August 18, 2026 • 43 mins
Love it or hate it, every American recognizes the Star-Spangled Banner. The lyrics come from a poem written by a lawyer Francis Scott Key on September 14, 1814, based on his experience watching an attack of Baltimore's Fort McHenry. The story itself is pretty inspiring -- but as Ben, Noel and Max learn in today's episode... Francis Scott Key was actually kind of a jerk.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Oh say, can you see by
the Don's early light, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I can't see a thing except Max's glorious visage and hairdo.
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And that is mister Noel Brown. They call me Ben
Bullen ed Noel. You know we were you know what
we were referencing here what so proudly we hailed at
the podcast bright gleaming at It is sort of our
school song here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Fight Fight Fight, fight, fight right right right four. It's
like some of the House of the Dragon type stuff. Man, Yeah,
I mean it's you know what I guess he's describing.
Is he describing like war or is it a fireworks display?
I've always been a little ify on what the subject
matter that song is about.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
He is describing the This is funny because we'll see
this in the episode two. He is describing a real
conflict that he saw. And who is he? You might
be asking. It's a guy named Francis scott Key since
nineteen thirty one, our national anthem. The official national anthem
(01:46):
has been the infamous Star Spangled Banner written by this guy.
We love national anthems. They're weird, they're frequently controversial. Check
out our earlier episode on that before we get into it, Ben,
what I think is so delightful and strange about the
United States is that while the Star Spangled Banner is
(02:09):
our official anthem, we have a ton of songs that
could be considered unofficial national anthems, like Proud to Be
an American?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
R No.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Really is that where we are for a certain demographic.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Bro, Yes, at least I know I'm free to not
like that song very much.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's one of those songs where and I'm going to
get some heat for this. It's one of those songs.
Like to me, it's like Benny and the Jets in
that it doesn't go anywhere melodically, you know. Benny and
the Jets is kind of this thing for several minutes,
it sort of it just goes and goes.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It does have a bit of a turn. I like
the part where he goes, but Benny and the Jets
that one little part like downward inflection Benny in the
Jets part, But You're right, it doesn't. It's a bit,
it's slight, it's a minor. It's a minor outon John.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, I feel like we're at a one and a half,
not like banning the Jets. I'm gonna throw my vote
in here is not liking that one too or two
and a half.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
All right, And that's how democracy works. I mean, it's
no crocodile rock. Okay, let's put it that way. It
is no crocodile rock or circle of it. But I'm
telling you, guys, Proud to be an American is kind
of like that. But Star Spangled Banner, right, it's a
we're fans of music here. Star Spangled Banner is infamous
(03:29):
for being kind of difficult to sing correctly. There's a
ton of crazy war around the song. A lot of
people and this may surprise some of our non American
ridiculous historians. A ton of people in the States don't
actually dig the Star Spangled Banner.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
As I saw that, you mentioned that it was much maligned,
and I guess maybe that that just don't float in
those circles. But like, who's trash talking the Star Spangled Banner?
I mean, I would argue it's on its face mid
at best, but like, is there really a vocal contingent
out there, like like slandering the Star Spangled banner?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
There have been movements to change the US national anthem. Uh,
this is this is a thing that comes up. It's
it's very it's a very American idea. Right to fix
the thing, but choicing of grievances, right, But but to
change the banner or the Star Spangled banner would at
(04:29):
this point require Congress, to require an Act of Congress,
and then the President would have to approve it. And
so we're kind of stuck with this legacy idea, and
we're not exploring this anthem in particular in today's episode. Instead,
we're kind of going behind the music, as it were,
(04:51):
and exploring the story of its creator, Francis, because, as
ridiculous as it may sound, folks, we are sorry to
report that Francis Scott Key was kind of a pill,
kind of a heel, kind of a jerk. Not a
good guy, not the best one. Nothing like if you
lined up all the guys, I don't think he stopped ten.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Let's get into why, and as you might imagine, it
has something to do with hipocrisy.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I was drinking coffee and let's spout it out. But yeah,
that's let's keep that. That's perfect ol our pal. Francis
is born on August first. He's a fellow August baby.
It's seventeen seventy nine, so just after what we call
the American Revolution. And he is born at a place
called Terra Rubra. This sea is in modern day Carroll County, Maryland.
(05:51):
His family is very wealthy.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yep, yep, you're definitely coming up alongside the swells. And
that's primarily because his father was a lawyer ross Key,
also a Continental War veteran and a local judge, and
so he had a bit of a born on third
kind of upbringing. It afforded him the opportunity to enroll
in Annapolis's in Maryland there Saint John's College. And imagine this,
(06:22):
at the time, he was only ten years old, which
is crazy. He's a bit of a bit of a prodigy,
I guess right. I mean, if he's calling in college
at ten or is this just specifically a product of
his his privilege? Yeah, before we call him adoogie houser there,
we're not calling him dumb folks, to be clear, but
(06:43):
we are saying that he had family connections. He is
kind of what we'll call a nepo baby in this
day and age, because he was studying law under his uncle,
a guy named Philip Barton Key, who was a British loyalist,
which was pretty poisonous at this time, you know, post revolution.
(07:04):
I would think, Yeah, he did graduate in seventeen ninety six.
He was only seventeen years old, so I guess that
means he was in college for seven seven years. That's
a long time. I mean, that's all to me to
graduate college, but I didn't do it right.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, he started when he was ten, you know what
I mean, So he had a lot of catching up
to do.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
He did have a little kit fair. He literally just said,
take this child learned men and turn him into a
learned man. Originally, young Frank yearned, he yearned to breathe
free and join the Episcopal priesthood. Maybe not free he was,
and this will be darkly hilarious. Later quite the pious
(07:45):
little lad Francis decided against that. However, possibly I'm the
advice of his father. Maybe there wasn't you know, there's
no money in the priesthood. He said, in my imagining
of this encounter, so he eschewed a spiritual path and
followed the secular moneyed path. Francis went on to study law,
following the footsteps of Ross his dad, under a judge
(08:08):
by the name of Jeremiah Townsld. Chase.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yes, you can smell the mint Julep's adom. This was
probably again a hookup from his father, Ross Key. Anyway,
it results in our buddy Francis passing the bar. He
becomes a lawyer in his own right around eighteen oh one,
So for all of us playing along at home, that
makes Frank about twenty two years old. Year after that,
(08:37):
it's New Year's Day and he gets hitched to a
lady named Mary Taylor Lloyd. This is important because Mary
comes from a family that's even more moneyed than the
Key family. She is Aristocracy. Her dad is Edward Lloyd
four the fourth. At anytime, anytime somebody gets past the
(08:59):
third in their name, I always wonder, right if they're
old money.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Well, sure you know you don't get a middle name
like Taylo unless you come from some old money either,
Because at first I thought you had misspoke. No, it
is t a y l Oe not Taylor Taylo.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, yeah, old money or someone who can't spell or both,
so so not mutually exclusive. There's a ven diagram, there's
a Van diagram. The United States has proven that time
and time again. So yeah. So this guy Eddie, who
was kind of a side character in our story, he is,
(09:37):
as we said, he's an elite plantation owner. He was
a delegate to the Congressional Congress. He himself had married
into a lot of money earlier in life. And at
this point we talk about this often. In this juncture
of history, the United States is still trying to figure out, like, hey,
how does an upper crust work in our new nation
(09:59):
which is ostensibly founded upon meritocracy. So they're saying, look,
these public proclamations of equality and liberty, they're great for
the press, they're great for the larger public and the
hoi poloi. But then privately, these folks who go to
the Congress, and these folks who have these big decision
(10:19):
maker meetings, they get together in back rooms and they
all feel something akin to a later concept of social Darwinism.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Do as I say, not as I do, A bit
of a who's got time for all? That this is
for others for others.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, yeah, they don't want to publicly call themselves aristocrats
or royalty, but they very much privately agree that some
people are just better than others. So that's the the
echelon the sphere in which Francis Scott.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Key is moving, planting the seeds for further elitism. He
did have his whole life path kind of set before him.
