Editor, The Times:
“Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light?” etc.
Every red-blooded American knows, or should know, the opening words to the Star Spangled Banner. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key’s composition – the first verse anyway.
The third verse contains these words:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave.
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”
So what does all this mean? Well, it turns out Frances Scott Key was a fervent pro-slavery being and a crony of Andrew Jackson (of Trail of Tears and, of course, the Battle of New Orleans). As district attorney, he prosecuted abolitionists with great zeal.
In contrast, British Admiral George Cockburn, the man who savaged the Chesapeake Bay area (in return for President Madison’s not very successful 1812 invasion of Canada) rescued some 6,000 slaves – whole families in fact, incorporating many into his own marine corp.
“The rags that their owners had clothed them had been replaced by bright red uniforms.” – Andrew Cockburn, writer and distant cousin of Sir George Cockburn.
With this army the British went on to sack and burn Washington (in return for the burning of York – Toronto) only to be stopped at Baltimore where, of course, the stars and stripes were still fluttering after the rockets’ red glare was over with.
“Despite angry American insistence that the peace treaty mandated the return of all property, Cockburn bluntly refused to hand them over and shipped everyone off to Bermuda. Most settled in Canada but the Colonial Marines accepted an offer of land in Trinidad.” Andrew Cockburn — “Washington is Burning”.
So one has to ask, who is the hero?
France’s Scott Keyes, an enthusiastic backer of slavery to the end of his life, or Sir George Cockburn, who freed scores of slaves, put many of them into uniform and turned them loose upon their former masters.
For this Sir George was vilified.
Understandable in the early 1800s. Not easy to understand in 2014.
Denis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
