Uncle Rick Reads Freedoms Flag: The Story of the Star Spangled Banner Audio Download

Everybody knows the first verse of our National Anthem.  But few of us know the story behind why the song was written.  It was on the morning of September 14, 18__ that a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key stood on the deck of a boat facing Fort McHenry in Baltimore and began to scribble lines of a rhyme on the back of an envelope.  Key had just watched England’s royal navy bombard the fort all night.  All through those long and dreadful hours he had desperately searched the sky above the fort for a glimpse of the huge, star-spangled flag that hung there.  When “dawn’s early light” began to glow through the clearing rain clouds and powder smoke, daylight revealed in all its glory what the light from “bombs bursting in air” had shown glimpses of during the battle.  The flag was still there and America was safe!