He is living high on the socioeconomic hog, coming from money,
marrying rich. He didn't have to do a thing if
he didn't want to. He could have rested on his
laurels there his family fortune for the rest of his life. Possibly.
(11:16):
They did have quite a few kids. Eleven if I'm
not mistaken, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Eleven kids is a lot even back then. And Francis
and Mary were also living in an expensive neighborhood. They
relocated to the Georgetown area of Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Still fancy, right, very much so, even.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
More now, And they were residing this I almost say coven.
I shouldn't say coven, this large collection of children. They
were in the Key House, which is now a famous
part of Georgetown. Look again, we kind of overemphasized this, folks.
(11:58):
Francis Franny whatever you want to call him. He is
a clever guy. Fran Man, Yeah, the frand Reno. This
is pardon us key to really understanding the dissonance at
play and why we think he's, you know, kind of
a pill.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
A bit of a pill. Like any young man, he
had his share of folks he looked up to the
rock stars of the day, chief of those, the equally
morally complicated Thomas Jefferson, who we've discussed at length. Got
to remember that Francis was born after the actual action
of the revolution, so he was too young to experience
(12:38):
any of that firsthand. But he came up in the
aftermath of this new nation, and like the very young nation,
continues to be relatively young compared to other civilizations. Francis
was also grappling with sort of an existential crisis. How
could a country, the champion liberty and equality also practice
(12:59):
industrial scale and laveman of other human beings? What a quandary, Ben,
What a quandary? How do you reconcile these things?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I didn't, not really, not successfully, because majority of his
adult life Francis was always trying to tread some sort
of moral middle ground and put diplomatically, he had a
best mixed results. I mean, you can, of course see
his legal career in DC. Luckily nepotism aside. He was
(13:31):
quite a talented lawyer. He was known as an extraordinary orator.
He was blessed with what the Irish and you know
will call the gift of gab. To his credit, he
argued against the Irish Actually, okay, all right, I'll write
to the ambassador to credit oh right, to the President
(13:55):
of Ireland, because I want an excuse to talk about
his dog. Have you seen those clips of the president?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Is it a cute Is it a cute boy's cute?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Kind of a ceremonial position. I don't know if the
guy is still president, but he is most well known
for taking his dog with him everywhere. So he's giving
he's given serious speeches, and the dog is always next
to him, like sniffing the treats in his pocket.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Anyway, it's a Bernice Mountain dog.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a big boy, uh Max with
the facts.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yes, indeed, well, and to keys credit, if we're going
to give him, we're going to give it to him
now publicly at least. He argued against enslavement as a concept.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah ye, And he even defended enslaved people in court.
As a matter of fact, in eighteen twenty five, he
explicitly stated, by the law of nature, all men are free.
And he went all the way to the Supreme Court
to go to bat for some people who wanted manumission,
(15:28):
wanted emancipation. But the thing is, folks, we're making him
sound really good, and like we said, it's important to
get give credit where due. The thing is. In his
personal life, Francis was the opposite of an abolitionist. This
dude literally owned slaves himself. When he was twenty two
years old, he bought his first enslaved person. By eighteen
(15:52):
twenty he owned wish wish again, no less than six
human beings. So like the sheer hypocrisy, the profound paradox
of going all the way to the Supreme Court of
the United States to argue for freeing people and then
heading home and going, well, you know not you guys though, right,
(16:13):
like not not the six.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Of you, No, no, because that would be convenient for me,
right exactly, how was gonna do all the chores? Guys?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You get it? Like I can't cook, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So I don't do baseboards. No, this is sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
About your life.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He did arguably try to make a difference. We know
he held something this complicated. We know he held something
like anti slavery views because he was a co founder
of a group called the American Colonization Society, and they
saw themselves as very progressive.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
See how you could claim to have anti slavery views
while simultaneously on these slaves and these things just do
not track. It doesn't really you know, you know again, hypocrisy.
It just could screams do as I say, not as
I do, And it really is giving image over reality.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Very much. So his crew, the ACS American Colonization Society,
founded in eighteen sixteen, had had a whole pitch that
they thought was edgy and radical and very much a
greater good thing. They said, here's what we should do.
We should take everybody who, by hook or by crook,
(17:40):
has been enslaved and then later freed, and we should
let them stay free, because we think that's fundamentally the
right thing to do. But we should also ship them
the hell out of the United States. We'll make special colonies.
We'll make colonies where we segregate them on the African continent.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean it's sort of like, you know, administrations in
different local areas and in the United States and Canada
dealing with the unhoused problem by shipping them elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, Hawaii had a big problem with that too.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
A lot of them get shipped to Vancouver, which is
a real tough place because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, and let us not forget that in our home
HQ of Atlanta, Georgia, when the Olympics came in, a
lot of unhoused people got one way bus tickets. This
is this was then is now seen as a moral
middle ground. They said, Okay, we're going to hold true
to the letter of the American law that all people
(18:44):
are created equal, but we're still going to bend the
need to this patriarchal agrarian system. And obviously folks mixing
the races, mixing the races here in the eighteen hundreds,
that is uncivilized.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Isn't that That's why they used a really gross term
for that, ben wasn't it misiingen imagination. Yeah, it just
has it's icky mouthfield to it. Just you can tell
that it's bad.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how early in
the career of this show, you and I learned that
Oregon never allowed slavery, not because they believed in equality,
but because they were so racist. They genuinely hated. The
idea of black people living in their area in any form.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Still blows my mind and blows the minds of most
people I share this with at parties because we're fun
there that you know, Oregon was founded as like this
white soulenly paradise, kind of intentional anti black community, especially
given what people know about Portland and it being so
kind of stereotypically let's call it liberal. A lot of
(19:54):
the rest of the state very much still to this
day quite backwards, and often is the home of a
breeding ground for a lot of white supremacist groups. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I find it interesting because one place that is not
surprised about that fact are people in Portland.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
People.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Oh yeah, you get outside of Portland. It's a it's
a it can change, it changes very fast.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I mean, it's not that far off from Atlanta being
sort of a liberal bastion in Georgia, you know, surrounded
by not no casting any e spersions on the people
of Georgia. But it is a very different world out there.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well to jump to follow up on this, I mean,
I don't know if this is africane anywhere, but part
of the state at one point was trying to quit
Oregon and join Idaho.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Idaho.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
They disagree with the views of Portland, but since Portland
is such a large population center of the state, it
has kind of like a controlling basis for how the
state votes, and so they were trying to seceed from Oregon.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And it wasn't just the population aspect. It was also
the fact that Portland is an economic powerhouse in the region.
And I remember my first time in Portland being in
an interracial relationship. I was confused, frankly by the racism.
