Francis Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key, was a newspaper editor of the "Baltimore Exchange", a newspaper sympathetic to the southern cause. He was arrested on 13 September 1861 by U.S. Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks on the direct orders of General George B. McClellan, enforcing the policy of President Abraham Lincoln. The basis of his arrest was for writing a critical editorial in his newspaper on Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the fact that the Lincoln administration had declared martial law in Baltimore and imprisoned numerous persons without due process, including George William Brown, mayor of Baltimore, Congressman Henry May, the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council. Howard was then transferred to Fort Lafayette and from there to Fort Warren in Boston harbor.