This volume contains the complete text of several poems, orations, essays, and manuscripts written by Francis Scott Key, a lengthy introductory letter by Roger B. Taney to an 1857 book containing many of the poems that were written by Key, and a complete manuscript on the subject of Key by Victor Weybright. Key and Taney, both native Marylanders, are famous names in American history. Frances Scott Key is most famous for being imprisoned temporarily on a small ship in Baltimore harbor during the time that the British fleet bombarded Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, with the aim of invading the city of Baltimore, Maryland. While on this ship, he was moved to write a poem, which he put to the tune of an old English drinking song, and which, since 1931, has been the national anthem of the United States. The anthem is, of course, the Star-Spangled Banner.
The other poems, orations, essays, hymns, religious polemics, letters, anti-slavery activities, and other writings of Francis Scoot Key are not as famous as his primary work. Yet they give an unparalleled view into the thinking of an educated man who lived during some of the most turbulent times in the history of the world, with major wars in North America and Europe. A large collection of them is given here in this volume.
The volume includes a hard-to-find, major work by historian Victor Weybright on the life and times of the fascinating Mr. Key.
About the Introduction Author/Editor (Ronald J. Leach - you already know about Francis Scott Key and have never heard of Victor Weybright):
Ronald J. Leach recently retired as Professor and Chair Emeritus from the Department of Systems and Computer Science at Howard University, where he had taught since 1969. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Maryland at College Park and the M. S. degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include distributed systems, performance modeling and capacity planning; and most areas of software engineering, especially software reuse, fault-tolerance, and software performance measurement and their empirical foundations. Some of his current work includes the application of computing to the social sciences, especially in the area of name matching within historical documents, using both his computer search skills and genealogical knowledge. He is an experienced cruise ship lecturer, with special emphasis on identity theft and computer forensics. He also lectures to other groups.
Ron Leach is the author of seven print books: "Using C in Software Design," Academic Press Professional,"Advanced Topics in UNIX," John Wiley; "Object-Oriented Design and Programming in C++," Academic Press Professional, Software Reuse: Methods, Models, and Costs," McGraw-Hill, "Introduction to Software Engineering," CRC Press, "Genealogy for the Information Age," Disruptive Publishing, and "Relative Genealogy," Disruptive Publishing. He has published two books on the subject of identity theft: "Twelve and a Half Steps to Avoid Identity Theft," as an ebook, and "Identity Theft in the Cyber Age," which is available as both an ebook and in print. Revised editions of many of these are available as ebooks.
Dr. Leach has offered technical training and seminars on software reuse, reengineering, and testing on three continents. He has lectured on a variety of other topics between continents! He is also the author or co-author of more than one hundred technical papers. In his spare time, he is the co-Editor of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal and is webmaster for its newly designed website.