I didn't get some of this stuff, like why is
(21:14):
that lady spitting at us in the street? Is she okay?
Is she sick? No, she was just sick of us.
A story for another day. But if we go back
to Francis Scott Key, we know that free people of
color in the United States activist and activist and orators
(21:35):
and so on. They predictably hated the American Colonization Society.
They said it was an op and black leaders of
the equality movement thought leaving the country was beat me here, Max,
bullshit full stop. So this dude, Francis, of course, is
one of those guys who probably doesn't get told no
(21:59):
very often, and except that time, his dad wouldn't let
him be a priest. So he is a silver spooned,
silver tongued lawman, and he is convinced he has the
right way to tackle chattel slavery. He says, Okay, what
we do is we can't just free everybody, right, We've
got to gradually dial it down, you know, like quitting
(22:21):
coffee or something, or quitting caffeine. And the implicit statement
was you don't have to go back to the plantation,
but you can't just live here at this point too.
This is interesting. Everybody is thinking of this guy as
a hotshot lawyer. Nobody is thinking of him as a
(22:41):
songwriter or a poet.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Not yet, and they may never potentially, although it would
seem that some of his hookups and family connections are
what led him to be jumped up, as they say
in the song of Ice and Fire Universe.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yes yeah, yeah, yeah, as a jumped up hedge nights
you know, yeah, yeah yeah. So let's pause for a
second in this narrative and get to what he is
most well known for today, which is not law in
or lawyering.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
But it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Is the notoriously difficult to seeing star spangled banner because
he has jumped up like you're saying, Noel. He is
a mover and a shaker, which means that at this
point in American history, as part of the upper crust,
he functions as a fixer, right, a guy who can
use his connections through unofficial channels to make stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Happen, for sure, and he does just that. In early
September of eighteen fourteen, after the British had burned the
city in the city of Washington, Key was sent on
a quite potentially dangerous mission to the British fleet near
Baltimore in order to negotiate for and secure the release
of a friend of his by the name of William Beans,
(24:01):
a real stand up guy. William Beans a physician from
Upper Marlborough, Maryland. Bean's family and friends hope the Key,
who was then a of course, a prominent attorney in Washington,
would be able to accomplish this task getting his release secured.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, because his family wasn't able to make stuff happen.
They were perhaps not as connected as he was. So
France's partners up with an army colonel from the US
named John Skinner, and then they get the you know,
the go ahead from the President at the time, James Madison.
So Skinner and Francis meet the British at the Potomac
(24:44):
River on September seventh, and they the British are aboard
a ship called the todtet T NNA and t they
go into a negotiation. It's very civil, it's very fancy,
you know, sharing wine or whatever. And these two British guys,
General Robert Ross, because I'm a grown man who can vote,
(25:07):
I'm gonna do my best not to laugh. Another British
guy whose name is.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
George Cockburn, he really needs to get that looked at.
I'll titter enough for both of us. Cockburn was, of course,
as you point out, Ben, in the research document, these
top notch research document for this episode, a rear admiral
I think that we can vote, and Ben, I disagree.
(25:34):
The jokes don't write themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It's a rear admiral. Oh my gosh, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Sorry, but but stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
We're keeping it all.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
In So, boy, are we ever we're having big, big
Friday energy on a Thursday. Just so.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Uh So, these British guys are again beat me her Max.
They are about the cannon ball, the shut out of Baltimore, Maryland,
and they say, yeah, okay, all right, you've convinced us
Colonel Skinner and rich guy Lawyer, we will release this beans.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Dude, release the beans.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Release the beans, says Rear Admiral Cockburn. So but they say,
an important caveat Chaps you can't leave until after we're
done with our attack. So you have to sit there
and watch us bomb Baltimore's Fort McHenry for like a
(26:37):
full day.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Okay, all right. So early in the morning of September fourteenth,
Francis looked out and saw just that. However, despite all
the damage and chaos it caused, the American flag was
still flying high old glory over Fort Henry McHenry. Excuse me, yeah.
This inspired him to write the lyrics to the Star
(26:59):
Spangled Banner. After being released from this brief time being
held hostage, he rewrote the poem in a Baltimore hotel
that was then printed anonymously under the title Defense of
Fort McHenry, which is a very unsexy name and published
by the Baltimore Patriot on September the twentieth. Just a
(27:21):
few days later, it was set to an already popular
tune to Anacreon in Heaven, the theme song of the
British Anacreontic Society. The song became one of several popular
patriotic tunes that were performed throughout the nation, kind of repurposing,
I guess, you know, right. And again Francis at this
(27:42):
point still didn't really think of himself as a poetry prodigy.
He's still lawyer, a lawyer, lawyer in so he just
gets back to the busy job of lawyer in.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, exactly. And for everybody who is wondering what the
Anacreonotic Society is is this is a gentleman's club of
amateur musicians in London and they're pretty new. They were
founded in the mid seventeen hundreds. And like Francis, these
guys are well to do you know, doctors, barristers.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yeah, sort of like a creative writing group or something.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, well done. And if we fast forward, we're not
saying they were any good, but they were enjoying what
they were doing, yes, And that's the point. Of art.
So fast forward, it's the eighteen twenties, it's the eighteen thirties.
Now we see a reactionary rise of what was called
(28:40):
a mediast abolition. The mediast abolition is what hopefully the
vast majority of Americans support today, which is say, hey,
no half measures, stop treating human beings as property. These
guys were not John Brown level, like burn it down physically,
(29:00):
but they were blowing the whistle in the halls of power,
and they were saying what we said at the very top.
They were like, hey, my fellow Americans, this is hypocrisy,
this is bad. We've got the Constitution, We've got the
Bill of Rights. They're pretty frickin explicit.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And you you have these words, right you and power
that you claim are awesome every time you need to
get elected. But what you do in practice is diametrically
opposed to these noble ideals.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
This is democracy manifests. Sorry, very decracy manifest yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So this this is the clarion call, a media establish
clarion call for folks like William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher
of an anti slavery newspaper called The Liberator. And then,
of course the famous Frederick Douglas, who our own president said,
we're hearing more and more about these days.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do you remember that? I sure, yes, he's that guy
doing great work out there. Yeah. This was the time
where people really needed to kind of poop or get
off the pot, as they say, put their money where
their mouths were. And it was also a time where
a lot of that hypocrisy was kind of being you know, exposed.
(30:24):
Those clarion calls you were talking about earlier, were like,
we're not going to slow roll this. You know, we've
got to stamp out slavery and racism. Now, yeah, I
mean the racism part took a long time and it's
still it's still still progress. Yes, very least we can
get rid of the slavery bit. The American Anti Slavery
(30:47):
Society is formed in eighteen thirty one. They're exactly what
we're describing. They say, our goal is the immediate end
to slavery, not this undeniably racist gradualism of these American
Callization Society clowns. Now, we all know that trial lawyers
have a certain stereotype, and that stereotype is often being
(31:12):
tenacious in their opinions. Right, very pushy. Rarely are they
Rarely are they known to walk back an opinion or
admit that they are wrong. So Francis there's no exception
to this stereotype. And again, it's the stereotype because it
(31:32):
happens to some lawyers, but obviously hashtag not all lawyers.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Francis is one of these guys.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Though.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
He reacts to these immediates abolitionists by saying, I'm going
to be increasingly conservative. He talks about abolitionists the way
people talk about anti vod today. One of his big
things is that he's walking around. He's going, hey, guys, hey, guys, look,
(32:04):
I get I get it. But the thing is, these
slave owners invested a lot of money. So what are
you gonna do? What You're just gonna rob these people.
