Everyone knows that Francis Scott Key wrote our beloved national anthem The Star Spangled Banner while observing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of a British ship while a guest of his Majesty’s.

Turns out there is a little-known, unhappy sequel to the story.

Key’s grandson, Frank Key Howard, became a newspaper editor in Baltimore, his paper being the Daily Exchange. In late 1861, Howard published an editorial criticizing Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus and the arrest and imprisonment without charge of the mayor of Baltimore, George William Brown, and sundry other government officials. As a result, on orders from Secretary of State Seward, Howard himself was arrested without warrant and spent fourteen months in jail…including a period imprisoned in Ft. McHenry.

The irony of his situation was not lost on him:

“As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.”

When he was released, he published a book on his experiences called Fourteen Months in American Bastilles. The publishers of the book were subsequently arrested (the US Government has never grasped the concept of irony).

At least nine other Baltimore editors were likewise arrested during the early stages of the war.

The actions of the Lincoln administration in Maryland are worthy of examination and debate, since on one hand they represent some very blatant violations of the ostensible rights of American citizens and the Constitution, but on the other it’s arguable that to do otherwise would have been suicidal, given that Maryland joining the Confederacy would have put Washington D.C. squarely inside the rebelling states. Make of it what you will; I just found this nugget of history too interesting not to share.