Francis Key Howard (1826 - 1872) , the editor of a Baltimore newspaper, was arrested without a warrant just after midnight on September 13, 1861. The basis for his arrest was for writing a critical editorial in his newspaper of President Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus (a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court) and criticizing the fact that the Lincoln administration had declared martial law in Baltimore and imprisoned without charge , the mayor of Baltimore, the sitting U.S. Congressman , all the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council.
Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in Maryland had already been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice but Lincoln had ignored the federal court ruling.
Ironically,Howard was confined to Fort McHenry.
Why 'ironically'?.
Fort McHenry was the same fort that a certain Francis Scott Key witnessed withstand a brutal British bombardment during the War of 1812. The bravery of the fort's defenders inspired Key to write The Star Spangled Banner, which would become the national anthem of the United States of America.
Francis Scott Key was Francis Key Howard's grandfather.
Howard commented on his imprisonment: "When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British warship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the Star Spangled Banner. 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 -and over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed".
by the by : F Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby etc) was Key's second cousin. His full name was Francis Key Scott Fitzgerald.