Which anthem is national?

Three potential national anthems on one 1854 sheet music cover
Three potential national anthems on one 1854 sheet music cover

The arrival of 2014 brings the bicentennial of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The words were written by Francis Scott Key in September 1814. As the specific date draws nearer, more and more attention will be focused on the song.

It took a long time to officially designate it as the official National Anthem. That didn’t happen until 1931. The non-existence of a national song was noted as early as 1830 in a newspaper. A man who attended a play in Boston remarked that the theater band played “The Marseilles” to note the presence of Frenchmen. But, when someone called for the playing of “the American National Song,” silence followed.

The reason, said the man, is that “there is no such thing.” He nominated “The Star-Spangled Banner” as “the best among our songs of a patriotic character.”

Sheet music for Yankee DoodleHowever, other people offered other nominees. A band in Michigan, for example, played an 1843 concert during which, wrote one of the musicians, “we struck up the true National Anthem.” He meant “Yankee Doodle.”

In a counterpoint, a Boston newspaper told how a military band from that city had marched down Broadway in New York City in 1844. They played “The Star-Spangled Banner” with a regimental band from that town. Said the newspaper, “The national anthem being over, the military salutes were interchanged.”

However, in 1861, another Massachusetts paper told how “a glee club sang the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ and our national hymn.” To that paper, the former did not equal the latter.

Lyrics to Hail, ColumbiaThat same year, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington. Just before he took the oath of office, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer, “the Marine Band…struck up ‘Hail Columbia’….Cheer after cheer echoed each note of the national anthem.”

Thus, 19th-century nominees for the national anthem included Key’s song, “Yankee Doodle,” an unnamed “hymn” and “Hail Columbia.”

The Civil War would bring an ironic nominee, as noted in a Georgia journal just before the attack on Fort Sumter. “Do you not know,” the newspaper asked its readers, “that Dixie’s Land has become the ‘National Anthem of Secession?’…It is called for in Southern theatres…while ‘Hail Columbia’ and the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ are hissed down.”

By James Breig

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