March 7, 2024 • 51 mins
In 1835, Washington D.C. was a city on edge: tensions over race and slavery were nearing a boiling point. District Attorney Francis Scott Key (author of the national anthem!) was tasked with maintaining order in the city. But when Key charged a man named Reuben Crandall with distributing anti-slavery pamphlets, he unwittingly set off an explosive chain of events...
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to History on Trial, a production of
iHeart Podcasts. Listener discretion advised. In August eighteen thirty one,
rebellion broke out in Southampton County, Virginia. Like the American
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Revolution only fifty years before, the revolt in Southampton was
motivated by a desire for freedom, but the stakes here
were much graver than taxation without representation. The rebels in
eighteen thirty one were enslaved and free black people, led
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by a charismatic enslaved man named Nat Turner, and they
were fighting for their freedom. Over the course of two
nights in late August, Nat Turner and his followers rode
from plantation to plantation, freeing enslaved people and killing their
masters before they were stopped by white authorities on the
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morning of August twenty third. By that time, more than
fifty white Virginians were dead. Nat Turner's rebellion sent shockwaves
through the United States. Slave uprisings were not uncommon. The
historian Herbert Aptecker identified at least two hundred and fifty
revolts and conspiracies throughout the history of American slavery, but
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the scale and violence of Turner's rebellion was unprecedented. The
violent retribution against Southampton's black community in the wake of
the rebellion was even deadlier than Turner's rebellion itself. Mobs
and militiamen killed dozens of free and enslaved black people,
many of whom had no affiliation with Turner. Still, all
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that slave owners could think about was that they might
be next. One such worried slave owner was Francis Scott Key. Yes,
that Francis Scott Key, author of Our National Anthem, which
features lyrics extolling the Land of the Free. Though Key
publicly criticized the cruelty of the slave trade, he owned
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slaves himself, most of whom worked on his Maryland estate
and at his Washington, d c. Home. It was only
a matter of time Key fretted before a rebellion like
nat Turner's broke out in his neighborhood. Four years later,
on August fourth, eighteen thirty five, Key's fears appeared to
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come true. In the middle of the night, Anna Thornton,
a prominent Washington socialite whose late husband had designed the
US capital, awoke to a terrifying sight, standing silhouetted in
the door frame of her bedroom was a figure clutching
an axe. She recognized the man. It was Arthur Bowen,
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an enslaved teenager who Thornton owned. Thornton also owned Bowen's mother, Maria,
who was asleep in the same room that night. Terrified,
Thornton raced out of the house and on to the street,
screaming for help. In the meantime, Maria managed to get
her son out of the house and Arthur Bowen disappeared
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into the darkness. Bowen had been drunk, Maria realized, so
drunk that he might not have even known what he
was doing. But to Anna Thornton's neighbors, Bowen's drunkenness was
no excuse. He had appeared in a white woman's bedroom
with an axe, and then he had fled with the
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axe still in his hand. This was not Turner all
over again. It had to be. Newspapers leapt hungrily on
the story, embellishing as they went. Bowen was a maniac,
they said, driven to murder by the shocking language of
abolitionist pamphlets that had recently begun popping up across Washington.
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When Bowen turned himself in at his mother's urging three
days later, Washingtonians bade for his blood. Francis Scott Key,
now the District Attorney for the District of Columbia, was
responsible for seeing that justice was done. To Key's credit,
he was an interested in mob justice. When an unruly
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crowd gathered outside the jail and called for Bowen to
be lynched, he talked them down. But he also wasn't
interested in granting clemency to Bowen, despite the protestations of
Bowen's owner and alleged intended victim, Anna Thornton, who had
now come to believe that Bowen had simply been drunk
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and never meant to hurt her. Key wasn't really that
interested in Bowen at all. Truth be told, he cared
more about what he believed had motivated Bowen, the abolitionist
pamphlets that had inundated the city's mailboxes that summer. These
pamphlets Key thought were more dangerous than one man with
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an axe would. Their graphic depictions of the horrors of
slavery and their frank appeals for immediate emancipation, these pamphlets
might very well inspire a whole army of men with axes.
In Keys view, the pamphlets had to be shut down,
and Key thought he knew the pamphlet's source, an unassuming
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recent transplant from the North named Reuben Crandall, whose neighbors
claimed he kept abolitionist pamphlets in his office. Quickly, Key
convened a grand jury, who granted him a warrant to
search Crandall's home and office. This search would set off
a chain of events more shocking and destructive than anything
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Arthur Bowen had ever done, and lead to a trial
that questioned the very nature of the right to free speech.
Welcome to history on trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward.
This week the United States the Ruben Crandall. By the
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time of Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, it
had been more than two decades since the act. Francis
Scott Key is best known for today writing the lyrics
to the Star Spangled Banner. Key had written the lyrics
originally a poem called Defense of Fort McHenry in eighteen fourteen,
inspired by events he witnessed during the War of eighteen twelve.
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Key composed the poem to fit the meter of a
popular British song. After the poem was printed, it quickly
caught on appearing in newspapers across the country with a
note about the tune it could be sung to. The
resulting song, which became known as the Star Spangled Banner,
was a mainstay of patriotic performances throughout the nineteenth century,
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though it wouldn't become the official national anthem until nineteen
thirty one. Key was well known in his day for
his work on the poem and song. Key was only
an amateur poet. His true profession was lawyering. He worked
in private practice for more than three decades before a
close political relationship with President Andrew Jackson led to his
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nomination as District Attorney for the District of Columbia in
eighteen thirty three. In his early career, Key had been
an idealist and had defended black people in court often
enough to be known by some as the Black's lawyer.
Jefferson Morley, in his book about the events surrounding the
Crandall trial, titled Snowstorm in August, describes the young Key
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as a pious dreamer, a sensitive poet, a tranquil philanthropist.
But after becoming close with President Jackson, Key changed. Morley
calls this new Key a militant warrior of galvanized conviction,
Key became a political operator determined to defend the status
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quo as defined by the president. Part of that status
quo was slavery. As district attorney, Key controlled a group
of constables ostensibly charged with enforcing the law. What his
constables mainly did, however, was harassed people of color for
fun and for profit. When an editor named Ben Lundy
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wrote in his newspaper that quote, there is neither mercy
nor justice for colored people in this district, Key was
furious and filed charges against Lundy. Despite Key's role in
prosecuting runaway slaves and anti slavery activists, he still liked
to think of himself as a humanitarian. Key was a
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founding member of the American Colonization Society, a group which
advocated for the resettlement of freeborn black Americans and emancipated
slaves in Africa. Colonization proponents argued that their cause was
in the best interest of black Americas and that they
only wanted to provide Black Americans with their own country.