They have to be financially compensated for losing out on
their investments. Let's be reasonable. I don't know why his
voice got more and more soul goodman as that went on.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, it feels like he's doing a bit of a
tony soprano kind of move.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Oh yeah, my cousin, right.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I mean, it's just like sure on paper, I can
see that, But it also.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Like they're people.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, well I'm just saying, like,
you know, there was a time where it was legal,
and those people paid good money, you know, to do
a thing that at the time was legal. So logically
it would follow that now that it's been made illegal,
maybe they should be refunded their investment. But also so
like that doesn't really work from a moral standpoint. This
(33:04):
is a moral discussion, right.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and this these ideas of compensation
came up again and again. Games you should be compensated,
right right, in reparations, right, So this was an argument
for towards reparations for slave owners, not yet.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Gross yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
So by this point, the nepotism, combined with the talent,
had given Francis Scott Key the position of district attorneys.
So he was definitely in the catbird seat. He had
the public pulpit to rail on and on about this.
But here we find another complication, folks, because Francis seemed
(33:47):
to understand that slavery as a concept was super duper wrong. Still,
even though he acknowledged that he was also one of
those guys this was very common who believed that black
people were inherently inferior to others. So he would say,
you know, he would say all people should be free,
(34:08):
or but all people aren't really equal, right, like you
get it, You get it right, guys, right, mister president.
And as a result, the American colonization Society wasn't super successful.
They've moved very few people out to the African continent.
The people who did manage to get across the pond,
(34:30):
they were in brutal conditions, they were not well supported.
Extinction level mortality rates were in play, and the ACS,
you could say, became a tool like what we would
call an AstroTurf movement these days, for pro slavery.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Powers, and you know, kind of adding insult to injury.
He also did defend the idea of the occupation, former
occupation of being a slave catcher. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, And slave catchers were essentially bounty hunters who were
paid on commission by slave owners, often in the South,
to chase down escape to people and to return them,
usually alive but sometimes dead, for a fee for a commission.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Doesn't this kind of make you think of like the
idea of being tried for war crimes or something like that,
You know, it'd be the equivalent of like defending a
war criminal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, And you know, good defense lawyers often make their
name on defending folks that the court, Yeah, the court
of public opinion has already decided we're guilty. Sometimes a
good reason, but.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
It's the good point. And of course there is that
old argument that everyone deserves, you know, a robust defense.
I just don't know if that's where he was coming
at it from.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I'm sure he leaned on that one. It talked a
lot about it.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It seems like the kind of thing he would have done. Yes,
very much.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So we know that he came down hard in various
aspects of this. There was a famous trial in eighteen
thirty six about a guy named Ruben Crandall, and Francis said,
this Ruben Crandall guy is not the abolitionist you think
he is. He is trying to create a widespread rebellion
(36:23):
of slaves. And the evidence is so tenuous and skimpy.
Police had raided this guy's office and they found anti
slavery pamphlets, basically ratic zines. They found zines, and was
(36:43):
possession of a zine with intent to distribute. And in
this courtroom, Francis the guy who wrote The Star Spangled Banner, says, Look,
people should be able to own people, you know, like
people sell the people to people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Right, started this company with one rusty slave ship and
a motto people selling people to people. Mister well done.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yes, yeah, And he built his case around the idea
that anti slavery activism would create rebellion amongst the enslaved
population of the US, and therefore it was a matter
not of morality but of public safety.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yikes. Yeah, talk about gilding the lily. Is that the
right term? Or putting lipstick on a pig. I don't know,
I get those confused. But yeah, it's definitely a spin move.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, and we've got a quotation to measure the size
of this guy's butt holary. In this case, let's remember
as you hear this, folks, that Francis Scott Key again,
the creator of the Star Spangled Banner, said this on
record verbatim.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yep, he sure did. The great moral and political evil
of which I speaks posed to be slavery. But is
it not plainly the whole colored race? But if I
did say this of slavery, as I am quite willing
to say it here and on all fit occasions. Do
I not also, in the same breath speak of emancipation
(38:18):
as a far greater evil. What are you talking about, guy?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We can't free everybody game out of his butthole. What
he's doing very much, he's boofing. So Francis argued for
this segregation for the entirety of his life, and in
this landmark case, this Rubing Crandall case, he wanted to
convince people that not prosecuting a mediist abolitionist was a
(38:48):
death sentence for the Union. To him, all people might
be technically free, legally equal, but some are to quote
or well more equal than others. The real threat to
him was integration right leading to miss engination. Ultimately, in
this eighteen thirty six trial, our buddy Rubin is found
not guilty, but it doesn't do him much good because
(39:11):
he gets tuberculosis in jail and then he dies pretty
much right after he was released. So this is arguably
a big win for Francis.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, it would seem so, And Ben correct me if
I'm wrong. Did we not do a previous episode that
was a little more focused on the Star Spangled banner itself?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
We did an episode on multiple national anthems.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Okay, Well, if you want a little more info on
the you know how the Star Spangled banner came to
be in some of the controversies surrounding it being the
national anthem, do check that one out as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
We also, as we're wrapping up the story here, we've
got to add another wrinkle to this morally troubled character.
Francis was known amongst his upper class peers as a
humane slave voter. That's a pretty paradoxical statement. Yeah, but
but scoff, scoff. But in the eighteen thirties, he freed
(40:08):
multiple enslaved people under his control, and we know that
at least one of those people continued to work and
stay on the property was a free foreman on the farm.
And as the freed foreman on the farm, this guy
supervised several people that were still enslaved because Francis did
(40:31):
not free all of them.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yikes, or like Samuel L. Jackson's character and Chengo unchained.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, get out of my head, dude. Yeah, it's no
wonder that Jefferson was Francis's dream guy.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Shout out to Sally Emmys.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Night number one, A guy talking to Francis.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, Francis got keyth spoiler dies, he's not around to
hear this episode.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
That might have been the case at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
It was January eleventh, eighteen forty three. He was sixty
three years old, fourteen years after he dies. His collected
poetry is published in eighteen fifty seven, and at the
time of his passing, he still wish Wish owned eight slaves.
So you got to wonder what would he as such
(41:23):
a morally tortured, staunch segregationist, what would he think of
modern day America? How would he feel about going to, say,
a baseball game, and heard the national anthem and seeing
people of all creeds, ethnicities, and backgrounds singing along together.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
What would he have thought of a Fergie's interpretation?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Oh gosh, well, what do you have thought of Roseanne
Barr's interpretation?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Ooh good question. Well, but at the end of the day.
To take away for this episode, it's in a title
I believe, is that we think he was kind of
a jerk.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yeah, yep, I hate to say it, but we're being fair.
We have so much more that we want to explore,
perhaps another day. Thank you so much for tuning in,
Fellow ridiculous historians. Big thanks to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. Big thanks actually to everybody who has powered wait,
(42:16):
we'll keep it in, but big thanks to the majority
of people who have powered through the Star Spangled banner
in a public performance, So most of you, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
All of you. I haven't been to a sporting event
a lot. Do they sing the whole damn thing? No?
