O Say have you Seen and Heard and Touched...

Roy:

We visited Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, the birthplace of our national anthem the Star Spangled Banner.  It was classic homeschooling; a day filled with rich learning supported by ample time and personal experience. 

First, a little bit about the song:  Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer who found himself aboard a British warship as it attacked Baltimore during the war of 1812.  After Fort McHenry survived the bombardment they raised an enormous U.S. flag in defiance of the British.  It was the sight of this sign of victory after a long night of uncertain fate that inspired the words to this famous song.

It was amazing to walk around the grounds, touch the actual cannons, stare out into the deep waters where the enemy ships would have been, and imagine the deafening explosions as the two sides traded gunfire through the night.  Later on they unfurled an actual replica of the American flag that was used that day and we stood in a huge rectangle holding the flag taut in the air as the park ranger retold the story to us again in vivid detail. We learned facts like the flag was 30 feet tall and 42 feet wide, it had 15 stripes (not 13!), what the word ‘spangled’ means, and the flag flown in the morning was not the one that had survived throughout the night.  Learning history in this manner (with all your senses viscerally engaged) really brings it to life and cements it into your memory in a way no textbook or even movie ever could.

 There was a recent study that found that 90% of Americans don’t even know the words to the Star Spangled Banner.  Of the 10% who do I would venture that only 10% of those know the events and context surrounding its formation.  Of the 1% who know the words and the context I would venture that less than 1% of those have actually been to Fort McHenry and held the flag with their own hands.  Therefore, our family joined the exclusive 0.01% today!

To be accurate though the 10% who “know the Star Spangled Banner” really only know ¼ of the song!  How many of you have noticed that when you sing just the first verse (there are four total) you are left hanging with the question of whether the flag is even still there or not? (the answer doesn't come until the end of the second verse!)  So the crucial question is not who knows the first quarter of the song or not, it’s who knows the true message of the whole song.  In the final verse Key reveals the secret of our nation’s founding and protection by introducing our national motto, “In God We Trust”.

Whenever we take the time to look there is ample godly heritage in our nation to hearken back to.  The problem is not that we don’t have a rich history, it’s that we haven’t bothered to study it (or even worse, allowed others to obscure it from us).  Reading through our national anthem (in its entirety) puts our nation’s dawn in the proper perspective:

O 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 the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through 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?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:

'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home and the war's desolation.

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!