Battle of Baltimore Navy inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which later became the lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States of America. Future President James Buchanan served as Private in the defense of Baltimore. Until April 1814, Great Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, which limited British war aims in America. During this time the British primarily used a defensive strategy and repelled American invasions of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. However, the Americans gained naval control over Lake Erie in 1813, and seized parts of western Ontario.
Habeas corpus in the United States Baltimore newspaper editor Frank Key Howard, they had the editor also arrested by federal troops without charge or trial. The troops imprisoned Howard, who was Francis Scott Key's grandson, in Fort McHenry, which, as he noted, was the same fort where the Star Spangled Banner had been waving "o'er the land of the free" in his grandfather's song. (In 1863, Howard wrote about his experience as a "political prisoner" at Fort McHenry in the book "Fourteen Months in the American Bastille"; two of the publishers selling the book were then arrested.) When Congress convened in July 1861 it failed to