The Star-Spangled Banner

In the War of 1812, after the burning of Washington, British forces arrested William Beanes, a physician of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and a friend of the lawyer Francis Scott Key. With the sanction of President Madison, Key went to Baltimore in early September 1814 and, with John Stuart Skinner, an American agent for prisoners of war, sailed down the Chesapeake Bay to the British fleet.