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, because we've got the full lyrics here.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Which I was looking at it some of these verses exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous Crime. Big thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs and you
know uh an ominous we know what you did to
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
And huge thanks to you Ben for doing the excellent
research on this episode. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Oh say, can you see by
the Don's early light, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I can't see a thing except Max's glorious visage and hairdo.
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And that is mister Noel Brown. They call me Ben
Bullen ed Noel. You know we were you know what
we were referencing here what so proudly we hailed at
the podcast bright gleaming at It is sort of our
school song here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Fight Fight Fight, fight, fight right right right four. It's
like some of the House of the Dragon type stuff. Man, Yeah,
I mean it's you know what I guess he's describing.
Is he describing like war or is it a fireworks display?
I've always been a little ify on what the subject
matter that song is about.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
He is describing the This is funny because we'll see
this in the episode two. He is describing a real
conflict that he saw. And who is he? You might
be asking. It's a guy named Francis scott Key since
nineteen thirty one, our national anthem. The official national anthem
(01:46):
has been the infamous Star Spangled Banner written by this guy.
We love national anthems. They're weird, they're frequently controversial. Check
out our earlier episode on that before we get into it, Ben,
what I think is so delightful and strange about the
United States is that while the Star Spangled Banner is
(02:09):
our official anthem, we have a ton of songs that
could be considered unofficial national anthems, like Proud to Be
an American?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
R No.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Really is that where we are for a certain demographic.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Bro, Yes, at least I know I'm free to not
like that song very much.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's one of those songs where and I'm going to
get some heat for this. It's one of those songs.
Like to me, it's like Benny and the Jets in
that it doesn't go anywhere melodically, you know. Benny and
the Jets is kind of this thing for several minutes,
it sort of it just goes and goes.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It does have a bit of a turn. I like
the part where he goes, but Benny and the Jets
that one little part like downward inflection Benny in the
Jets part, But You're right, it doesn't. It's a bit,
it's slight, it's a minor. It's a minor outon John.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, I feel like we're at a one and a half,
not like banning the Jets. I'm gonna throw my vote
in here is not liking that one too or two
and a half.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
All right, And that's how democracy works. I mean, it's
no crocodile rock. Okay, let's put it that way. It
is no crocodile rock or circle of it. But I'm
telling you, guys, Proud to be an American is kind
of like that. But Star Spangled Banner, right, it's a
we're fans of music here. Star Spangled Banner is infamous
(03:29):
for being kind of difficult to sing correctly. There's a
ton of crazy war around the song. A lot of
people and this may surprise some of our non American
ridiculous historians. A ton of people in the States don't
actually dig the Star Spangled Banner.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
As I saw that, you mentioned that it was much maligned,
and I guess maybe that that just don't float in
those circles. But like, who's trash talking the Star Spangled Banner?
I mean, I would argue it's on its face mid
at best, but like, is there really a vocal contingent
out there, like like slandering the Star Spangled banner?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
There have been movements to change the US national anthem. Uh,
this is this is a thing that comes up. It's
it's very it's a very American idea. Right to fix
the thing, but choicing of grievances, right, But but to
change the banner or the Star Spangled banner would at
(04:29):
this point require Congress, to require an Act of Congress,
and then the President would have to approve it. And
so we're kind of stuck with this legacy idea, and
we're not exploring this anthem in particular in today's episode. Instead,
we're kind of going behind the music, as it were,
(04:51):
and exploring the story of its creator, Francis, because, as
ridiculous as it may sound, folks, we are sorry to
report that Francis Scott Key was kind of a pill,
kind of a heel, kind of a jerk. Not a
good guy, not the best one. Nothing like if you
lined up all the guys, I don't think he stopped ten.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Let's get into why, and as you might imagine, it
has something to do with hipocrisy.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I was drinking coffee and let's spout it out. But yeah,
that's let's keep that. That's perfect ol our pal. Francis
is born on August first. He's a fellow August baby.
It's seventeen seventy nine, so just after what we call
the American Revolution. And he is born at a place
called Terra Rubra. This sea is in modern day Carroll County, Maryland.
(05:51):
His family is very wealthy.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yep, yep, you're definitely coming up alongside the swells. And
that's primarily because his father was a lawyer ross Key,
also a Continental War veteran and a local judge, and
so he had a bit of a born on third
kind of upbringing. It afforded him the opportunity to enroll
in Annapolis's in Maryland there Saint John's College. And imagine this,
(06:22):
at the time, he was only ten years old, which
is crazy. He's a bit of a bit of a prodigy,
I guess right. I mean, if he's calling in college
at ten or is this just specifically a product of
his his privilege? Yeah, before we call him adoogie houser there,
we're not calling him dumb folks, to be clear, but
(06:43):
we are saying that he had family connections. He is
kind of what we'll call a nepo baby in this
day and age, because he was studying law under his uncle,
a guy named Philip Barton Key, who was a British loyalist,
which was pretty poisonous at this time, you know, post revolution.
(07:04):
I would think, Yeah, he did graduate in seventeen ninety six.
He was only seventeen years old, so I guess that
means he was in college for seven seven years. That's
a long time. I mean, that's all to me to
graduate college, but I didn't do it right.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, he started when he was ten, you know what
I mean, So he had a lot of catching up
to do.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
He did have a little kit fair. He literally just said,
take this child learned men and turn him into a
learned man. Originally, young Frank yearned, he yearned to breathe
free and join the Episcopal priesthood. Maybe not free he was,
and this will be darkly hilarious. Later quite the pious
(07:45):
little lad Francis decided against that. However, possibly I'm the
advice of his father. Maybe there wasn't you know, there's
no money in the priesthood. He said, in my imagining
of this encounter, so he eschewed a spiritual path and
followed the secular moneyed path. Francis went on to study law,
following the footsteps of Ross his dad, under a judge
(08:08):
by the name of Jeremiah Townsld. Chase.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yes, you can smell the mint Julep's adom. This was
probably again a hookup from his father, Ross Key. Anyway,
it results in our buddy Francis passing the bar. He
becomes a lawyer in his own right around eighteen oh one,
So for all of us playing along at home, that
makes Frank about twenty two years old. Year after that,
(08:37):
it's New Year's Day and he gets hitched to a
lady named Mary Taylor Lloyd. This is important because Mary
comes from a family that's even more moneyed than the
Key family. She is Aristocracy. Her dad is Edward Lloyd
four the fourth. At anytime, anytime somebody gets past the
(08:59):
third in their name, I always wonder, right if they're
old money.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Well, sure you know you don't get a middle name
like Taylo unless you come from some old money either,
Because at first I thought you had misspoke. No, it
is t a y l Oe not Taylor Taylo.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, yeah, old money or someone who can't spell or both,
so so not mutually exclusive. There's a ven diagram, there's
a Van diagram. The United States has proven that time
and time again. So yeah. So this guy Eddie, who
was kind of a side character in our story, he is,
(09:37):
as we said, he's an elite plantation owner. He was
a delegate to the Congressional Congress. He himself had married
into a lot of money earlier in life. And at
this point we talk about this often. In this juncture
of history, the United States is still trying to figure out, like, hey,
how does an upper crust work in our new nation
(09:59):
which is ostensibly founded upon meritocracy. So they're saying, look,
these public proclamations of equality and liberty, they're great for
the press, they're great for the larger public and the
hoi poloi. But then privately, these folks who go to
the Congress, and these folks who have these big decision
(10:19):
maker meetings, they get together in back rooms and they
all feel something akin to a later concept of social Darwinism.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Do as I say, not as I do, A bit
of a who's got time for all? That this is
for others for others.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, yeah, they don't want to publicly call themselves aristocrats
or royalty, but they very much privately agree that some
people are just better than others. So that's the the
echelon the sphere in which Francis Scott.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Key is moving, planting the seeds for further elitism. He
did have his whole life path kind of set before him.
