This is an IHeart podcast.

This is our American stories.

And as you know, we love to tell stories about everything here on this show, particularly history.

And all of our history stories are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College.

For the last century, Americans have honored our country by singing words that were written by a tone-deaf lawyer

to the tune of a British social club song.

Francis Frank Scott Key was not someone you would have picked to write our national anthem.

Here's Mark Leibson, author of a biography on Key, What So Proudly We Hailed,

to tell us more about the unlikely events that brought us our national anthem.

And here's the story of how Francis Scott Key, the big Washington, D.C. lawyer, that pious patriot, wrote the words that will become our national anthem,

what will become known as the Star-Spangled Banner.

This story starts during the War of 1812 with the Battle of Bladenburg,

Bladensburg, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.

This is one of the most embarrassing defeats

in U.S. military history.

The British, you know, changed the complexion of the war of 1812 after defeating Napoleon in 1814

and sent thousands of crack troops over here.

They were raiding up the Chesapeake Bay.

They came to the outskirts of Washington, and they overran just a pathetic

group of last minute thrown together militia men on August 26th. Overran them and came into

Washington and most people remember that they burned the White House, Treasury Department,

and other public buildings.

...