This relatively recent date may come as a surprise to some who believe the national anthem dates back much further, but this lack of awareness may be symptomatic of a broader trend: “Many Americans don’t realize that much of what we think of as the foundations of our country actually comes from the 1920s and the Great Depression,” says Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of London and author of the widely acclaimed book, “The Anthem of the Nation.” Careless people“When F. Scott Fitzgerald (a distant relative of Francis Scott Key, after whom Fitzgerald is named) began conceiving The Great Gatsby in 1922, the year in which the novel is set, America was still debating whether it should have a national anthem,” Churchwell notes. The Star-Spangled Banner was the leading candidate, but was fiercely opposed, especially by temperance activists. (John Philip Sousa proclaimed, perhaps literally, that “the spirit of the music is as inspiring as the words of Key that stir the soul”; it is often mocked that you need to be drunk to sing the song.)
The American Dream
On June 11, 1922, Augusta Emma Stetson, a Christian Scientist who built the imposing First Christian Science Church on New York City’s Central Park West, took out a remarkable (and huge) advertisement in the New York Tribune with the headline “The Star-Spangled Banner Can Never Be a National Anthem.” The ad spoke of a “strenuous, unsingable rhythm” that could never express “the spiritual ideals on which the Nation is founded” (Churchwell noted that “not only was the tune not composed by an American, but, even worse, it was a ‘vulgar, sensual drinking song.'” The ad infuriatingly warned that “Congress has never, and never will, lawfully approve a national anthem born of the lowest quality of human emotion.” It also ominously warned that “God forbid.”
Congress had other ideas. “The Star-Spangled Banner became America’s national anthem in 1931, two years after the market crash, at a time when Americans needed a renewal of faith,” Churchwell says. She points out that this was also the year the phrase “American Dream” became a national catchphrase, thanks to James Truslow Adams’ book The American Epic. She thinks the connection is striking. “I think Americans in general are encouraged to think that everything about our country reaches back into the mists of time, that it transcends history. That’s a key aspect of the American Dream, exactly as Fitzgerald pointed out in Gatsby: the idea that we’re always drawn back into our history without ever understanding it.”
