O, say can you see: The not-so-well-known history behind our nation’s anthem
Ask folks where our national anthem got its start, and most are quick to point at a man named Francis Scott Key, a lawyer by trade. Not just any ol’ lawyer, either. He became the federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., a prestigious post, indeed. Came complete with a Presidential nomination and everything. That Andrew Jackson was a longtime friend mattered little because he’d earned his chops the old-fashioned way, case by case. He was good, too. Quite the grizzly in the courtroom, by all accounts. He built a reputation for not only accepting some of the toughest cases around but usually landing the most favorable outcomes for his clients. Still, no matter how impressive he might be in an argument, Key wouldn’t be most folks first choice as songwriter. Not for something as grand in scale as a nation’s anthem, anyway. Apart from legal briefs, he wasn’t a writer of any real merit. He might’ve dallied some with verse, but poet laureate he was not. Nor was he a composer of grand musical s