“THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER” IS THE WRONG NATIONAL ANTHEM

In 1896 at the first modern Olympics, the U.S. team dominated, winning 16 of 27 events. At the first win, the Greek bandmaster approached Dr. William Milligan Stone, the organizer and sponsor of the American team, and asked what song the band should play - the band was supposed to play the national anthem of the nation the winner represented, and the United States did not have a national anthem. The bandmaster told Dr. Stone that his musicians knew two songs he thought were appropriate, and asked Dr. Stone if he would choose which one was played. The choices were “America the Beautiful” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Stone chose “The Star-Spangled Banner” and thus, the first modern Olympics was the first time that the song was internationally recognized as a “national anthem” for the United States.

The lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner" come from the poem, "Defence of Fort M'Henry," written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812.

The poem was then set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" was already popular in the United States; renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it soon became a well-known U.S. patriotic song. The song was recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889, and by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson in 1916,.

Before March 3, 1931, when “the Star-Spangled Banner” became the official national anthem by Act of Congress, other songs also served as the official U.S. hymn: "Hail, Columbia" was played at official functions for most of the 19th century. "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (whose melody is identical to "God Save the Queen") was also played as a de facto national anthem.

In 1893, professor, poet, and writer Katharine Lee Bates made a trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she took the cog railway to the top of Pike’s Peak; at 14,115 feet, it is the tallest mountain in the 48 continental U.S. Inspired by a view that let her see into Wyoming, Kansas, and the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado, she wrote a poem, “America the Beautiful," which first appeared in print in the weekly journal “The Congregationalist,”on July 4, 1895 and was soon set to music. The song struck such a national nerve that only a year later, it was one of two patriotic American songs known by a band in Athens, Greece. In 1931, the song lost the vote in Congress to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

When I was a child, I used to visit my grandparents, who lived in Colorado Springs, and once rode that cog railroad Katharine Lee Bates had ridden to the top of Pikes Peak. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies” - trust me, the sky goes on forever from that vantage point. “And amber waves of grain” - looking east across the plains to Kansas, that really was all you could see (I suspect with the great population increase in the “Metro Denver-Colorado Springs Area” today, that the view may be different). My grandmother, who came to Colorado at age 20 by train from civilized Ohio to the then-still-frontier San Luis Valley to be a teacher, had once met Dr. Bates, and she specifically took me up there so I could see how real the song was.

Rather than continue an argument over which song is the right song, allow Mr. Ray Charles to make the case (you can’t do this to the other one):