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But the truth was that many of the Colonization Society's
members were racist and believed that a racially integrated society
was impossible. By the eighteen thirties, a portion of anti
slavery advocates had begun to reject colonization and supported immediate
emancipation instead. To ardent colonization believers like Key, immediate emancipation
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was a horrifying idea. As district attorney, he was determined
to keep Washington, d c. Free of even a whiff
of abolition, and in Key's mind, Ruben Crandall practically wreeked
of the stuff. First of all, Reuben Crandell was from
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the North New York to be exact home to the
American Anti Slavery Society, the abolition group founded in eighteen
thirty three. Several of Crandall's friends from Yale, where he
had earned a medical degree in eighteen twenty eight, were
high ranking members of the American Anti Slavery Society, and
Crandall had an even closer tie to advocates of racial integration.
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In eighteen thirty two, his school teacher, sister Prudence, had
become notorious nationwide for welcoming a black woman into her classroom.
When Prudence's white students quit her school in protest, Prudence
decided to double down and make her school only for
black women. An angry mob eventually forced Prudence to flee Connecticut,
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but she never abandoned her belief in the equal right
to education. At first glance, Crandell himself didn't seem as
politically active as his friends and family. He was known
to be an outspoken advocate for temperance abstaining from alcohol,
but besides that, his main passionate sae of his medical
work was botany. Twenty nine years old, he had originally
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come to Washington, d c. As the live in physician
for a family from Peakskill, New York. Liking what he
saw of DC, Crandall had decided to stay. He secured
a position as a science teacher at a school in
nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and found a home and office space
in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. A month after Crandall's
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arrival in June eighteen thirty five, mysterious pamphlets began appearing
all across Washington. Copies of abolitionist papers like The Anti
Slavery Reporter and The Emancipator arrived by the bushel. These
pamphlets spoke out strongly against slavery, discussing the cruelty of
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slave masters, the humanity of enslaved people, and the arguments
for immediate emancipation. The pamphlets were addressed to influential political, intellectual,
and religious leaders across the city. Government officials were baffled
where had they come from. In truth, these mailings were
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the work of the American Anti Slavery Society. In May
eighteen thirty five, at the Society's second annual meeting, members
had approved a plan to send pamphlets to the entire country.
They wanted to shake white Americans out of their apathy
about slavery. They wanted to start a conversation. They would
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certainly get their wish, but even the most radical of
the Anti Slavery Society's members could not foresee what impact
their pamphlet plan would have in Washington, d c. In
the summer of eighteen thirty five, no one in Washington
knew yet about the Anti Slavery Society's role in the
pamphlet campaign. No one was quite sure where these pamphlets
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were coming from. But Reuben Crandall's neighbors had an idea.
Crandell seemed like a mild mannered man, several Georgetown residents
had uncovered a shocking secret when visiting his office. Alongside
his boxes of plant specimens and medical instruments, visitors noticed
that Crandell possessed many abolitionist pamphlets. Some of the pamphlets
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people observed even had a handwritten note at the top
read and circulate. When news of what Crandall's neighbors had
seen reached Francis Scott Key, he was sure that he
had found the man responsible for sending out the pamphlets
to prominent Washingtonians and in turn inspiring Arthur Bowen's alleged
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attempted murder of Anna Thornton. On August tenth, having obtained
a warrant to search Crandall's office and home, Key sent
two of his constables to detain the man. He believed
that by arresting Crandall, he could cut off the source
of agitation at its root, but in reality, Key's actions
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would spark something far far worse. Word quickly spread that
a man was being arrested for, in Key's words, exhibiting
and circulating dangerous and insurrectionary writings and thereby attempting to
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excite an insurrection. As two constables searched Crandall's residence. A
crowd gathered outside, waiting to hear what the men found.
They would not be disappointed. When one of the constables,
Madison Jeffers, stepped out to fetch a torch, a voice
in the crowd asked how many pamphlets he had found,
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More than I expected. Jeffers responded, we found one hundred
and fifty, maybe one hundred and sixty pamphlets. The crowd
was outraged. We ought to take the damned rascal and
hang him up on one of those trees. A man shouted,
Seeing that the crowd might just do such a thing.
Crandall and the constables agreed that jail was the safest
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place for him. As the group made its way by
carriage to the jail behind City Hall, the constables started
questioning Crandall. Why did he have so many pamphlets? They
asked to get information from Crandall said. When they pushed
him on why he had multiple copies of certain pamphlets,
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Crandall refused to explain, but also stood firm on his principles.
I'm an anti slavery man, he said, don't you think
it very dangerous? At the present time to set all
the slaves free. Constable Henry Robertson asked Crandall did not.
From Crandall's responses, it became clear to the Constables that
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Crandall believed that quote the slaves ought to be all
free and had as much right to be free as
we had. To the constables, Crandall's proclamations were as good
as a confession. Yes, he had denied distributing the pamphlets
when they asked him about it in the house, but
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he wasn't denying his abolitionist views. What else could an
abolitionist want with so many pamphlets if not to distribute them.
Don't say too much or speak too freely, Constable Robertson
warrened Crandall, we might be witnesses against you. The rest
of the carriage ride passed intent silence. Upon arriving at
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the jail, Crandall was escorted to a cell on the
first floor and locked in. Back in Georgetown, the crowd
gathered outside Crandall's house was growing increasingly angry. They had
been denied the chance to lynch not one but two men,
both Arthur Bowen and Reuben Crandall, sat safely, if uncomfortably,
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in jail cells. What kind of justice was this? Over
the next two days, their discontent only grew. Many in
the crowd were white men who felt they had been
replaced in the labor market by d c's growing population
of freed black men. Many in the crowd were also
poor and felt that they had suffered disproportionately in the
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recent economic crisis caused by President Jackson's war with the banks.
These men were sick of the freedoms granted to black
people just when they felt their own voices were being suppressed.