He is living high on the socioeconomic hog, coming from money,
marrying rich. He didn't have to do a thing if
he didn't want to. He could have rested on his
laurels there his family fortune for the rest of his life. Possibly.
(11:16):
They did have quite a few kids. Eleven if I'm
not mistaken, Ben, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Eleven kids is a lot even back then. And Francis
and Mary were also living in an expensive neighborhood. They
relocated to the Georgetown area of Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Still fancy, right, very much so, even.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
More now, And they were residing this I almost say coven.
I shouldn't say coven, this large collection of children. They
were in the Key House, which is now a famous
part of Georgetown. Look again, we kind of overemphasized this, folks.
(11:58):
Francis Franny whatever you want to call him. He is
a clever guy. Fran Man, Yeah, the frand Reno. This
is pardon us key to really understanding the dissonance at
play and why we think he's, you know, kind of
a pill.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
A bit of a pill. Like any young man, he
had his share of folks he looked up to the
rock stars of the day, chief of those, the equally
morally complicated Thomas Jefferson, who we've discussed at length. Got
to remember that Francis was born after the actual action
of the revolution, so he was too young to experience
(12:38):
any of that firsthand. But he came up in the
aftermath of this new nation, and like the very young nation,
continues to be relatively young compared to other civilizations. Francis
was also grappling with sort of an existential crisis. How
could a country, the champion liberty and equality also practice
(12:59):
industrial scale and laveman of other human beings? What a quandary, Ben,
What a quandary? How do you reconcile these things?
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I didn't, not really, not successfully, because majority of his
adult life Francis was always trying to tread some sort
of moral middle ground and put diplomatically, he had a
best mixed results. I mean, you can, of course see
his legal career in DC. Luckily nepotism aside. He was
(13:31):
quite a talented lawyer. He was known as an extraordinary orator.
He was blessed with what the Irish and you know
will call the gift of gab. To his credit, he
argued against the Irish Actually, okay, all right, I'll write
to the ambassador to credit oh right, to the President
(13:55):
of Ireland, because I want an excuse to talk about
his dog. Have you seen those clips of the president?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Is it a cute Is it a cute boy's cute?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Kind of a ceremonial position. I don't know if the
guy is still president, but he is most well known
for taking his dog with him everywhere. So he's giving
he's given serious speeches, and the dog is always next
to him, like sniffing the treats in his pocket.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Anyway, it's a Bernice Mountain dog.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a big boy, uh Max with
the facts.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yes, indeed, well, and to keys credit, if we're going
to give him, we're going to give it to him
now publicly at least. He argued against enslavement as a concept.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah ye, And he even defended enslaved people in court.
As a matter of fact, in eighteen twenty five, he
explicitly stated, by the law of nature, all men are free.
And he went all the way to the Supreme Court
to go to bat for some people who wanted manumission,
(15:28):
wanted emancipation. But the thing is, folks, we're making him
sound really good, and like we said, it's important to
get give credit where due. The thing is. In his
personal life, Francis was the opposite of an abolitionist. This
dude literally owned slaves himself. When he was twenty two
years old, he bought his first enslaved person. By eighteen
(15:52):
twenty he owned wish wish again, no less than six
human beings. So like the sheer hypocrisy, the profound paradox
of going all the way to the Supreme Court of
the United States to argue for freeing people and then
heading home and going, well, you know not you guys though, right,
(16:13):
like not not the six.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Of you, No, no, because that would be convenient for me,
right exactly, how was gonna do all the chores? Guys?
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You get it? Like I can't cook, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So I don't do baseboards. No, this is sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
About your life.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
He did arguably try to make a difference. We know
he held something this complicated. We know he held something
like anti slavery views because he was a co founder
of a group called the American Colonization Society, and they
saw themselves as very progressive.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
See how you could claim to have anti slavery views
while simultaneously on these slaves and these things just do
not track. It doesn't really you know, you know again, hypocrisy.
It just could screams do as I say, not as
I do, And it really is giving image over reality.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Very much. So his crew, the ACS American Colonization Society,
founded in eighteen sixteen, had had a whole pitch that
they thought was edgy and radical and very much a
greater good thing. They said, here's what we should do.
We should take everybody who, by hook or by crook,
(17:40):
has been enslaved and then later freed, and we should
let them stay free, because we think that's fundamentally the
right thing to do. But we should also ship them
the hell out of the United States. We'll make special colonies.
We'll make colonies where we segregate them on the African continent.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I mean it's sort of like, you know, administrations in
different local areas and in the United States and Canada
dealing with the unhoused problem by shipping them elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, Hawaii had a big problem with that too.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
A lot of them get shipped to Vancouver, which is
a real tough place because of that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Yeah, and let us not forget that in our home
HQ of Atlanta, Georgia, when the Olympics came in, a
lot of unhoused people got one way bus tickets. This
is this was then is now seen as a moral
middle ground. They said, Okay, we're going to hold true
to the letter of the American law that all people
(18:44):
are created equal, but we're still going to bend the
need to this patriarchal agrarian system. And obviously folks mixing
the races, mixing the races here in the eighteen hundreds,
that is uncivilized.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Isn't that That's why they used a really gross term
for that, ben wasn't it misiingen imagination. Yeah, it just
has it's icky mouthfield to it. Just you can tell
that it's bad.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like how early in
the career of this show, you and I learned that
Oregon never allowed slavery, not because they believed in equality,
but because they were so racist. They genuinely hated. The
idea of black people living in their area in any form.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Still blows my mind and blows the minds of most
people I share this with at parties because we're fun
there that you know, Oregon was founded as like this
white soulenly paradise, kind of intentional anti black community, especially
given what people know about Portland and it being so
kind of stereotypically let's call it liberal. A lot of
(19:54):
the rest of the state very much still to this
day quite backwards, and often is the home of a
breeding ground for a lot of white supremacist groups. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I find it interesting because one place that is not
surprised about that fact are people in Portland.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
People.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Oh yeah, you get outside of Portland. It's a it's
a it can change, it changes very fast.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I mean, it's not that far off from Atlanta being
sort of a liberal bastion in Georgia, you know, surrounded
by not no casting any e spersions on the people
of Georgia. But it is a very different world out there.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well to jump to follow up on this, I mean,
I don't know if this is africane anywhere, but part
of the state at one point was trying to quit
Oregon and join Idaho.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Idaho.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
They disagree with the views of Portland, but since Portland
is such a large population center of the state, it
has kind of like a controlling basis for how the
state votes, and so they were trying to seceed from Oregon.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And it wasn't just the population aspect. It was also
the fact that Portland is an economic powerhouse in the region.
And I remember my first time in Portland being in
an interracial relationship. I was confused, frankly by the racism.
I didn't get some of this stuff, like why is
(21:14):
that lady spitting at us in the street? Is she okay?
Is she sick? No, she was just sick of us.
A story for another day. But if we go back
to Francis Scott Key, we know that free people of
color in the United States activist and activist and orators
(21:35):
and so on. They predictably hated the American Colonization Society.
