Our Nation’s Song

What does March 3, 1931 have to do with baseball, Fort McHenry, and President Herbert Hoover? It is the date that the congressional resolution was signed by the then president to make The Star Spangled Banner our national anthem. 

Oh, it was written as the poem, Defense of Fort McHenry, by Francis Scott Key in 1814 and put to music the same year. It was a popular song for Fourth of July events as early as 1889. It was officially played at baseball games in 1918. But it wasn't until 1931 that President Herbert Hoover made this our official national song.

It took us a long time of mulling it over to make this the authorized song to represent our country. We fought a lot of wars, even world wars, as we were deciding. And wouldn't you know it is one of the hardest songs to sing with a range of an octave and a half? You'd think the tune could have been changed to make it easier for the citizens. But then again the freedom we sing about has never come easily.

Famous Americans have been known to forget the words during performance and even make fun of the singing of the song. But still we stand, remove our hats, and some of us even put a hand over our hearts. It’s our song. All of us who call ourselves citizens of The United States of America have this as our defining melody.

O say does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Yes, it does.

Francis Scott Key’s fourth and final verse of his poem is hardly known or sung but it strikes a chord in the hearts of all Americans who truly know why we are who we are:

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry 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!

We are who we are because of the established core values that make the roots of our United States. Whether we still hold to those core values or not, our nation was built by Americans who trusted in God. No matter how far we stray away from our roots, they still remain part of our unchangeable history.

Praise the Power that made and preserves our nation.

In God we still trust.

So we celebrate our trust in God as we sing our national anthem at ballgames, and special patriotic events, and on every Fourth of July..

We've been trusting in God from the beginning of the formation of our nation.

We've been known as singing about our national trust in God since 1814.

Sing it proudly Americans.

And sing it humbly for our future.