They were racist, and they were angry. Arthur Bowen and
Reuben Crandell's alleged crimes were the final straw. On Wednesday,
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August twelfth, more than three thousand men gathered in Judiciary Square,
where both City Hall and the jail stood, and demanded
the authority's hand over the prisoners. Key, who had just
finished conducting an interrogation of the terrified Crandall, managed to
calm the crowd, telling them Crandall will be punished if
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you let the trial progress. Grudgingly, the crowd dispersed and
slunk off home. But the crowd's anger wasn't quelled for long.
The next morning, a mob swarmed the Epicurean Eating House,
a restaurant run by a free black man named Beverly Snow.
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A rumor had spread that Snow, a well known larger
than life character, had spoken inappropriately, either to or about
a white woman. That was enough for the crowd to
demand his life. Snow managed to slip out the back
of his restaurant and run to safety, but the mob
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destroyed his business, and that was only the beginning of
the violence. The mob split into small raiding parties and
began destroying black owned businesses and cultural centers across the city.
They tore apart schoolhouses and boarding houses, brothels, and churches.
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It was a targeted campaign designed to terrorize DC's black residents.
These events became known as the Snow Riot after the
destruction of Beverly Snow's restaurant. Metropolitan newspaper reporting on the
violence said, the property of every colored person who rendered
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themselves obnoxious to the mob was devoted to destruction for
the crime of being obnoxious or, in other words, of thriving,
or even of simply existing. Many black people lost everything
they had spent a lifetime building up for twenty four hours,
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the mob held Washington hostage. By the morning of August fourteenth,
their energy spent, the men began to disperse, though small
groups continued to wreak havoc for the next few nights.
Washingtonians would soon learn that they were not the only
cities subject to such chaos. Throughout eighteen thirty five, mobs
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popped up all across the country, most of them stirred
to anger by the same anti slavery pamphlet campaign that
had led to Reuben Crandall's arrest. Many white Americans saw
the American Anti Slavery Society's writings as a direct attack
on their way of life, and they did not hesitate
to fight back physically. The United States had been founded
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on a central contradiction, a land of liberty undergirded by
the institution of slavery, and in the summer of eighteen
thirty five, that contradiction seemed to reach ahead. The rule
of law, writes Jefferson Morley, was buckling under the realities
of a slave holding democracy. As District Attorney Francis Scott
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Key both derived his power from that rule of law
and was also sworn to protect it, but his actions
after the Snow riots showed that he was more interested
in preserving the system of slavery than the rule of law. Yes,
his office arrested and charged a dozen of the rioters,
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but when a jury recommended mercy in sentencing after the
men's trial in March eighteen thirty six, he did not object.
Though he did not condone rioting, he was more interested
in teaching a lesson to the radical abolitionists, who, in
his opinion, were most responsible for the damage done by
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the mob. He wanted to send the abolitionists a message
they were not welcome in his city. That message would come,
he hoped, from the conviction and punishment of Reuben Crandall.
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By the time his trial began on Friday, April fifteenth,
eighteen thirty six, Ruben Crandall had spent more than eight
months in jail. The city jail was a dismal place,
and Crandall was feeling the effects of his imprisonment. Reporters
in the courtroom noticed how pale he looked. Fortunately, Crandall
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had his lawyers to support him. His family had hired
two respected Washington lawyers, Richard Cox and Joseph Bradley. After
his arrest, and the men had been by Crandall's side
every step of the way. They stood by him now
as he pled not guilty to the indictment in which
Key had accused Crandall of having quote most unlawfully, mischievously,
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and seditiously contrived to traduce, vilify, and bring into hatred
and contempt among the good citizens the laws and the
government of the United States. In other words, Crandall was
accused of having committed seditious libel. If you aren't a
time traveling early American lawyer, which you probably aren't, the
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charge of seditious libel is likely an unfamiliar one. Libel
in modern legal practice is the publication of an untruth
which will cause harm to its subject. Seditious libel is
something different in two ways. First, the subject of seditious
libel is always the government, and second, the statement need
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not be untruthful in order to be found libelous. Seditious
libel entered the American legal practice via English law. British
government lawyers used seditious libel laws to punish citizens who
criticize the state. In the late eighteenth century, the American
Federalist Party pushed for the passage of the Alien and
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Sedition Acts, which they used to prosecute journalists who criticize them.
Americans were less sympathetic towards the government's use of seditious
libel laws than their English forebears had been. The Alien
and Sedition Acts were extremely unpopular with the wider public
and expired in eighteen oh one. At the time of
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Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, there was no
seditious libel law in the federal books. So what exactly
had Francis Scott Key charged Grandell with. The Answer to
this question requires a quick explainer of the District of
Columbia's bizarre legal status. Unlike US states, which are allowed
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to make their own laws, the ultimate authority over DC,
which is not a state but a federal district, is
the United States Congress. The Constitution grants Congress oversight of
DC's laws. The city government of wahe Washington was and
is allowed to have some legal powers, but Congress retains
the power to oversee and overturn any local DC legislation.
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The eighteen thirty three Code of Laws drafted for d
C contained a provision that specifically covered Reuben Crandall's crime,
people in d C were prohibited from quote knowingly publishing
and circulating any writing or pamphlet among the free, black
or slave population of this district tending to excite a
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discontent or insurrection. Congress did not approve this provision when
it approved the Code of Laws, but according to historian
Neil S. Kramer, quote, this code accurately represented legal practice
in the District of Columbia at the time it was compiled.
Though it lacked the authority of law, the code was
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used by the Circuit Court. It was this code that
Key was relying on to convict Crandall. Another note here
about to legal terminology. Most of us think the verb
to publish as meaning to print a text and make
it publicly available, but in this legal context, publishing simply
means making something known to an audience that can be
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as small as one person. He was relying on this
legal definition because, unfortunately for his case, he had only
one concrete example of Reuben Crandall giving an anti slavery
pamphlet to another person, and Key now called that person
a man named Henry King, as his first witness. Henry
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King was a Washington physician whose office was just down
the block from Crandall's. One day, King testified he had
dropped by Crandall's office to say hello. Finding Crandall busy
with his botanical work, King, like any good visitor, had
started to snoop. He was startled to find an abolitionist
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pamphlet on a table. The latitude is too far south
for these things, he told Crandall, meaning that Washington was
too southern of a city for Crandall to safely possess
such pamphlets. Despite this warning to Crandall, though, King was
curious about the pamphlet's contents and asked if he could
borrow it. Crandall reluctantly agreed. Crandall's lawyer Cox objected here
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that King's testimony was irrelevant. He was a white man,
not an enslaved or free black man. The group that
d c's quasi legal code prohibited distribution of pamphlets to
Key responded that King's testimony was necessary to establish a
chain of evidence, and the panel of judges judges Cramch, Morsel,
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and Threston, agreed to admit it. Key soon began to
build the chain he had alluded to. His next witness
William Robinson described seeing the pamphlet that Crandall had give
King and added a crucial detail. At the top of
the pamphlet, there was a handwritten note that said read
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and circulate. So Crandell hadn't simply given one person a pamphlet,
he had given them a pamphlet that instructed the recipient
to read the pamphlet and pass it on. It sounded damning.