They said it was an op and black leaders of
the equality movement thought leaving the country was beat me here, Max,
bullshit full stop. So this dude, Francis, of course, is
one of those guys who probably doesn't get told no
(21:59):
very often, and except that time, his dad wouldn't let
him be a priest. So he is a silver spooned,
silver tongued lawman, and he is convinced he has the
right way to tackle chattel slavery. He says, Okay, what
we do is we can't just free everybody, right, We've
got to gradually dial it down, you know, like quitting
(22:21):
coffee or something, or quitting caffeine. And the implicit statement
was you don't have to go back to the plantation,
but you can't just live here at this point too.
This is interesting. Everybody is thinking of this guy as
a hotshot lawyer. Nobody is thinking of him as a
(22:41):
songwriter or a poet.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Not yet, and they may never potentially, although it would
seem that some of his hookups and family connections are
what led him to be jumped up, as they say
in the song of Ice and Fire Universe.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yes yeah, yeah, yeah, as a jumped up hedge nights
you know, yeah, yeah yeah. So let's pause for a
second in this narrative and get to what he is
most well known for today, which is not law in
or lawyering.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
But it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Is the notoriously difficult to seeing star spangled banner because
he has jumped up like you're saying, Noel. He is
a mover and a shaker, which means that at this
point in American history, as part of the upper crust,
he functions as a fixer, right, a guy who can
use his connections through unofficial channels to make stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Happen, for sure, and he does just that. In early
September of eighteen fourteen, after the British had burned the
city in the city of Washington, Key was sent on
a quite potentially dangerous mission to the British fleet near
Baltimore in order to negotiate for and secure the release
of a friend of his by the name of William Beans,
(24:01):
a real stand up guy. William Beans a physician from
Upper Marlborough, Maryland. Bean's family and friends hope the Key,
who was then a of course, a prominent attorney in Washington,
would be able to accomplish this task getting his release secured.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, because his family wasn't able to make stuff happen.
They were perhaps not as connected as he was. So
France's partners up with an army colonel from the US
named John Skinner, and then they get the you know,
the go ahead from the President at the time, James Madison.
So Skinner and Francis meet the British at the Potomac
(24:44):
River on September seventh, and they the British are aboard
a ship called the todtet T NNA and t they
go into a negotiation. It's very civil, it's very fancy,
you know, sharing wine or whatever. And these two British guys,
General Robert Ross, because I'm a grown man who can vote,
(25:07):
I'm gonna do my best not to laugh. Another British
guy whose name is.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
George Cockburn, he really needs to get that looked at.
I'll titter enough for both of us. Cockburn was, of course,
as you point out, Ben, in the research document, these
top notch research document for this episode, a rear admiral
I think that we can vote, and Ben, I disagree.
(25:34):
The jokes don't write themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It's a rear admiral. Oh my gosh, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Sorry, but but stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
We're keeping it all.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
In So, boy, are we ever we're having big, big
Friday energy on a Thursday. Just so.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Uh So, these British guys are again beat me her Max.
They are about the cannon ball, the shut out of Baltimore, Maryland,
and they say, yeah, okay, all right, you've convinced us
Colonel Skinner and rich guy Lawyer, we will release this beans.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Dude, release the beans.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Release the beans, says Rear Admiral Cockburn. So but they say,
an important caveat Chaps you can't leave until after we're
done with our attack. So you have to sit there
and watch us bomb Baltimore's Fort McHenry for like a
(26:37):
full day.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Okay, all right. So early in the morning of September fourteenth,
Francis looked out and saw just that. However, despite all
the damage and chaos it caused, the American flag was
still flying high old glory over Fort Henry McHenry. Excuse me, yeah.
This inspired him to write the lyrics to the Star
(26:59):
Spangled Banner. After being released from this brief time being
held hostage, he rewrote the poem in a Baltimore hotel
that was then printed anonymously under the title Defense of
Fort McHenry, which is a very unsexy name and published
by the Baltimore Patriot on September the twentieth. Just a
(27:21):
few days later, it was set to an already popular
tune to Anacreon in Heaven, the theme song of the
British Anacreontic Society. The song became one of several popular
patriotic tunes that were performed throughout the nation, kind of repurposing,
I guess, you know, right. And again Francis at this
(27:42):
point still didn't really think of himself as a poetry prodigy.
He's still lawyer, a lawyer, lawyer in so he just
gets back to the busy job of lawyer in.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, exactly. And for everybody who is wondering what the
Anacreonotic Society is is this is a gentleman's club of
amateur musicians in London and they're pretty new. They were
founded in the mid seventeen hundreds. And like Francis, these
guys are well to do you know, doctors, barristers.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Yeah, sort of like a creative writing group or something.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, well done. And if we fast forward, we're not
saying they were any good, but they were enjoying what
they were doing, yes, And that's the point. Of art.
So fast forward, it's the eighteen twenties, it's the eighteen thirties.
Now we see a reactionary rise of what was called
(28:40):
a mediast abolition. The mediast abolition is what hopefully the
vast majority of Americans support today, which is say, hey,
no half measures, stop treating human beings as property. These
guys were not John Brown level, like burn it down physically,
(29:00):
but they were blowing the whistle in the halls of power,
and they were saying what we said at the very top.
They were like, hey, my fellow Americans, this is hypocrisy,
this is bad. We've got the Constitution, We've got the
Bill of Rights. They're pretty frickin explicit.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And you you have these words, right you and power
that you claim are awesome every time you need to
get elected. But what you do in practice is diametrically
opposed to these noble ideals.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
This is democracy manifests. Sorry, very decracy manifest yes, thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So this this is the clarion call, a media establish
clarion call for folks like William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher
of an anti slavery newspaper called The Liberator. And then,
of course the famous Frederick Douglas, who our own president said,
we're hearing more and more about these days.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do you remember that? I sure, yes, he's that guy
doing great work out there. Yeah. This was the time
where people really needed to kind of poop or get
off the pot, as they say, put their money where
their mouths were. And it was also a time where
a lot of that hypocrisy was kind of being you know, exposed.
(30:24):
Those clarion calls you were talking about earlier, were like,
we're not going to slow roll this. You know, we've
got to stamp out slavery and racism. Now, yeah, I
mean the racism part took a long time and it's
still it's still still progress. Yes, very least we can
get rid of the slavery bit. The American Anti Slavery
(30:47):
Society is formed in eighteen thirty one. They're exactly what
we're describing. They say, our goal is the immediate end
to slavery, not this undeniably racist gradualism of these American
Callization Society clowns. Now, we all know that trial lawyers
have a certain stereotype, and that stereotype is often being
(31:12):
tenacious in their opinions. Right, very pushy. Rarely are they
Rarely are they known to walk back an opinion or
admit that they are wrong. So Francis there's no exception
to this stereotype. And again, it's the stereotype because it
(31:32):
happens to some lawyers, but obviously hashtag not all lawyers.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Francis is one of these guys.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Though.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
He reacts to these immediates abolitionists by saying, I'm going
to be increasingly conservative. He talks about abolitionists the way
people talk about anti vod today. One of his big
things is that he's walking around. He's going, hey, guys, hey, guys, look,
(32:04):
I get I get it. But the thing is, these
slave owners invested a lot of money. So what are
you gonna do? What You're just gonna rob these people.
