Editing Francis Scott Key (section)

==Key and slavery==
Key purchased his first slave in 1800 or 1801 and owned six slaves in 1820.<ref>Leepson p. 25</ref> He freed seven in the 1830s, and owned eight when he died.<ref name="UNCP">{{cite book |title=Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital |date=2007 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press Books |page=55}}</ref> One of his freed slaves continued to work for him for wages as his farm's foreman, supervising several slaves.<ref name="Leepson">Leepson pp. 130–131 post-Turner's rebellion emancipations of Romeo, William Ridout, Elizabeth Hicks, Clem Johnson.</ref> Key also represented several slaves seeking their freedom, as well as several slave-owners seeking return of their runaway slaves.<ref name="HuffPost">{{cite web|last=Morley|first=Jefferson|title='Land of the Free?' Francis Scott Key, Composer of National Anthem, Was Defender of Slavery|url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/francis-scott-key_b_1645878|date=September 2, 2012|work=[[HuffPost]]|access-date=September 23, 2019|archive-date=September 23, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190923092950/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/francis-scott-key_b_1645878|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Leepson pp. 125</ref> Key was one of the executors of [[John Randolph of Roanoke]]'s will, which freed his 400 slaves, and Key fought to enforce the will for the next decade and to provide the freedmen and women with land to support themselves.<ref>May, Gregory, A Madman's Will: John Randolph, 400 Slaves, and the Mirage of Freedom (New York: Liveright, 2023), 113–17; Leepson, p. 144</ref>

Key is known to have publicly criticized slavery's cruelties, and a newspaper editorial stated that "he often volunteered to defend the downtrodden sons and daughters of Africa." The editor said that Key "convinced me that slavery was wrong—radically wrong".<ref>Leepson p. 26 citing Cincinnati Daily Gazette July 11, 1870</ref>

A quote increasingly credited to Key stating that free black people are "a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community" is erroneous.<ref>{{Cite web |title=An Erroneous Francis Scott Key Quote |date=June 26, 2020 |url=http://starspangledmusic.org/an-erroneous-francis-scott-key-quote/ |publisher=Star Spangled Music Foundation |language=en |access-date=June 27, 2020 |archive-date=June 29, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200629084547/http://starspangledmusic.org/an-erroneous-francis-scott-key-quote/ |url-status=live }}
In response to a question asking why some Colonizationists thought that slaves should not be emancipated, Key says (as reprinted in an 1839 pamphlet by Augustus Palmer):
"It is, I believe, universally so thought by them. I never heard a contrary opinion, except that some conceived, some time ago, that the territory of our country, to the West, might be set apart for them. But few, comparatively adopted this idea; and I never hear it advocated now. This opinion is founded on the conviction that their labor, however it might be needed, could not be secured, but by a severer system of constraint than that of slavery—that they would constitute a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that could afflict a community. I do not suppose, however, that they would object to their reception in the free States, if they chose to make preparations for their comfortable settlement among them."</ref> The quote is taken from an 1838 letter that Key wrote to Reverend Benjamin Tappan of Maine who had sent Key a questionnaire about the attitudes of Southern religious institutions about slavery. Rather than representing a statement by Key identifying his personal thoughts, the words quoted are offered by Key to describe the attitudes of others who assert that former slaves could not remain in the U.S. as paid laborers. This was the official policy of the [[American Colonization Society]]. Key was an ACS leader and fundraiser for the organization, but he himself did not send the men and women he freed to Africa upon their emancipation. The original confusion around this quote arises from ambiguities in the 1937 biography of Key by Edward S. Delaplaine.<ref>{{cite book |last=Delaplaine |first=Edward S. |title=Francis Scott Key: Life and Times |publisher=Heritage Books |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-5854-9685-3 |orig-year=1937 by The Biography Press |page=449 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H6D6MAAACAAJ }}</ref>

Key was a founding member and active leader of the [[American Colonization Society]] (ACS), whose primary goal was to send free black people to Africa.<ref name="HuffPost" /> Though many free black people were born in the United States by this time, historians argue that upper-class American society, of which Key was a part, could never "envision a multiracial society".<ref name="Smithsonian Mag">{{Cite web |title=Francis Scott Key, the Reluctant Patriot |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/francis-scott-key-the-reluctant-patriot-180937178/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en |access-date=June 15, 2020 |archive-date=June 14, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200614142246/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/francis-scott-key-the-reluctant-patriot-180937178/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The ACS was not supported by most abolitionists or free black people of the time, but the organization's work would eventually lead to the creation of [[Liberia]] in 1847.<ref name="Britannica" /><ref name="Smithsonian Mag" />