He next read from the pamphlets Crandall was in possession of,
hoping that their abolitionist sentiments would alarm the jury and
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make Crandall's seditious intentions clear. In one anti colonization pamphlet,
the author sarcastically claimed that given the immigrant heritage of
most white Americans, they were just as deserving of deportation
to Europe as black people were of being sent to
Africa for a colonization advocate like Key, such language was shocking.
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Another pamphlet set bloody stakes for the conflict over slavery.
So long as slavery is tolerated, no peace can exist,
the pamphlet read, before exhorting slaveholding states to begin the
work of emancipation lest they risk quote the fiery indignation
of him, to whom vengeance belongeth. The threats contained in
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this pamphlet weren't just divine. The slave, the pamphlet continued,
will become conscious sooner or later of his strength. His
torch will be at the threshold, and his knife at
the throat of the planter. As Key read these words aloud,
and he was a skillful, passionate speaker, he knew what
he was evoking. The specters of Southampton, the bloody legacy
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of Nat Turner, and more recently here in their own city,
the outrages of Arthur Bowen. He made that connection more explicit,
describing Arthur Bowen as being inspired by pamphlets like the
very ones he had just read from. And he also
raised the connection between Ruben Crandall and the pamphlet campaign
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that had flooded local mailboxes, but the judges were unsympathetic
to this argument. In the months leading up to the trial,
it had become clear that the American Anti Slavery Society
was responsible for these mailings. Unless Key could prove that
Reuben Crandall was a member of the society, he would
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have to drop this claim. So Key attempted to prove
Crandall's membership. He had uncovered what he thought to be
a trump card, a record in the Society's roles of
a member named Phineas Crandall residing in Peaskill, New York,
just where Ruben Crandall had lived before coming to Washington.
The first names might not match, but what were the
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odds of it not being the same Crandall? Well. Crandall's
lawyers were prepared for this argument and quickly submitted to
devastating depositions from secretaries of the Society, which revealed that
the longs contained a typo. The Phineas Crandall in question
was from Sandy Hill, not Peak Skill, and certified that
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Reuben Crandall had never been a member at all. Key's
evidence seemed weak, but in the political climate of the day,
it might still have been enough for a jury to
convict Crandall. The defense team would have to present a
compelling rebuttal in their case. Joseph Bradley delivered the opening
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for the defense, and he started strangely. As the jury
listened intently, Bradley began to read a passage discussing the
evils at the slave trade. It sounded a lot like
the pamphlets Key had read during the prosecution's case. After
some time, Judge Cranch interrupted Bradley to ask exactly what
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he was reading. I'm reading, Bradley said, from a speech
made by the district attorney at a colonization meeting. Cranch
was shocked. I thought you were reading from some of
the libels given in evidence. He said, that, of course,
was Bradley's point. How libelists could these pamphlets really be
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if the very district attorney prosecuting Crandell over them had
himself spoken so similarly on the topic. He was furious
and demanded a chance to respond, but the judges told
him in essence to get over himself. The rest of
Bradley's opening was much more standard and outlined the defense's case.
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They would prove Crandall's good character, Bradley said, prove that
he had no intention of distributing any pamphlets, and proved
that he had no involvement in the abolition movement. To
testify to Crandall's character, his lawyers had recruited prominent citizens
who had known Crandell in New York, including former Congressman
At Judson, spoke highly of Crandell and even revealed that
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Crandell had opposed his sister's integrated school and begged her
to shut it down. None of Crandall's New York friends
or acquaintances had ever heard him speak about abolition. The
defense lawyers also brought in Crandall's former employers, mister and
Missus Austin, who offered an explanation for how Crandall had
even gotten the boxes of pamphlets to begin with. When
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Crandall had lived with the family in New York, a
visitor named mister Dennison had left behind some anti slavery
pamphlets ahead of Crandall's move to d C. Missus Austin
had helped him by packing up his library and scientific
instruments she had, she testified, used the abolitionist pamphlets as
packing material to wrap the instruments. In jail, the night
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after his arrest, Crandall had been questioned by Key and
several magistrates about the origins of the pamphlets. His explanation
had been garbled and occasionally contradictory, which Key pointed to
as evidence of his duplicity, but the general outline of
his story mashed what the Austins were saying, and Bradley
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pointed out that Crandall had been questioned under extreme duress,
barricaded in a building as the crowds outside called for
his head. More than making any point about Crandall's character
or providing logistical explanations for the pamphlets, Cox and Bradley
used their time to argue against the validity of Key's
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moral and legal case. Bradley wondered how Key could argue
that these pamphlets were so dangerous that even the transmission
to one person could lead to general rebellion, while also
reading the pamphlets aloud in the courtroom, guaranteeing that their
audience multiplied exponentially. Cox followed up on his colleague's point,
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discussing how the language of the pamphlets was no different
than that used by thousands of Americans as they discussed slavery.
There is not one sentiment or one expression bearing upon
the subject of slavery, Cox said in his closing, which
I shall not show you to have been uttered by slaveholders,
by the statesmen and the legislators, the divines, the lawyers,
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and the philosophers of the South. He proceeded to do
just that pulling passages from a variety of famous texts,
including ones by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Francis Scott,
key himself to show that there was nothing new or
particularly libelous about the text of these pamphlets. What's more,
Cox continued, was that possessing a pamphlet could not be
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considered a crime if quote, I shall be indictable without
any overt act for sedition and subject as crandall has
been to an incarceration for eight months preparatory to trial,
and then denounced before the community in the unmeasured terms
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you have applied to him and be told that for
such an offense as having in my private custody under
my own lock and key publications such as he had,
or for loaning one to an intelligent friend for his
single perusal, I shall encounter such consequences. Then to escape
(36:21):
such tyranny, would I fly to the remotest parts of
this once free land. This trial, Cox implied, was an
affront to the principles of free speech and democracy that
the nation held so dear Key, in his closing, would
(36:44):
not be subdued. He rejected Cox's comparison of the pamphlet's
contents to his own speeches, saying that he had never
called for emancipation, let alone insurrection. His speech had been
critical of the slave trade, but not of the slave
system or of the government, unlike the pamphlets, which, in
(37:05):
his words, declared that every law which sanctioned slavery is
null and void, that we have no more rights over
our slaves than they have over us. Does this not
bring the Constitution and the laws under which we live
into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?
