On April 6, 1815, British prison guards at Dartmoor Prison in Devon, England, fired on American prisoners of war, killing seven and wounding between 31 and 60 men. The prison held thousands of American sailors captured during the War of 1812, and tensions had been high due to overcrowding and harsh conditions. The massacre occurred after a dispute over a broken lock, with guards firing into an unarmed crowd. The event caused a diplomatic outcry and strained Anglo-American relations even after the war had formally ended.

The Dartmoor Massacre became a poignant symbol of the suffering endured by common soldiers and sailors during the War of 1812, finding its way into American folk ballads and prisoner-of-war narratives. The event was memorialized in contemporary newspaper accounts and later in historical poems that highlighted the plight of ordinary men caught in the machinery of war. It contributed to a growing American literary sensibility that emphasized the human cost of conflict, a theme that would resonate through the works of poets like Walt Whitman and novelists like Herman Melville.