In this conversational dialogue, Speaker A and Speaker B examine the claim that the U.S. national anthem, specifically its rarely‑sung third stanza, is racist because it mentions “hirelings and slaves.” They trace the phrase to Francis Scott Key’s description of British forces at the Battle of Fort McHenry, showing that contemporaneous usage of “hirelings and slaves” was a generic derogatory term for foreign troops rather than a reference to American slavery. Speaker A details a research method: checking Key’s own writings for clarification, then consulting period dictionaries and newspapers to confirm the phrase’s broader meaning. The discussion also includes an anecdote from World War II, where Allied forces used knowledge of the third stanza as a litmus test to spot German infiltrators, illustrating that the stanza was obscure to ordinary Americans. Overall, the speakers argue that the accusation of inherent racism in the anthem is unfounded, emphasizing historical context and the lack of evidence that Key intended a pro‑slavery message.
Chapters
Hey Dennis, thanks for asking me to do it.
So how many views does it have in these 3 days?
Oh, I haven't checked today, but I mean, it's in the hundreds of thousands, I know that.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll be in the millions over the next couple of weeks. And it should be, it's a very important subject. First, explain to people the charge that the national anthem 700,000 right now, okay, that's what Sean told me, it's 700,000 now, so it'll reach a million by the end of the week. So what is the charge of its racism?
Well, the charge centers on the third stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner, which by the way, nobody knows. I mean, it's not like you're out there at the ballgame singing all four stanzas, but there's a line in there in which Francis Scott Key mentions the hirelings and slaves, which is how he referred to the British forces who were fighting in that battle of Fort McHenry that he witnessed. So, you know, the use of the word slaves alerted people to the idea that maybe he was talking about a unit of Royal Marines that was composed of freed slaves that the British had recruited into this unit who then went on missions, you know, looting and pillaging and burning up and down the American coast.
Right. So first of all, my dear listeners, you have to understand the charges made on something nobody knows, the third stanza. Nobody knows the second, but there are three parts to the national anthem. Of course, only the first is sung, and they could not find anything even there, even with their microscopic findings of racism. They couldn't find anything there. So it was in the third stanza. Then it's because of the words hirelings and slaves. And as you point out, that was used elsewhere. It is a derogatory term for your enemy. Is that correct?
Yeah. What I did in looking into this was, well, one of the things first I looked to see, does Francis Scott Key in any of his writings come out and say Yes, that's what I was referring to. And there's no record of that. So the next thing I did was look into that construction, hirelings and slaves. Like, what does that mean exactly? And what I found was it was used a lot at that time period referring to things that had nothing to do with the United States, nothing to do with our institution of slavery. It was just a kind of general putdown that people used when referring to foreign armies or anybody in the pay of a foreign government.
Right. So that was the phrase that was used. You have a hilarious story there about catching German spies. Tell the story.
Oh, catching German spies. What was the story?
Yeah, they would ask the guy— that's okay— they'd ask the guy if he knew the third stanza.
Right, right. But right, yes, during the Battle of the Bulge. I'm sorry, I was still in the war.
That's, that's quite right.
Yes, right. When Russia Why, when the Germans were infiltrating in World War II during the Battle of the Bulge and they sent infiltrators behind our lines dressed as Americans, and sometimes people would be caught suspected of being these spies, and they were asked if they knew like the third stanza of the Star-Spangled Banner. And if anyone knew that, they figured that was a spy because no normal American knows that.
That is just one of the great stories. If you knew the third stanza of the national anthem, you had to be a spy because Americans don't know it.
