Most Americans know the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Few know the tune wasn’t written for America at all.

The melody Francis Scott Key used was the popular English tune “To Anacreon in Heaven,” originally the constitutional song of the Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen’s music club in London.

The next time you bail on the high note at a ball game or a July 4 cookout, don’t blame your lungs.

The club met regularly for a formal concert, dinner, and social time during which members entertained each other with songs. Its 1780 membership included peers, commoners, aldermen, gentlemen, actors, and tradesmen.

Although it is often described as a “drinking song,” the song was not a barroom ballad — it was convivial, but in a special and stately way. The verses were sung by a solo singer, with the entire society joining in only on the refrain.

When Key wrote his lyrics on September 14, 1814, after watching the British attack Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, he wasn’t composing original music — he was setting new words to a tune Americans would have instantly recognized.

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He wasn’t the first American to do it. By 1798, many new songs had already been set to the melody, including “Adams and Liberty,” a patriotic song in praise of the nation’s second president. By 1820, 84 sets of lyrics had been written to it in the United States alone.

The tune’s origins also explain a common modern complaint: The anthem is famously difficult to sing. It was intended for solo performance by an experienced vocalist — never designed for mass singing.

The composer’s identity was itself a mystery for generations. John Stafford Smith was identified as the writer of the original tune only in the 1970s, when a librarian in the music division of the Library of Congress tracked him down.

So the next time you bail on the high note at a ball game or a July 4 cookout, don’t blame your lungs. Blame an 18th-century London music club that never expected anyone outside its dining room to try.

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A century ago in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926, Calvin Coolidge gave America the speech it needed on its 150th birthday. He did not flatter the country. He did not scold it. He reminded Americans that the Declaration was not a museum piece or a political slogan, but a spiritual document rooted in permanent truths. On our 250th birthday, his warning looks less like history than prophecy. Read this excerpt slowly. Then ask whether we still believe it. Editor’s note: This excerpt has been edited and condensed.

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the 4th day of July.

Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years, the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.

Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.

Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions.

Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws that creates the character of a nation.

RELATED: 1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship

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About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.

If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.

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When most think of the Statue of Liberty, they picture her halo-like crown — the seven rays symbolizing a beacon of hope to the rest of the world. Or they think of the torch held aloft in her right hand, a representation of enlightenment and liberty lighting the way to freedom and progress.

But as our nation nears its 250th birthday this Independence Day, many Americans still overlook one of her most powerful symbols: the broken chain and shackle partially hidden under the hem of her flowing robes.

This chain and shackle, says Glenn Beck, represent a crucial piece of the American identity.

In this powerful monologue, Glenn takes us beyond the usual symbols to reveal the profound story hidden at the Statue of Liberty’s feet — and what it truly means to be an American patriot.

“France didn’t give [the Statue of Liberty] to us because they liked us. They were fighting Marxism in their own country, and they were trying to show America has the best idea,” Glenn recounts.

The reason for the broken chain and shackle around her foot, he explains, is to show that America “broke the chain of slavery.”

“And how did we do it?” Glenn asks. “Here’s a tip: With what’s in her [left] hand.”

In Lady Liberty’s left hand sits a rectangular tablet inscribed with “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” — July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals. It represents the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and emphasizes that liberty rests on principles of law and order.

The idea of “independence” and that “all men are created equal” is what “breaks the chain of slavery,” Glenn exclaims.

“And what makes man man? The ability to invent, the ability to dream, the ability to do. That’s the torch!” he continues.

Put them all together, and you get a striking picture of what America is and who she is for: the “free man … under the law” who can turn “dreams” into reality and thus “light the entire world.”

Believing in this is what true patriotism is about.

“Patriotism is not about red hats. It’s not about waving flags or chanting slogans at rallies. It’s not about God bless the USA. It’s not about any of that stuff,” says Glenn, calling these surface-level expressions “sugar highs.”