He asked, Summoning up his most fiery rhetoric, he argued
(37:28):
that what was at stake was not freedom of speech,
but the safety of the nation and the right of
Southerners to their way of life. If the jury allowed
men like Crandall to quote whisper their principles in chimney
corners and in byways, to come to the South in
a cold blooded manner and deluge the country with blood
(37:51):
and give the dwellings to the flames, then there was
an end to all protection for the lives and property
of the people of the se Would the jurors men
of the South themselves allow this? Francis Scott Key hoped
they would not. With this, the jurors were dismissed to deliberate.
(38:15):
It did not take them long. After only an hour
or so of discussion, the jury returned a verdict on
the charges of seditious libel. Ruben Crandall had been found
not guilty. Ruben Crandall was free, but he did not
(38:37):
yet feel safe. The papers and public officials who had
once condemned him were now commenting on the weakness of
Key's case, but Crandall knew that many Washingtonians still saw
him as a scourge. Terrified that a mob might seize him,
Crandall asked to be taken back to jail until his
safety was guaranteed. Later that night, Congressman William Jackson, a
(39:00):
prominent anti slavery activist, arrived at the jail to personally
escort Crandall home, but Crandall was too afraid to return
to Georgetown. Jackson invited Crandall to come to his own
boarding house, where Crandall stayed for several hours before fleeing
to his parents' home in Connecticut. Writing to a friend,
(39:21):
Jackson wrote of the toll the past nine months had
taken on Crandall. Thus an amiable and respectable young man's
prospects are all overturned, his property sacrificed, and his health
greatly injured by long imprisonment, and after a full proof
of his innocence, he is compelled to flee from the
(39:42):
capital of his country for his life, like a felon
in the dark. Jackson was not exaggerating about the ill
effects imprisonment and had on Crandall. Sometime during his pre
trial detainment, Crandall had contracted tuberculosis. His health both never
fully recovered, and he died less than two years later,
(40:04):
on January eighteenth, eighteen thirty eight, aged only thirty two.
He may have been acquitted, but Key's persecution had ultimately
meant a death sentence for Reuben Crandall. Crandall's actual role
in the abolitionist movement is uncertain. Though Bradley and Cox
had made a compelling case that Crandall had only accidentally
(40:26):
obtained the pamphlets, there were hints that he was more
involved in the abolitionist movement than the public knew. Remember
how Crandall's former employer, mister Austen, testified to a man
leaving anti slavery pamphlets at his home after visiting Crandall.
That visitor was none other than Charles Denison, editor of
(40:48):
the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and a leader of the
American Anti Slavery Society. Key seems not to have realized
who Denison was during Austin's testimony and did not dig
into the relationship further, so it remained unexplored. Crandall's true
connection to the abolitionist movement is still unknown. There are
(41:10):
two more key players in the Riots and Trials of
eighteen thirty five whose fates are worth mentioning. Beverly Snow,
the black restaateeur whose business had been destroyed by the mob,
tried to return to Washington in the summer of eighteen
thirty six. He was immediately recognized and harassed by a
(41:31):
group of white men, who chased him down and threatened
to lynch him. Luckily, the mayor, a personal friend of Snow,
intervened and convinced the mob to release Snow. After spending
a night in jail for his own safety and undergoing
a public interrogation, Snow and his wife left for Canada.
(41:51):
He became a successful businessman in Toronto, opening several popular
restaurants before dying in eighteen fifty six. The other man
at the heart of Washington's tumultuous year was Arthur Bowen,
the enslaved nineteen year old accused of attempting to murder
his owner, Anna Thornton. Thornton had come to believe that
(42:12):
Bowen never meant to harm her, and in the lead
up to Bowen's trial, she had petitioned endlessly for his release.
Key denied her at every turn. Arthur Bowen was convicted
of attempted murder and sentenced to death on January twenty third,
eighteen thirty six. Horrified, Thornton intensified her campaign to free him.
(42:34):
After a series of stays of execution, President Andrew Jackson
issued Bowen a pardon on June twenty fifth, eighteen thirty six.
But a reprieve from prison did not mean freedom for
Arthur Bowen. Anna Thornton believed that he would never be
safe in Washington, d c. Given the notoriety of his
alleged crime. She had always made it clear in her
(42:57):
petitions to the authorities that she would see sell Bowen
out of the city if he was freed. Upon his release,
Thornton did just that. We know that Bowen was sold
to a man in Florida. In June eighteen thirty seven,
he wrote to his mother Maria that his new owner
mistreated him. Thornton arranged for the new owner to sell
(43:18):
Bowen to a man who worked in the pensacle And
Navy Yard, and in eighteen thirty eight Bowen wrote to
his mother that he was doing well and working on
a steamboat. But after that he disappears from the historical record.
We do not know the ultimate fate of the teenaged
boy whose drunken actions on an August night sparked a
(43:38):
riot in the nation's capital and led to his own
exile from the only home he had ever known. Unlike
Arthur Bowen, Francis Scott Key is firmly enshrined in history.
The words he wrote in eighteen fourteen are sung daily
(43:59):
in the school room, on the sports field, and in
the halls of government. Though he was criticized for his
actions in the Crandell case, Key continued on as District
attorney for another two years. After eventually resigning from the
post in eighteen forty, Key worked in private practice until
his death on January eleventh, eighteen forty three, his legacy
(44:22):
as a lawyer would be a checkered one. In his
earliest years of practice, Key had defended people of color
against abuses of power. But as district Attorney, Key had
abused the power of his office against the most vulnerable
members of society, all in the interest of maintaining the
status quo. He is certainly not alone in this. Throughout
(44:45):
American history, particularly in times of unrest, the law has
been used to penalize the most outspoken among us. During
Reuben Crandall's trial, one of the judges, Buckner Thruston, recognized
the slippery slope that Key he was hurtling down with
this case. Threston, a slave owner himself, was not sympathetic
(45:06):
towards the abolitionist cause, but he was a passionate defender
of Crandall's right to express his opinions. Every man has
an unquestionable right to his own moral or religious sentiments.
