3: has kind of like a controlling basis for how the
Speaker 3: state votes, and so they were trying to seceed from Oregon.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the population aspect. It was also
Speaker 1: the fact that Portland is an economic powerhouse in the region.
Speaker 1: And I remember my first time in Portland being in
Speaker 1: an interracial relationship. I was confused, frankly by the racism.
Speaker 1: I didn't get some of this stuff, like why is
Speaker 1: that lady spitting at us in the street? Is she okay?
Speaker 1: Is she sick? No, she was just sick of us.
Speaker 1: A story for another day. But if we go back
Speaker 1: to Francis Scott Key, we know that free people of
Speaker 1: color in the United States activist and activist and orators
Speaker 1: and so on. They predictably hated the American Colonization Society.
Speaker 1: They said it was an op and black leaders of
Speaker 1: the equality movement thought leaving the country was beat me here, Max,
Speaker 1: bullshit full stop. So this dude, Francis, of course, is
Speaker 1: one of those guys who probably doesn't get told no
Speaker 1: very often, and except that time, his dad wouldn't let
Speaker 1: him be a priest. So he is a silver spooned,
Speaker 1: silver tongued lawman, and he is convinced he has the
Speaker 1: right way to tackle chattel slavery. He says, Okay, what
Speaker 1: we do is we can't just free everybody, right, We've
Speaker 1: got to gradually dial it down, you know, like quitting
Speaker 1: coffee or something, or quitting caffeine. And the implicit statement
Speaker 1: was you don't have to go back to the plantation,
Speaker 1: but you can't just live here at this point too.
Speaker 1: This is interesting. Everybody is thinking of this guy as
Speaker 1: a hotshot lawyer. Nobody is thinking of him as a
Speaker 1: songwriter or a poet.
Speaker 2: Not yet, and they may never potentially, although it would
Speaker 2: seem that some of his hookups and family connections are
Speaker 2: what led him to be jumped up, as they say
Speaker 2: in the song of Ice and Fire Universe.
Speaker 1: Yes yeah, yeah, yeah, as a jumped up hedge nights
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah yeah. So let's pause for a
Speaker 1: second in this narrative and get to what he is
Speaker 1: most well known for today, which is not law in
Speaker 1: or lawyering.
Speaker 2: But it.
Speaker 1: Is the notoriously difficult to seeing star spangled banner because
Speaker 1: he has jumped up like you're saying, Noel. He is
Speaker 1: a mover and a shaker, which means that at this
Speaker 1: point in American history, as part of the upper crust,
Speaker 1: he functions as a fixer, right, a guy who can
Speaker 1: use his connections through unofficial channels to make stuff.
Speaker 2: Happen, for sure, and he does just that. In early
Speaker 2: September of eighteen fourteen, after the British had burned the
Speaker 2: city in the city of Washington, Key was sent on
Speaker 2: a quite potentially dangerous mission to the British fleet near
Speaker 2: Baltimore in order to negotiate for and secure the release
Speaker 2: of a friend of his by the name of William Beans,
Speaker 2: a real stand up guy. William Beans a physician from
Speaker 2: Upper Marlborough, Maryland. Bean's family and friends hope the Key,
Speaker 2: who was then a of course, a prominent attorney in Washington,
Speaker 2: would be able to accomplish this task getting his release secured.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because his family wasn't able to make stuff happen.
Speaker 1: They were perhaps not as connected as he was. So
Speaker 1: France's partners up with an army colonel from the US
Speaker 1: named John Skinner, and then they get the you know,
Speaker 1: the go ahead from the President at the time, James Madison.
Speaker 1: So Skinner and Francis meet the British at the Potomac
Speaker 1: River on September seventh, and they the British are aboard
Speaker 1: a ship called the todtet T NNA and t they
Speaker 1: go into a negotiation. It's very civil, it's very fancy,
Speaker 1: you know, sharing wine or whatever. And these two British guys,
Speaker 1: General Robert Ross, because I'm a grown man who can vote,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my best not to laugh. Another British
Speaker 1: guy whose name is.
Speaker 2: George Cockburn, he really needs to get that looked at.
Speaker 2: I'll titter enough for both of us. Cockburn was, of course,
Speaker 2: as you point out, Ben, in the research document, these
Speaker 2: top notch research document for this episode, a rear admiral
Speaker 2: I think that we can vote, and Ben, I disagree.
Speaker 2: The jokes don't write themselves.
Speaker 1: It's a rear admiral. Oh my gosh, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but but stuff.
Speaker 1: We're keeping it all.
Speaker 2: In So, boy, are we ever we're having big, big
Speaker 2: Friday energy on a Thursday. Just so.
Speaker 1: Uh So, these British guys are again beat me her Max.
