The Star Spangled Banner Revisited

From The Southern Confederacy, an Atlanta newspaper, June 9, 1861

This is a Confederate man's take on the Star Spangled Banner.

Letter to the editor:

Star Spangled Banner.  I have seen and heard various lamentations over the prospect of the repudiation of this song; particularly the air, which is supposed to have been composed for it.  I beg to dispel the illusion.  Very early in life, I took a fancy to music; and among my father's books, published, I think, before the Revolution, and certainly before the "Star Spangled Banner" was written, was one of songs with accompanying music, painted in London.  From it, I learned to play on the flute the air to which the "Star Spangled Banner" was adapted, and send you one verse of the song.  Seeing that the Yankees steal everything else, it is not surprising that they have stolen music.  For myself, I have no hesitation in singing the air to the original song; which, now that the "Star Spangled Banner" is only emblematical of Black Republican murder and robbery, is a far more pious offering to the God of music than anything which reminds us of the desecration of the once honored, but now forever cursed National flag:

To Anacreon in heaven where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice, fiddle and flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

The air is a beautiful one, and can be sung without recalling, I trust, the memory of that standard which signalizes power without right or humanity, and numbers without laws, human or divine.

From the Library of Congress Collection