There is no crime in this, Threston said, as part
of his descent on a certain evidentiary ruling. He further
(45:27):
noted that quote bad as the tendency of these writings
may be, I know not how much less danger would
result if, led by our feeling, we bend the rules
and principles of law from expediency or the supposed political
(45:48):
necessity of convicting the accused. If we invade the panoply
which the law has provided for the protection of the
accused against arbitrary or vindictive judgments, we establish precedence, the
evil consequences of which cannot be calculated. In other words,
(46:10):
Francis Scott Key may have thought he was protecting the
land of the Free and the home of the brave
by trying Reuben Crandell, But had he succeeded in convicting
the man, he would have created an even greater threat
to our democracy. That's the story of the United States v.
Reuben Crandall. After the break, one more look into Francis
(46:33):
Scott Key's surprising influence on the US legal system. Francis
Scott Key's most impactful legacy, besides the extremely difficult to
sing national anthem that he wrote, might be the lobbying
(46:53):
work that he performed on behalf of one of his
best friends. Key first met Roger Taney in the late
seventeen nineties when they were both practicing law in Fredericktown, Maryland.
The two men immediately hit it off, and their relationship
only grew closer when Taney married Key's sister Anne in
eighteen oh six. Taney, an ambitious man who admitted to
(47:16):
desiring quote high rank and social position, was drawn to
politics before Key was. He became Attorney General from Maryland
in eighteen twenty seven, and then United States Attorney General
in eighteen thirty one. Francis Scott. Key was instrumental in
securing the latter job for Taeney, negotiating the resignation of
(47:38):
the previous Attorney General and clearing the way for his friend.
While Attorney General, Taeney became extremely close to President Andrew Jackson,
and when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall died in
July eighteen thirty five, the President nominated Taeney as Marshall's replacement. Again,
(47:58):
Key acted as Teeney's chief support, lobbying senators to confirm
the appointment. On March fifteenth, eighteen thirty six, the Senate
approved Tainey, and two weeks later he was sworn in
as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Twenty years later, Taeney would author the Court's decision in
(48:20):
dread Scott v. Sandford. This was the notorious opinion that
declared that people of African descent were quote beings of
an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the
white race, and not entitled to legal protections or the
(48:40):
right of citizenship. Further, the dread Scott decision denied Congress's
power to ban slavery in federal territories. The outcry over
this decision is often regarded as one of the inciting
incidents of the Civil War. Just how the dread Scott
case would have been decided without Tane is impossible to know,
(49:02):
but the inflammatory racist language he used in writing the
opinion made him infamous and sparked outrage across the country,
and it's likely that Teaney would not have risen as
high as he did, allowing him to have as much
impact as he had without the help of his best friend,
Francis Scott Key. Thank you for listening to History on Trial.
(49:27):
The main sources for this episode were the trial transcripts
and Jefferson Morley's book Snowstorm in August, Washington City, Francis
Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of eighteen thirty five.
For a full bibliography, as well as a transcript of
this episode with citations, please visit our website History on
(49:48):
Trial podcast dot com. History on Trial is written and
hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Trevor Young and
executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward.
(50:09):
Learn more about the show at History on Trial podcast
dot com and follow us on Instagram at History on
Trial and on Twitter at Underscore History on Trial. Find
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You are listening to History on Trial, a production of
iHeart Podcasts. Listener discretion advised. In August eighteen thirty one,
rebellion broke out in Southampton County, Virginia. Like the American
(00:23):
Revolution only fifty years before, the revolt in Southampton was
motivated by a desire for freedom, but the stakes here
were much graver than taxation without representation. The rebels in
eighteen thirty one were enslaved and free black people, led
(00:43):
by a charismatic enslaved man named Nat Turner, and they
were fighting for their freedom. Over the course of two
nights in late August, Nat Turner and his followers rode
from plantation to plantation, freeing enslaved people and killing their
masters before they were stopped by white authorities on the
(01:03):
morning of August twenty third. By that time, more than
fifty white Virginians were dead. Nat Turner's rebellion sent shockwaves
through the United States. Slave uprisings were not uncommon. The
historian Herbert Aptecker identified at least two hundred and fifty
revolts and conspiracies throughout the history of American slavery, but
(01:25):
the scale and violence of Turner's rebellion was unprecedented. The
violent retribution against Southampton's black community in the wake of
the rebellion was even deadlier than Turner's rebellion itself. Mobs
and militiamen killed dozens of free and enslaved black people,
many of whom had no affiliation with Turner. Still, all
(01:47):
that slave owners could think about was that they might
be next. One such worried slave owner was Francis Scott Key. Yes,
that Francis Scott Key, author of Our National Anthem, which
features lyrics extolling the Land of the Free. Though Key
publicly criticized the cruelty of the slave trade, he owned
(02:08):
slaves himself, most of whom worked on his Maryland estate
and at his Washington, d c. Home. It was only
a matter of time Key fretted before a rebellion like
nat Turner's broke out in his neighborhood. Four years later,
on August fourth, eighteen thirty five, Key's fears appeared to
(02:29):
come true. In the middle of the night, Anna Thornton,
a prominent Washington socialite whose late husband had designed the
US capital, awoke to a terrifying sight, standing silhouetted in
the door frame of her bedroom was a figure clutching
an axe. She recognized the man. It was Arthur Bowen,
(02:53):
an enslaved teenager who Thornton owned. Thornton also owned Bowen's mother, Maria,
who was asleep in the same room that night. Terrified,
Thornton raced out of the house and on to the street,
screaming for help. In the meantime, Maria managed to get
her son out of the house and Arthur Bowen disappeared
(03:13):
into the darkness. Bowen had been drunk, Maria realized, so
drunk that he might not have even known what he
was doing. But to Anna Thornton's neighbors, Bowen's drunkenness was
no excuse. He had appeared in a white woman's bedroom
with an axe, and then he had fled with the
(03:34):
axe still in his hand. This was not Turner all
over again. It had to be. Newspapers leapt hungrily on
the story, embellishing as they went. Bowen was a maniac,
they said, driven to murder by the shocking language of
abolitionist pamphlets that had recently begun popping up across Washington.