===Anti-abolitionism===
In the early 1830s American thinking on slavery changed quite abruptly. Considerable opposition to the American Colonization Society's project emerged. Led by newspaper editor and publisher [[William Lloyd Garrison]], a growing portion of the population noted that only a very small number of free black people were actually moved, and they faced brutal conditions in West Africa, with very high mortality. Free Black people made it clear that few of them wanted to move, and if they did, it would be to Canada, Mexico, or Central America, not Africa. The leaders of the American Colonization Society, including Key, were predominantly slave owners. The Society was intended to preserve slavery, rather than eliminate it. In the words of philanthropist [[Gerrit Smith]], it was "quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society".<ref name="Smith">Smith, Hal H. "Historic Washington Homes". ''Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington.'' 1908.{{page needed|date=September 2021}}</ref> "This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into a serviceable organ and member of the [[Slave Power]]."

The alternative to the colonization of Africa, project of the American Colonization Society, was the total and immediate [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition of slavery in the United States]]. This Key was firmly against, with or without [[compensated emancipation|slave owner compensation]], and he used his position as District Attorney to attack abolitionists.<ref name="HuffPost" /> In 1833, he secured a grand jury indictment against [[Benjamin Lundy]], editor of the anti-slavery publication ''[[Genius of Universal Emancipation]]'', and his printer William Greer, for [[Defamation|libel]] after Lundy published an article that declared, "There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district [of Columbia]". Lundy's article, Key said in the indictment, "was intended to injure, oppress, aggrieve, and vilify the good name, fame, credit & reputation of the Magistrates and constables" of Washington. Lundy left town rather than face trial; Greer was acquitted.<ref>{{cite book
|last=Morley
|first=Jefferson
|title=Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835
|publisher=[[Nan Talese/Doubleday]]
|location=New York
|date=2012
|page=81}}</ref>

====Prosecution of Reuben Crandall====
{{main|Trial of Reuben Crandall}}
In a larger unsuccessful prosecution, in August 1836 Key obtained an [[Trial of Reuben Crandall|indictment against Reuben Crandall]], brother of controversial Connecticut teacher [[Prudence Crandall]], who had recently moved to Washington, D.C. It accused Crandall of "[[seditious libel]]" after two marshals (who operated as [[slave catcher]]s in their off hours) found Crandall had a trunk full of [[anti-slavery]] publications in his Georgetown residence and office, five days after the [[Snow Riot|Snow riot]], caused by rumors that a mentally ill slave had attempted to kill an elderly white woman. In an April 1837 trial that attracted nationwide attention and that congressmen attended, Key charged that Crandall's publications instigated [[Slave rebellion|slaves to rebel]]. Crandall's attorneys acknowledged he opposed slavery, but denied any intent or actions to encourage rebellion. Evidence was introduced that the anti-slavery publications were packing materials used by his landlady in shipping his possessions to him. He had not "published" anything; he had given one copy to one man who had asked for it.<ref>{{cite book
|title=The trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. : charged with publishing seditious libels, by circulating the publications of the American Anti-Slavery Society, before the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, held at Washington, in April, 1836, occupying the court the period of ten days|year=1836|page=43|location=New York|publisher=H. R. Piercy
|url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbcmisc.lst0092/?st=gallery|access-date=2022-04-08|archive-date=2020-09-02
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200902102603/https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbcmisc.lst0092/?st=gallery|url-status=live}}</ref>

Key, in his final address to the jury said:

{{blockquote|Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country, to permit it to be taken from you, and occupied by the abolitionist, according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the negro? Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?<ref>{{cite book |last1=Finkelman |first1=Paul |title=Slave Rebels, Abolitionists, and Southern Courts: The Pamphlet Literature |date=2007 |publisher=The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd |page=364}}</ref>}}

The jury acquitted Crandall of all charges.<ref>Morley, Jefferson, ''Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835'' (Nan Talese/Doubleday, New York, 2012), 211–220</ref><ref>Leepson, pp. 169–172, 181–185</ref> This public and humiliating defeat, as well as family tragedies in 1835, diminished Key's political ambition. He resigned as District Attorney in 1840. He remained a staunch proponent of African colonization and a strong critic of the abolition movement until his death.<ref name="Globalist">{{cite web| last1=Morley| first1=Jefferson| title=What role did the famous author of "The Star-Spangled Banner" play in the debate over American slavery?| url=http://www.theglobalist.com/francis-scott-key-and-the-slavery-question/| website=The Globalist| date=July 5, 2013| access-date=October 7, 2014| archive-date=October 10, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141010103622/http://www.theglobalist.com/francis-scott-key-and-the-slavery-question/| url-status=live}}</ref>

Crandall died shortly after his acquittal of pneumonia contracted in the Washington jail.