They have to be financially compensated for losing out on
their investments. Let's be reasonable. I don't know why his
voice got more and more soul goodman as that went on.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well, it feels like he's doing a bit of a
tony soprano kind of move.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Oh yeah, my cousin, right.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
I mean, it's just like sure on paper, I can
see that, But it also.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Like they're people.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, well I'm just saying, like,
you know, there was a time where it was legal,
and those people paid good money, you know, to do
a thing that at the time was legal. So logically
it would follow that now that it's been made illegal,
maybe they should be refunded their investment. But also so
like that doesn't really work from a moral standpoint. This
(33:04):
is a moral discussion, right.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and this these ideas of compensation
came up again and again. Games you should be compensated,
right right, in reparations, right, So this was an argument
for towards reparations for slave owners, not yet.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Gross yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
So by this point, the nepotism, combined with the talent,
had given Francis Scott Key the position of district attorneys.
So he was definitely in the catbird seat. He had
the public pulpit to rail on and on about this.
But here we find another complication, folks, because Francis seemed
(33:47):
to understand that slavery as a concept was super duper wrong. Still,
even though he acknowledged that he was also one of
those guys this was very common who believed that black
people were inherently inferior to others. So he would say,
you know, he would say all people should be free,
(34:08):
or but all people aren't really equal, right, like you
get it, You get it right, guys, right, mister president.
And as a result, the American colonization Society wasn't super successful.
They've moved very few people out to the African continent.
The people who did manage to get across the pond,
(34:30):
they were in brutal conditions, they were not well supported.
Extinction level mortality rates were in play, and the ACS,
you could say, became a tool like what we would
call an AstroTurf movement these days, for pro slavery.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Powers, and you know, kind of adding insult to injury.
He also did defend the idea of the occupation, former
occupation of being a slave catcher. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, And slave catchers were essentially bounty hunters who were
paid on commission by slave owners, often in the South,
to chase down escape to people and to return them,
usually alive but sometimes dead, for a fee for a commission.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Doesn't this kind of make you think of like the
idea of being tried for war crimes or something like that,
You know, it'd be the equivalent of like defending a
war criminal. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah, And you know, good defense lawyers often make their
name on defending folks that the court, Yeah, the court
of public opinion has already decided we're guilty. Sometimes a
good reason, but.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
It's the good point. And of course there is that
old argument that everyone deserves, you know, a robust defense.
I just don't know if that's where he was coming
at it from.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I'm sure he leaned on that one. It talked a
lot about it.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It seems like the kind of thing he would have done. Yes,
very much.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So we know that he came down hard in various
aspects of this. There was a famous trial in eighteen
thirty six about a guy named Ruben Crandall, and Francis said,
this Ruben Crandall guy is not the abolitionist you think
he is. He is trying to create a widespread rebellion
(36:23):
of slaves. And the evidence is so tenuous and skimpy.
Police had raided this guy's office and they found anti
slavery pamphlets, basically ratic zines. They found zines, and was
(36:43):
possession of a zine with intent to distribute. And in
this courtroom, Francis the guy who wrote The Star Spangled Banner, says, Look,
people should be able to own people, you know, like
people sell the people to people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Right, started this company with one rusty slave ship and
a motto people selling people to people. Mister well done.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yes, yeah, And he built his case around the idea
that anti slavery activism would create rebellion amongst the enslaved
population of the US, and therefore it was a matter
not of morality but of public safety.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yikes. Yeah, talk about gilding the lily. Is that the
right term? Or putting lipstick on a pig. I don't know,
I get those confused. But yeah, it's definitely a spin move.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, and we've got a quotation to measure the size
of this guy's butt holary. In this case, let's remember
as you hear this, folks, that Francis Scott Key again,
the creator of the Star Spangled Banner, said this on
record verbatim.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yep, he sure did. The great moral and political evil
of which I speaks posed to be slavery. But is
it not plainly the whole colored race? But if I
did say this of slavery, as I am quite willing
to say it here and on all fit occasions. Do
I not also, in the same breath speak of emancipation
(38:18):
as a far greater evil. What are you talking about, guy?
Speaker 1 (38:25):
We can't free everybody game out of his butthole. What
he's doing very much, he's boofing. So Francis argued for
this segregation for the entirety of his life, and in
this landmark case, this Rubing Crandall case, he wanted to
convince people that not prosecuting a mediist abolitionist was a
(38:48):
death sentence for the Union. To him, all people might
be technically free, legally equal, but some are to quote
or well more equal than others. The real threat to
him was integration right leading to miss engination. Ultimately, in
this eighteen thirty six trial, our buddy Rubin is found
not guilty, but it doesn't do him much good because
(39:11):
he gets tuberculosis in jail and then he dies pretty
much right after he was released. So this is arguably
a big win for Francis.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, it would seem so, And Ben correct me if
I'm wrong. Did we not do a previous episode that
was a little more focused on the Star Spangled banner itself?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
We did an episode on multiple national anthems.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Okay, Well, if you want a little more info on
the you know how the Star Spangled banner came to
be in some of the controversies surrounding it being the
national anthem, do check that one out as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
We also, as we're wrapping up the story here, we've
got to add another wrinkle to this morally troubled character.
Francis was known amongst his upper class peers as a
humane slave voter. That's a pretty paradoxical statement. Yeah, but
but scoff, scoff. But in the eighteen thirties, he freed
(40:08):
multiple enslaved people under his control, and we know that
at least one of those people continued to work and
stay on the property was a free foreman on the farm.
And as the freed foreman on the farm, this guy
supervised several people that were still enslaved because Francis did
(40:31):
not free all of them.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yikes, or like Samuel L. Jackson's character and Chengo unchained.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, get out of my head, dude. Yeah, it's no
wonder that Jefferson was Francis's dream guy.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Shout out to Sally Emmys.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Night number one, A guy talking to Francis.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, Francis got keyth spoiler dies, he's not around to
hear this episode.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
That might have been the case at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
It was January eleventh, eighteen forty three. He was sixty
three years old, fourteen years after he dies. His collected
poetry is published in eighteen fifty seven, and at the
time of his passing, he still wish Wish owned eight slaves.
So you got to wonder what would he as such
(41:23):
a morally tortured, staunch segregationist, what would he think of
modern day America? How would he feel about going to, say,
a baseball game, and heard the national anthem and seeing
people of all creeds, ethnicities, and backgrounds singing along together.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
What would he have thought of a Fergie's interpretation?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Oh gosh, well, what do you have thought of Roseanne
Barr's interpretation?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Ooh good question. Well, but at the end of the day.
To take away for this episode, it's in a title
I believe, is that we think he was kind of
a jerk.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Yeah, yep, I hate to say it, but we're being fair.
We have so much more that we want to explore,
perhaps another day. Thank you so much for tuning in,
Fellow ridiculous historians. Big thanks to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. Big thanks actually to everybody who has powered wait,
(42:16):
we'll keep it in, but big thanks to the majority
of people who have powered through the Star Spangled banner
in a public performance, So most of you, but maybe not.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
All of you. I haven't been to a sporting event
a lot. Do they sing the whole damn thing? No?
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, because we've got the full lyrics here.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Which I was looking at it some of these verses exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Big big thanks as well to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous Crime. Big thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs and you
know uh an ominous we know what you did to
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
And huge thanks to you Ben for doing the excellent
research on this episode. We'll see you next time, folks.
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