(03:55):
When Bowen turned himself in at his mother's urging three
days later, Washingtonians bade for his blood. Francis Scott Key,
now the District Attorney for the District of Columbia, was
responsible for seeing that justice was done. To Key's credit,
he was an interested in mob justice. When an unruly
(04:16):
crowd gathered outside the jail and called for Bowen to
be lynched, he talked them down. But he also wasn't
interested in granting clemency to Bowen, despite the protestations of
Bowen's owner and alleged intended victim, Anna Thornton, who had
now come to believe that Bowen had simply been drunk
(04:37):
and never meant to hurt her. Key wasn't really that
interested in Bowen at all. Truth be told, he cared
more about what he believed had motivated Bowen, the abolitionist
pamphlets that had inundated the city's mailboxes that summer. These
pamphlets Key thought were more dangerous than one man with
(04:57):
an axe would. Their graphic depictions of the horrors of
slavery and their frank appeals for immediate emancipation, these pamphlets
might very well inspire a whole army of men with axes.
In Keys view, the pamphlets had to be shut down,
and Key thought he knew the pamphlet's source, an unassuming
(05:20):
recent transplant from the North named Reuben Crandall, whose neighbors
claimed he kept abolitionist pamphlets in his office. Quickly, Key
convened a grand jury, who granted him a warrant to
search Crandall's home and office. This search would set off
a chain of events more shocking and destructive than anything
(05:40):
Arthur Bowen had ever done, and lead to a trial
that questioned the very nature of the right to free speech.
Welcome to history on trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward.
This week the United States the Ruben Crandall. By the
(06:04):
time of Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, it
had been more than two decades since the act. Francis
Scott Key is best known for today writing the lyrics
to the Star Spangled Banner. Key had written the lyrics
originally a poem called Defense of Fort McHenry in eighteen fourteen,
inspired by events he witnessed during the War of eighteen twelve.
(06:28):
Key composed the poem to fit the meter of a
popular British song. After the poem was printed, it quickly
caught on appearing in newspapers across the country with a
note about the tune it could be sung to. The
resulting song, which became known as the Star Spangled Banner,
was a mainstay of patriotic performances throughout the nineteenth century,
(06:51):
though it wouldn't become the official national anthem until nineteen
thirty one. Key was well known in his day for
his work on the poem and song. Key was only
an amateur poet. His true profession was lawyering. He worked
in private practice for more than three decades before a
close political relationship with President Andrew Jackson led to his
(07:13):
nomination as District Attorney for the District of Columbia in
eighteen thirty three. In his early career, Key had been
an idealist and had defended black people in court often
enough to be known by some as the Black's lawyer.
Jefferson Morley, in his book about the events surrounding the
Crandall trial, titled Snowstorm in August, describes the young Key
(07:37):
as a pious dreamer, a sensitive poet, a tranquil philanthropist.
But after becoming close with President Jackson, Key changed. Morley
calls this new Key a militant warrior of galvanized conviction,
Key became a political operator determined to defend the status
(07:59):
quo as defined by the president. Part of that status
quo was slavery. As district attorney, Key controlled a group
of constables ostensibly charged with enforcing the law. What his
constables mainly did, however, was harassed people of color for
fun and for profit. When an editor named Ben Lundy
(08:21):
wrote in his newspaper that quote, there is neither mercy
nor justice for colored people in this district, Key was
furious and filed charges against Lundy. Despite Key's role in
prosecuting runaway slaves and anti slavery activists, he still liked
to think of himself as a humanitarian. Key was a
(08:44):
founding member of the American Colonization Society, a group which
advocated for the resettlement of freeborn black Americans and emancipated
slaves in Africa. Colonization proponents argued that their cause was
in the best interest of black Americas and that they
only wanted to provide Black Americans with their own country.
(09:05):
But the truth was that many of the Colonization Society's
members were racist and believed that a racially integrated society
was impossible. By the eighteen thirties, a portion of anti
slavery advocates had begun to reject colonization and supported immediate
emancipation instead. To ardent colonization believers like Key, immediate emancipation
(09:30):
was a horrifying idea. As district attorney, he was determined
to keep Washington, d c. Free of even a whiff
of abolition, and in Key's mind, Ruben Crandall practically wreeked
of the stuff. First of all, Reuben Crandell was from
(09:53):
the North New York to be exact home to the
American Anti Slavery Society, the abolition group founded in eighteen
thirty three. Several of Crandall's friends from Yale, where he
had earned a medical degree in eighteen twenty eight, were
high ranking members of the American Anti Slavery Society, and
Crandall had an even closer tie to advocates of racial integration.
(10:18):
In eighteen thirty two, his school teacher, sister Prudence, had
become notorious nationwide for welcoming a black woman into her classroom.
When Prudence's white students quit her school in protest, Prudence
decided to double down and make her school only for
black women. An angry mob eventually forced Prudence to flee Connecticut,
(10:41):
but she never abandoned her belief in the equal right
to education. At first glance, Crandell himself didn't seem as
politically active as his friends and family. He was known
to be an outspoken advocate for temperance abstaining from alcohol,
but besides that, his main passionate sae of his medical
work was botany. Twenty nine years old, he had originally
(11:04):
come to Washington, d c. As the live in physician
for a family from Peakskill, New York. Liking what he
saw of DC, Crandall had decided to stay. He secured
a position as a science teacher at a school in
nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and found a home and office space
in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. A month after Crandall's
(11:27):
arrival in June eighteen thirty five, mysterious pamphlets began appearing
all across Washington. Copies of abolitionist papers like The Anti
Slavery Reporter and The Emancipator arrived by the bushel. These
pamphlets spoke out strongly against slavery, discussing the cruelty of
(11:47):
slave masters, the humanity of enslaved people, and the arguments
for immediate emancipation. The pamphlets were addressed to influential political, intellectual,
and religious leaders across the city. Government officials were baffled
where had they come from. In truth, these mailings were
(12:09):
the work of the American Anti Slavery Society. In May
eighteen thirty five, at the Society's second annual meeting, members
had approved a plan to send pamphlets to the entire country.
