You can now pick up your Bolt text from Amazon. They'll also be bringing copies of it to class on Monday, to help those of you who don't have time/transportation to get over there this week.
here is what Zinn had to say about the Star Spangled Banner:
First, it was the war of 1812, barely thirty years after the Revolution. Hawks in Congress hoped a war would expand American territory, especially into Canada. But the war ended indecisively with a treaty in 1815. In 1814, the British invaded and burned Washington. Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore lawyer, went to the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to secure the release of a friend held prisoner. He himself was detained while the British shelled Fort McHenry, near Baltimore. After a night of bombardment Key saw the Americanflag still flying over Fort McHenry, was overjoyed, as we must all be when we see the American flag flying over anything, and when he got to a Baltimore hotel sat down and wrote a poem "The Star Spangled Banner", which was published in a Baltimore newspaper. It was set to music, the tune of an English drinking song "To Anacrean in Heaven", adopted first by the army and navy, and made official anthem by Congress in 1931. And ever since then the story has brought tears to eyes of every true American.
Howard
Posted by: kati at February 4, 2005 04:11 PM