“Real patriotism is deeper. … It’s the steady, bone-deep love of the country that raised you even when it didn’t get things right.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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On the night of July 4, 1776, as delegates of the Continental Congress dispersed into the Philadelphia darkness, a printer named John Dunlap got to work.

The assignment was urgent. Congress had just approved the Declaration of Independence and needed copies immediately. Through the night, Dunlap and his assistants set type and printed roughly 200 broadsides carrying the astonishing news that Britain’s American colonies had declared themselves free and independent states.

By early 1778, copies of the Declaration were being debated in Parliament itself.

These first printings were never intended to become museum pieces. They were meant to travel — by horseback, by ship, and by express rider — to army camps, city squares, and eventually, to foreign governments whose support the fledgling republic desperately needed. Some were pinned to walls and read aloud to soldiers. Others were folded, carried, and eventually discarded.

Most were lost, damaged, or simply thrown away.

In enemy hands

Just 26 of the original Dunlap broadsides are known to survive. One of them took an especially unlikely journey.

Barely five weeks after it rolled off Dunlap’s press, the document fell into British hands. Captured during the Revolutionary War and sent back across the Atlantic, it arrived in London accompanied by a dispatch from Vice Admiral Richard Howe and General William Howe, the brothers leading Britain’s military campaign in North America.

The Howes occupied an unusual position. They were not only commanders tasked with defeating the rebellion but also King George III’s peace commissioners, charged with seeking some form of reconciliation with the colonies. Ironically, they were among the last senior British officials who still believed the breach might be repaired. Lord Howe would later suggest that, had his peace commission arrived only days earlier, independence might have been avoided.

Instead, it was the Howes themselves who sent London one of the first printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, informing ministers that the colonists had declared themselves “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”

A decisive break

For many on both sides of the conflict, the Declaration marked a decisive break. The quarrel with the colonies had become something altogether different: the birth of a new nation.

In that sense, this was the copy that told Britain the American crisis had entered an entirely new phase.

Now, nearly 250 years later, that same sheet of paper is on display as the centerpiece of the America 250 celebrations at the American Museum and Gardens in Bath.

The broadside’s story has acquired another twist in recent years. Although it had long been held by Britain’s National Archives, it was only identified in 2009 as a surviving Dunlap Broadside, making it the most recently discovered of the 26 known copies.

RELATED: America’s founding is an inheritance purchased with blood; we owe it our remembrance

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Philadelphia freedom

More recently still, historians traced the document’s origins to Jonas Phillips, a Jewish merchant and patriot who lived just doors from John Dunlap’s Philadelphia print shop. Research suggests that Phillips mailed the broadside to his cousin and business partner in Amsterdam in hopes of spreading the news of American independence abroad.

To evade British searches, he enclosed a note written in Yiddish referring only to “a declaration of that whole country.” The precaution failed. The letter, the Declaration, and the accompanying papers were seized by the British and eventually filed away in government archives.

What survives, then, is not merely one of America’s founding texts but also a rare piece of wartime intelligence — a document that crossed an ocean, vanished into the British state papers, and remained hidden there for more than two centuries.

The annotations on the reverse are striking for their banality. Officials in the colonial secretary’s office simply logged the Declaration and its accompanying papers as part of the ordinary business of government. One of history’s most consequential political texts was processed like routine correspondence.

Talk of the town

Yet the document did not simply disappear into an archive. By early 1778, copies of the Declaration were being debated in Parliament itself. Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, a leading critic of Lord North’s government, read portions of the text aloud in the House of Lords and argued that Britain might ultimately have no choice but to recognize American independence.

In that sense, the Declaration became more than an American founding document. It also became part of Britain’s own argument over the war and the future of its empire.

The document also illustrates the tyranny of distance in the eighteenth century. News from North America often took six to 10 weeks to reach Britain, and any instructions sent in response required an equally long journey back across the Atlantic. By the time officials in Whitehall learned of dramatic events in the colonies, those events had already become history.

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