Speaker 1: They are about the cannon ball, the shut out of Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: and they say, yeah, okay, all right, you've convinced us
Speaker 1: Colonel Skinner and rich guy Lawyer, we will release this beans.
Speaker 2: Dude, release the beans.
Speaker 1: Release the beans, says Rear Admiral Cockburn. So but they say,
Speaker 1: an important caveat Chaps you can't leave until after we're
Speaker 1: done with our attack. So you have to sit there
Speaker 1: and watch us bomb Baltimore's Fort McHenry for like a
Speaker 1: full day.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right. So early in the morning of September fourteenth,
Speaker 2: Francis looked out and saw just that. However, despite all
Speaker 2: the damage and chaos it caused, the American flag was
Speaker 2: still flying high old glory over Fort Henry McHenry. Excuse me, yeah.
Speaker 2: This inspired him to write the lyrics to the Star
Speaker 2: Spangled Banner. After being released from this brief time being
Speaker 2: held hostage, he rewrote the poem in a Baltimore hotel
Speaker 2: that was then printed anonymously under the title Defense of
Speaker 2: Fort McHenry, which is a very unsexy name and published
Speaker 2: by the Baltimore Patriot on September the twentieth. Just a
Speaker 2: few days later, it was set to an already popular
Speaker 2: tune to Anacreon in Heaven, the theme song of the
Speaker 2: British Anacreontic Society. The song became one of several popular
Speaker 2: patriotic tunes that were performed throughout the nation, kind of repurposing,
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, right. And again Francis at this
Speaker 2: point still didn't really think of himself as a poetry prodigy.
Speaker 2: He's still lawyer, a lawyer, lawyer in so he just
Speaker 2: gets back to the busy job of lawyer in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And for everybody who is wondering what the
Speaker 1: Anacreonotic Society is is this is a gentleman's club of
Speaker 1: amateur musicians in London and they're pretty new. They were
Speaker 1: founded in the mid seventeen hundreds. And like Francis, these
Speaker 1: guys are well to do you know, doctors, barristers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of like a creative writing group or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, well done. And if we fast forward, we're not
Speaker 1: saying they were any good, but they were enjoying what
Speaker 1: they were doing, yes, And that's the point. Of art.
Speaker 1: So fast forward, it's the eighteen twenties, it's the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Now we see a reactionary rise of what was called
Speaker 1: a mediast abolition. The mediast abolition is what hopefully the
Speaker 1: vast majority of Americans support today, which is say, hey,
Speaker 1: no half measures, stop treating human beings as property. These
Speaker 1: guys were not John Brown level, like burn it down physically,
Speaker 1: but they were blowing the whistle in the halls of power,
Speaker 1: and they were saying what we said at the very top.
Speaker 1: They were like, hey, my fellow Americans, this is hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: this is bad. We've got the Constitution, We've got the
Speaker 1: Bill of Rights. They're pretty frickin explicit.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And you you have these words, right you and power
Speaker 1: that you claim are awesome every time you need to
Speaker 1: get elected. But what you do in practice is diametrically
Speaker 1: opposed to these noble ideals.
Speaker 2: This is democracy manifests. Sorry, very decracy manifest yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: So this this is the clarion call, a media establish
Speaker 1: clarion call for folks like William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher
Speaker 1: of an anti slavery newspaper called The Liberator. And then,
Speaker 1: of course the famous Frederick Douglas, who our own president said,
Speaker 1: we're hearing more and more about these days.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that? I sure, yes, he's that guy
Speaker 2: doing great work out there. Yeah. This was the time
Speaker 2: where people really needed to kind of poop or get
Speaker 2: off the pot, as they say, put their money where
Speaker 2: their mouths were. And it was also a time where
Speaker 2: a lot of that hypocrisy was kind of being you know, exposed.
Speaker 2: Those clarion calls you were talking about earlier, were like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to slow roll this. You know, we've
Speaker 2: got to stamp out slavery and racism. Now, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean the racism part took a long time and it's
Speaker 2: still it's still still progress. Yes, very least we can
Speaker 2: get rid of the slavery bit. The American Anti Slavery
Speaker 2: Society is formed in eighteen thirty one. They're exactly what
Speaker 2: we're describing. They say, our goal is the immediate end
Speaker 2: to slavery, not this undeniably racist gradualism of these American
Speaker 2: Callization Society clowns. Now, we all know that trial lawyers
Speaker 2: have a certain stereotype, and that stereotype is often being
Speaker 2: tenacious in their opinions. Right, very pushy. Rarely are they
Speaker 2: Rarely are they known to walk back an opinion or
Speaker 2: admit that they are wrong. So Francis there's no exception
Speaker 2: to this stereotype. And again, it's the stereotype because it
Speaker 2: happens to some lawyers, but obviously hashtag not all lawyers.
