On this Fourth of July, with the uncertainty of COVID-19 and unrest touching nearly every part of the nation, I'd like to reflect on another time of uncertainty in the United States' history, the Civil War. In 1861, as states are voting to leave the Union, as Congress votes to not interfere with slavery in any state, as Lincoln as to sneak in to Washington, DC to take office as the 16th president, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the same poet whose poem "Old Ironsides" lead to the preservation of USS Constitution (now the oldest commissioned warship still afloat in the world), wrote an unofficial fifth stanza to another famous poem, "The Star Spangled Banner." I think that Holmes was probably feeling many of the same emotions that we are experiencing right now. Anger, fear, sadness, disappointment. But, his words also reflect a sense of hope. Hope that the war would end, hope that the slaves would be freed, and hope that the Union would be healed.

When the "Star Spangled Banner" became the official national anthem of the United States of America in 1931, only the four stanzas written by Francis Scott Key were recognized. Holmes' fifth, unofficial stanza is largely unknown, but something worth reflecting on today.