[Heyitsrick]

A professor of history at Stevenson University has done quite a bit of research into Key's poem, trying to ascertain what Key meant by the controversial third stanza's slave and hireling wording.

What he found was other mentions of these terms back in run up to the War of 1812 - including in a poem written a full year before Key's:

Originally Posted by Professor Glenn Johnston

If you search Newspapers.com for "hireling and slave" your initial results will uncover current articles discussing our problems with Key's words in the National Anthem. However, if you narrow the search to Key's time, 1780-1816, you will see that slave and hireling were each used in a pejorative fashion to describe free people carrying out the wishes of a more powerful person. This is similar to China's Communist newspapers calling our South Vietnamese allies "running dogs" or "puppets" during the Vietnam War.

As proof that all Key did in his third verse was employ a rhetorical device, I submit the following evidence. In 1813, in the midst of the War of 1812, and a full year before Key penned the "Defence of Fort M'Henry," another poet used the words hirelings and slaves in a poem to describe the King's soldiers during the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In the poem "The Death of Warren" from the Trenton True American, published on 15 May 1813 in the Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the poet describes:

",,,,,When tyrant George assailed our shore,

and thousands of his slaves sent o'er,

With power to kill, inflict each ill.

Our towns to burn that we might mourn.

And make us to his sway return.

A sway that was slavish and foreign."

The poet continues in a later verse:

"Now How(e), who had the chief command

of George's troops within our land,

Addresses thus his hireling band:

'To stand us they are not able.

Behold (he cries) the motly host,

And quickly drive them from their post;

And as you live no quarter give,

Mind no prayer, not one spare;

For vengeance we will have that's rare.

And destroy every Yankee Rebel.'

...

Based on the widespread use of hireling and slave as a an epithet in the US press during the lead-up to and waging of the War of 1812, I believe it is entirely credible that Key used hireling and slave in that fashion. His poem was not meant to arouse anything but patriotic fervor through recognition of Baltimore's defense. The narrative of the US David defeating the British military Goliath was central to his theme, not communicating his beliefs about chattel slavery as practiced in the Chesapeake region. With Bible societies on the rise in the US as well as a rising tide of abolitionism, such a display of racism would have caused issues both in the North as well as Baltimore. The third largest city in the US at the time with the largest population of free Blacks in the US, free Blacks--and enslaved Blacks-- who had just helped save the city, Baltimore was in no mood for racist rhetoric the day after its major victory.

...

At the outset of this piece I suggested that the solutions found by the humanities to many problems are those that just seem real and authentic. The solutions that spin a narrative that best seem to fit the facts and context as known at that time are what we seek in the humanities. Change the context or the known facts and you may decide on a different explanation and solution for the problem. In this rather tedious piece I have presented the evidence as I know it and tried to place it within the context of which I am aware. Based on that, I believe Key simply used the phrase "hireling and slave" as a rhetorical device in his poem Defence of Fort M'Henry in order to describe the British Army and Navy repelled from Baltimore's door in September 1814. In the true spirit of the humanities, however, if you provide me evidence that changes what I know, I just might change my mind.