Speaker 1: Francis is one of these guys.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: He reacts to these immediates abolitionists by saying, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be increasingly conservative. He talks about abolitionists the way
Speaker 1: people talk about anti vod today. One of his big
Speaker 1: things is that he's walking around. He's going, hey, guys, hey, guys, look,
Speaker 1: I get I get it. But the thing is, these
Speaker 1: slave owners invested a lot of money. So what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? What You're just gonna rob these people.
Speaker 1: They have to be financially compensated for losing out on
Speaker 1: their investments. Let's be reasonable. I don't know why his
Speaker 1: voice got more and more soul goodman as that went on.
Speaker 2: Well, it feels like he's doing a bit of a
Speaker 2: tony soprano kind of move.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my cousin, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like sure on paper, I can
Speaker 2: see that, But it also.
Speaker 1: Like they're people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, well I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a time where it was legal,
Speaker 2: and those people paid good money, you know, to do
Speaker 2: a thing that at the time was legal. So logically
Speaker 2: it would follow that now that it's been made illegal,
Speaker 2: maybe they should be refunded their investment. But also so
Speaker 2: like that doesn't really work from a moral standpoint. This
Speaker 2: is a moral discussion, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, you know, and this these ideas of compensation
Speaker 1: came up again and again. Games you should be compensated,
Speaker 1: right right, in reparations, right, So this was an argument
Speaker 1: for towards reparations for slave owners, not yet.
Speaker 2: Gross yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So by this point, the nepotism, combined with the talent,
Speaker 1: had given Francis Scott Key the position of district attorneys.
Speaker 1: So he was definitely in the catbird seat. He had
Speaker 1: the public pulpit to rail on and on about this.
Speaker 1: But here we find another complication, folks, because Francis seemed
Speaker 1: to understand that slavery as a concept was super duper wrong. Still,
Speaker 1: even though he acknowledged that he was also one of
Speaker 1: those guys this was very common who believed that black
Speaker 1: people were inherently inferior to others. So he would say,
Speaker 1: you know, he would say all people should be free,
Speaker 1: or but all people aren't really equal, right, like you
Speaker 1: get it, You get it right, guys, right, mister president.
Speaker 1: And as a result, the American colonization Society wasn't super successful.
Speaker 1: They've moved very few people out to the African continent.
Speaker 1: The people who did manage to get across the pond,
Speaker 1: they were in brutal conditions, they were not well supported.
Speaker 1: Extinction level mortality rates were in play, and the ACS,
Speaker 1: you could say, became a tool like what we would
Speaker 1: call an AstroTurf movement these days, for pro slavery.
Speaker 2: Powers, and you know, kind of adding insult to injury.
Speaker 2: He also did defend the idea of the occupation, former
Speaker 2: occupation of being a slave catcher. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And slave catchers were essentially bounty hunters who were
Speaker 1: paid on commission by slave owners, often in the South,
Speaker 1: to chase down escape to people and to return them,
Speaker 1: usually alive but sometimes dead, for a fee for a commission.
Speaker 2: Doesn't this kind of make you think of like the
Speaker 2: idea of being tried for war crimes or something like that,
Speaker 2: You know, it'd be the equivalent of like defending a
Speaker 2: war criminal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, good defense lawyers often make their
Speaker 1: name on defending folks that the court, Yeah, the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion has already decided we're guilty. Sometimes a
Speaker 1: good reason, but.
Speaker 2: It's the good point. And of course there is that
Speaker 2: old argument that everyone deserves, you know, a robust defense.
Speaker 2: I just don't know if that's where he was coming
Speaker 2: at it from.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he leaned on that one. It talked a
Speaker 1: lot about it.
Speaker 2: It seems like the kind of thing he would have done. Yes,
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 1: So we know that he came down hard in various
Speaker 1: aspects of this. There was a famous trial in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six about a guy named Ruben Crandall, and Francis said,
Speaker 1: this Ruben Crandall guy is not the abolitionist you think
Speaker 1: he is. He is trying to create a widespread rebellion
Speaker 1: of slaves. And the evidence is so tenuous and skimpy.
Speaker 1: Police had raided this guy's office and they found anti
Speaker 1: slavery pamphlets, basically ratic zines. They found zines, and was
Speaker 1: possession of a zine with intent to distribute. And in
Speaker 1: this courtroom, Francis the guy who wrote The Star Spangled Banner, says, Look,
Speaker 1: people should be able to own people, you know, like
Speaker 1: people sell the people to people.
Speaker 2: Right, started this company with one rusty slave ship and
Speaker 2: a motto people selling people to people. Mister well done.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And he built his case around the idea
Speaker 1: that anti slavery activism would create rebellion amongst the enslaved
Speaker 1: population of the US, and therefore it was a matter
Speaker 1: not of morality but of public safety.
