What So Proudly We Hailed
This book is no longer in print but there are a very limited number of signed copies available for purchase here.
“As Marc Leepson shows us, there is a lot to know about Francis Scott Key—much of it surprising, and all of it engrossing. A wonderful and long-overdue biography, and worth the wait.”
—Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Night Fall
This book is no longer in print but there are a very limited number of signed copies available for purchase here.
“As Marc Leepson shows us, there is a lot to know about Francis Scott Key—much of it surprising, and all of it engrossing. A wonderful and long-overdue biography, and worth the wait.”
—Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Night Fall
This book is no longer in print but there are a very limited number of signed copies available for purchase here.
“As Marc Leepson shows us, there is a lot to know about Francis Scott Key—much of it surprising, and all of it engrossing. A wonderful and long-overdue biography, and worth the wait.”
—Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Night Fall
What So Proudly We Hailed, published in 2014, the 200th anniversary of the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” is a highly acclaimed, full-length biography of Francis Scott Key—the first biography of Key published in more than seventy-five years.
This fascinating book explores the life and legacy of Francis Scott Key in the Early American Republic. A well-known and influential Washington, D.C., lawyer, Key argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and served as U.S. Attorney in the Nation’s Capital for eight years.
The book also provides a detailed look at how Key made his mark as an American icon by one single and unforgettable act: writing what would become our National Anthem during Battle of Baltimore on the night of September 13-14, 1814.
Among other things, What So Proudly We Hailed reveals:
· How the young Washington lawyer found himself in Baltimore Harbor on the fateful night during the War of 1812
· The mysterious circumstances surrounding how the poem he wrote, first titled “The Defense of Ft. M’Henry,” morphed into the National Anthem
· Key’s role in forming the American Colonization Society, and his decades-long fervent support for that controversial endeavor that sent free blacks to Africa
· Key’s adamant opposition to slave trafficking and his willingness to represent enslaved people and freed men and women for free in Washington’s courts
· Key’s role as a confidant of President Andrew Jackson and his work in Jackson’s unofficial “kitchen cabinet”
· Key’s controversial actions as U.S. Attorney during the first race riot in Washington, D.C., in 1835