Discussion for article #227635
Interesting timing in that I just saw the original flag three days ago while vacationing here in D.C. Not sure I buy some of e speculative leaps in the article, but an interesting read.
You lose the the story in extraneous details.
I think itâs padding. How else do you write long-form article about almost nothing?
More importantly, why did he write a song with a 4 octave (at least) range that is almost impossible to sing?
National Anthem should be American the Beautiful.
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I just have to point out that cannon shells in 1813 were not âfilled with dynamite.â They were filled with black powder (âgun powderâ) which is less powerful than dynamite which wouldnât be invented for another half century.
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Where did you read the âfilled with dynamiteâ quote you are referencing? I didnât find that in the story.
Be all that as it may, the really informative part of The Star-Spangled Banner is the second verse, the one that celebrates the empire thatâs never really not been at war with someone somewhere since the Pequot Massacre of 1634. âAnd when conquer we must/When our cause it is just/In this be our motto/In God Is Our Trustâ Given that none of our conquests have ever been just, itâs a perfect demonstration of that thing Americans do better than anyone else: self-delusional hypocrisy.
America the Beautiful is certainly a far better call to what we claim we would like to be. The Star-Spangled Banner is a better description of what we are.
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The reference to dynamite (non-existent at the time) is in the the eighth paragraph (just above the photo of the flag).
âThe bomb ships could hurl an iron mortar shell packed with dynamite some two miles . . . .â
Well, there it isâmissed it the first time. Poor editing for them to miss an obvious anachronism. Good catch.
Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in 1867. In his will, he funded prizes for science, literature, and peace.
Proud moment - my family was at Fort McHenry one afternoon as they were closing, and my eight-year old, a first year Cub Scout, got to help fold the 1814 flag as it was being lowered.
Did anyone else hear Frank DeFordâs piece about the co-evolution of the Star Spangled Banner and baseball? It explained a lot about why America the Beautiful isnât our national anthem.
Yes, thatâs true. When I first learned that as a student, it seemed a bit ironic. Dynamite is a true double-edged sword.
"âŚour forthcoming book on General Ross â surprisingly, perhaps, the first such book in 200 years about the man who captured Washington! "
Actually, neglect by posterity, even by the participants, characterizes the record for the whole war.
Partly, thatâs because the war ended with a territorial status quo. Partly thatâs because neither side covered itself in glory in the war. But largely thatâs because the combatants quickly became fairly close allies after the war, and no one was very interested in being reminded that they had recently been at war.
The Battle of New Orleans is the real winner in the undeserved neglect contest for the War of 1812. None of the participants wrote much at all about it afterwards. About the only primary sources among participants are then 2LT Villereâs scattered anecdotes delivered in his old age, and the contemporaneous letters of a private soldier in the British 75th.
The Americans won, but in a sickening one-sided slaughter that didnât leave the victors in any mood to gloat. The victory actually did save New Orleans from being handed back to Spain (or kept by Great Britain), because GB did not recognize the legitimacy of the Louisiana Purchase â but no one wanted to remember that fact of illegitimacy of the Purchase after the US and GB became friends. Nobody wanted to remember that the Plenipotentiary sent by His Majestyâs Govt to ratify the treaty was also credentialed to the Hartford Convention, presumably in order to deal with them if New England seceded in response the administration refusing to ratify if that meant leaving British troops in New Orleans.
And no one ever figured out how to use it artillery projectiles. Nitroglycerine stabilized in an inert medium is still nitroglycerine, and it just doesnât like being subjected to sudden massive accelerations.
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The U.S. considered Great Britain its main foreign enemy until roughly about the time we managed to build a first rate navy of our own and we considered them a sufficiently likely enemy to keep an updated war plan (Plan Red) in a pigeon hole at the War Department through the 1920s. We came very close to war in 1862 and Seward was deliberately ratcheting up tensions over the Trent Affair because he thought a war with Britain would reunite the nation (Lincoln knew better and put a stop to it).
The Washington Naval Treaty of 1920 was as much about keeping the U.S. and Britain from getting into the kind of naval building race that heightened tensions between Britain and Germany (traditional allies until Wilhelm retired Bismarck) in the late nineteenth century as it was abut keeping Japan from catching up with Britain and the U.S.
How about the fact that is was originally written in 6/4 time, and now, is published in 3/4 time?
I didnât follow everything you wrote, not being very well informed about the War of 1812. But I did find it interesting that the Battle of New Orleans may have kept New Orleans as part of the US. I had always thought the battle had been fought for nothing because the treaty ending the war had already been signed, without the knowledge of either the American or British forces engaged in the battle. But the way Louisiana is now, under the control of the Tea Party crowd with Bobby Jindal as governor, maybe the US would be better off if we gave it back to Spain.
set to the music of a popular song of the day, âTo Anacreon in Heaven,â
In TURN, AMCâs drama about the Culper (AKA Culpepper) spy ring of the Revolutionary war, one of the main characters has to sing this song at a British officerâs dinner party.
You can find it in TURN, Episode 8 âChallengeâ which aired on May 25, 2014.