Speaker 2: Yikes. Yeah, talk about gilding the lily. Is that the
Speaker 2: right term? Or putting lipstick on a pig. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I get those confused. But yeah, it's definitely a spin move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've got a quotation to measure the size
Speaker 1: of this guy's butt holary. In this case, let's remember
Speaker 1: as you hear this, folks, that Francis Scott Key again,
Speaker 1: the creator of the Star Spangled Banner, said this on
Speaker 1: record verbatim.
Speaker 2: Yep, he sure did. The great moral and political evil
Speaker 2: of which I speaks posed to be slavery. But is
Speaker 2: it not plainly the whole colored race? But if I
Speaker 2: did say this of slavery, as I am quite willing
Speaker 2: to say it here and on all fit occasions. Do
Speaker 2: I not also, in the same breath speak of emancipation
Speaker 2: as a far greater evil. What are you talking about, guy?
Speaker 1: We can't free everybody game out of his butthole. What
Speaker 1: he's doing very much, he's boofing. So Francis argued for
Speaker 1: this segregation for the entirety of his life, and in
Speaker 1: this landmark case, this Rubing Crandall case, he wanted to
Speaker 1: convince people that not prosecuting a mediist abolitionist was a
Speaker 1: death sentence for the Union. To him, all people might
Speaker 1: be technically free, legally equal, but some are to quote
Speaker 1: or well more equal than others. The real threat to
Speaker 1: him was integration right leading to miss engination. Ultimately, in
Speaker 1: this eighteen thirty six trial, our buddy Rubin is found
Speaker 1: not guilty, but it doesn't do him much good because
Speaker 1: he gets tuberculosis in jail and then he dies pretty
Speaker 1: much right after he was released. So this is arguably
Speaker 1: a big win for Francis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would seem so, And Ben correct me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong. Did we not do a previous episode that
Speaker 2: was a little more focused on the Star Spangled banner itself?
Speaker 1: We did an episode on multiple national anthems.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want a little more info on
Speaker 2: the you know how the Star Spangled banner came to
Speaker 2: be in some of the controversies surrounding it being the
Speaker 2: national anthem, do check that one out as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also, as we're wrapping up the story here, we've
Speaker 1: got to add another wrinkle to this morally troubled character.
Speaker 1: Francis was known amongst his upper class peers as a
Speaker 1: humane slave voter. That's a pretty paradoxical statement. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but scoff, scoff. But in the eighteen thirties, he freed
Speaker 1: multiple enslaved people under his control, and we know that
Speaker 1: at least one of those people continued to work and
Speaker 1: stay on the property was a free foreman on the farm.
Speaker 1: And as the freed foreman on the farm, this guy
Speaker 1: supervised several people that were still enslaved because Francis did
Speaker 1: not free all of them.
Speaker 2: Yikes, or like Samuel L. Jackson's character and Chengo unchained.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get out of my head, dude. Yeah, it's no
Speaker 1: wonder that Jefferson was Francis's dream guy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Sally Emmys.
Speaker 2: Night number one, A guy talking to Francis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Francis got keyth spoiler dies, he's not around to
Speaker 1: hear this episode.
Speaker 2: That might have been the case at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It was January eleventh, eighteen forty three. He was sixty
Speaker 1: three years old, fourteen years after he dies. His collected
Speaker 1: poetry is published in eighteen fifty seven, and at the
Speaker 1: time of his passing, he still wish Wish owned eight slaves.
Speaker 1: So you got to wonder what would he as such
Speaker 1: a morally tortured, staunch segregationist, what would he think of
Speaker 1: modern day America? How would he feel about going to, say,
Speaker 1: a baseball game, and heard the national anthem and seeing
Speaker 1: people of all creeds, ethnicities, and backgrounds singing along together.
Speaker 2: What would he have thought of a Fergie's interpretation?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, what do you have thought of Roseanne
Speaker 1: Barr's interpretation?
Speaker 2: Ooh good question. Well, but at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: To take away for this episode, it's in a title
Speaker 2: I believe, is that we think he was kind of
Speaker 2: a jerk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, I hate to say it, but we're being fair.
Speaker 1: We have so much more that we want to explore,
Speaker 1: perhaps another day. Thank you so much for tuning in,
Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians. Big thanks to our super producer, mister
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Big thanks actually to everybody who has powered wait,
Speaker 1: we'll keep it in, but big thanks to the majority
Speaker 1: of people who have powered through the Star Spangled banner
Speaker 1: in a public performance, So most of you, but maybe not.
Speaker 2: All of you. I haven't been to a sporting event
Speaker 2: a lot. Do they sing the whole damn thing? No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we've got the full lyrics here.
Speaker 2: Which I was looking at it some of these verses exactly.
Speaker 1: Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. Big thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs and you
Speaker 1: know uh an ominous we know what you did to
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist.
Speaker 2: And huge thanks to you Ben for doing the excellent
Speaker 2: research on this episode. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.