Editing Francis Scott Key (section)

===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.