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most of the Members of the Legislature from Baltimore, Mr. Brown, the Mayor of the City, and one of our Representatives in Congress, Mr. May. They were all gentlemen of high social position, and of unimpeachable character, and each of them had been arrested, as has been said, solely on account of his political opinions, no definite charge having been then, or afterwards, preferred against them. Two small rooms were assigned us during our stay. In the smaller one of these I was placed, with three companions. The furniture consisted of three or four chairs and an old ricketty bedstead, upon which was the filthiest apology for a bed I ever saw. There was also a tolerably clean looking mattress lying in one corner. Upon this mattress, and upon the chairs and bedstead, we vainly tried to get a few hours sleep. The rooms were in the second story of the building, and opened upon a narrow balcony, which we were allowed to use, sentinels, however, being stationed on it. 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 grand-father, Mr. F. S. Key, then a prisoner on a British ship, 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, over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.
At an early hour in the morning, and through the day, a number of our friends endeavored to procure access to us, but nearly all failed to do so. Three or four gentlemen and two or three ladies managed to obtain admission to the Fort, and Col. Morris, the commanding officer, permitted them to interchange a few words with us, in his presence, they being down on the parade-ground and we up in the balcony. Mr. Brown was not even allowed to speak to his wife, who had been suffered to enter the Fort, and could only take leave of her by bowing to her across the parade ground.
