Flag Day and The Star Spangled Banner: June 14 is Flag Day

The well-known story of how Francis Scott Key crafted a poem that eventually became our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” deserves to be revisited on this Flag Day. As well, we who believe God, as did Francis Scott Key, should remember and pray for our nation.

On September 14, 1841, having been detained by the Royal Navy when he tried to negotiate the release of Dr. William Beanes who had been captured during the British raid on Washington, Francis Scott Key prayed, watched, and waited with anticipation through the night.

The morning light revealed that God had preserved America. The British were prevented from being able to bring down the flag. The sight of the standing flag was a moving moment, but faith had prepared Key to author our national anthem.

While the tradition of singing what is now our national anthem at games began in 1917, several years before "The Star Spangled Banner" was officially our national anthem (1931), it quickly became a tradition to sing only the first verse.

The text below is your chance to read Key's "The Star Spangled Banner," a poetic account of his eyewitness to history that tells of the Providential preservation of our country, and reminds us of how the phrase “In God We Trust” came to be used as our nation’s motto.

The truth about our history is not being taught to our nation’s children. Take time to share this story with someone else, then encourage them to tell another so we can help each other take hold of our roots instead of simply allowing the tide of revisionist history to wash away the truth.

By shortening this anthem to one verse we lose too much! Today's Americans would generally have little patience with listening to the entire song before settling into an event unless someone talked it up and started a movement.

Could you be the person to start that movement? Maybe, maybe not, but you can be part of the collective effort to teach truth to this nation's citizens, especially on Flag Day. Don't forget to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" with your family and friends--and video it, too!

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 victory 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!

June 14 is when America celebrates Flag Day. ⚐

It's the day we remember the Flag Resolution of 1777.

Check out this site for a history on Flag Day and celebrate it by sharing the information with family and friends. Read up and be the one in the know, the go to person with the facts, and amaze everyone with your knowledge. It's kind of fun to watch their faces. ☺

• More about the dawn's early light.

• Remembering Memorial Day.

• A Patriotic garden project.

• The Cost of the Fourth of July.

• A Look at America's Flag Day.

• American flag clip art.

• Wave your flag!

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