They wanted to shake white Americans out of their apathy
about slavery. They wanted to start a conversation. They would
(12:30):
certainly get their wish, but even the most radical of
the Anti Slavery Society's members could not foresee what impact
their pamphlet plan would have in Washington, d c. In
the summer of eighteen thirty five, no one in Washington
knew yet about the Anti Slavery Society's role in the
pamphlet campaign. No one was quite sure where these pamphlets
(12:54):
were coming from. But Reuben Crandall's neighbors had an idea.
Crandell seemed like a mild mannered man, several Georgetown residents
had uncovered a shocking secret when visiting his office. Alongside
his boxes of plant specimens and medical instruments, visitors noticed
that Crandell possessed many abolitionist pamphlets. Some of the pamphlets
(13:19):
people observed even had a handwritten note at the top
read and circulate. When news of what Crandall's neighbors had
seen reached Francis Scott Key, he was sure that he
had found the man responsible for sending out the pamphlets
to prominent Washingtonians and in turn inspiring Arthur Bowen's alleged
(13:44):
attempted murder of Anna Thornton. On August tenth, having obtained
a warrant to search Crandall's office and home, Key sent
two of his constables to detain the man. He believed
that by arresting Crandall, he could cut off the source
of agitation at its root, but in reality, Key's actions
(14:06):
would spark something far far worse. Word quickly spread that
a man was being arrested for, in Key's words, exhibiting
and circulating dangerous and insurrectionary writings and thereby attempting to
(14:26):
excite an insurrection. As two constables searched Crandall's residence. A
crowd gathered outside, waiting to hear what the men found.
They would not be disappointed. When one of the constables,
Madison Jeffers, stepped out to fetch a torch, a voice
in the crowd asked how many pamphlets he had found,
(14:47):
More than I expected. Jeffers responded, we found one hundred
and fifty, maybe one hundred and sixty pamphlets. The crowd
was outraged. We ought to take the damned rascal and
hang him up on one of those trees. A man shouted,
Seeing that the crowd might just do such a thing.
Crandall and the constables agreed that jail was the safest
(15:10):
place for him. As the group made its way by
carriage to the jail behind City Hall, the constables started
questioning Crandall. Why did he have so many pamphlets? They
asked to get information from Crandall said. When they pushed
him on why he had multiple copies of certain pamphlets,
(15:31):
Crandall refused to explain, but also stood firm on his principles.
I'm an anti slavery man, he said, don't you think
it very dangerous? At the present time to set all
the slaves free. Constable Henry Robertson asked Crandall did not.
From Crandall's responses, it became clear to the Constables that
(15:54):
Crandall believed that quote the slaves ought to be all
free and had as much right to be free as
we had. To the constables, Crandall's proclamations were as good
as a confession. Yes, he had denied distributing the pamphlets
when they asked him about it in the house, but
(16:15):
he wasn't denying his abolitionist views. What else could an
abolitionist want with so many pamphlets if not to distribute them.
Don't say too much or speak too freely, Constable Robertson
warrened Crandall, we might be witnesses against you. The rest
of the carriage ride passed intent silence. Upon arriving at
(16:36):
the jail, Crandall was escorted to a cell on the
first floor and locked in. Back in Georgetown, the crowd
gathered outside Crandall's house was growing increasingly angry. They had
been denied the chance to lynch not one but two men,
both Arthur Bowen and Reuben Crandall, sat safely, if uncomfortably,
(16:58):
in jail cells. What kind of justice was this? Over
the next two days, their discontent only grew. Many in
the crowd were white men who felt they had been
replaced in the labor market by d c's growing population
of freed black men. Many in the crowd were also
poor and felt that they had suffered disproportionately in the
(17:21):
recent economic crisis caused by President Jackson's war with the banks.
These men were sick of the freedoms granted to black
people just when they felt their own voices were being suppressed.
They were racist, and they were angry. Arthur Bowen and
Reuben Crandell's alleged crimes were the final straw. On Wednesday,
(17:44):
August twelfth, more than three thousand men gathered in Judiciary Square,
where both City Hall and the jail stood, and demanded
the authority's hand over the prisoners. Key, who had just
finished conducting an interrogation of the terrified Crandall, managed to
calm the crowd, telling them Crandall will be punished if
(18:07):
you let the trial progress. Grudgingly, the crowd dispersed and
slunk off home. But the crowd's anger wasn't quelled for long.
The next morning, a mob swarmed the Epicurean Eating House,
a restaurant run by a free black man named Beverly Snow.
(18:31):
A rumor had spread that Snow, a well known larger
than life character, had spoken inappropriately, either to or about
a white woman. That was enough for the crowd to
demand his life. Snow managed to slip out the back
of his restaurant and run to safety, but the mob
(18:52):
destroyed his business, and that was only the beginning of
the violence. The mob split into small raiding parties and
began destroying black owned businesses and cultural centers across the city.
They tore apart schoolhouses and boarding houses, brothels, and churches.
(19:12):
It was a targeted campaign designed to terrorize DC's black residents.
These events became known as the Snow Riot after the
destruction of Beverly Snow's restaurant. Metropolitan newspaper reporting on the
violence said, the property of every colored person who rendered
(19:35):
themselves obnoxious to the mob was devoted to destruction for
the crime of being obnoxious or, in other words, of thriving,
or even of simply existing. Many black people lost everything
they had spent a lifetime building up for twenty four hours,
(19:56):
the mob held Washington hostage. By the morning of August fourteenth,
their energy spent, the men began to disperse, though small
groups continued to wreak havoc for the next few nights.
Washingtonians would soon learn that they were not the only
cities subject to such chaos. Throughout eighteen thirty five, mobs
(20:18):
popped up all across the country, most of them stirred
to anger by the same anti slavery pamphlet campaign that
had led to Reuben Crandall's arrest. Many white Americans saw
the American Anti Slavery Society's writings as a direct attack
on their way of life, and they did not hesitate
to fight back physically. The United States had been founded
(20:41):
on a central contradiction, a land of liberty undergirded by
the institution of slavery, and in the summer of eighteen
thirty five, that contradiction seemed to reach ahead. The rule
of law, writes Jefferson Morley, was buckling under the realities
of a slave holding democracy. As District Attorney Francis Scott
(21:04):
Key both derived his power from that rule of law
and was also sworn to protect it, but his actions
after the Snow riots showed that he was more interested
in preserving the system of slavery than the rule of law. Yes,
his office arrested and charged a dozen of the rioters,
(21:25):
but when a jury recommended mercy in sentencing after the
men's trial in March eighteen thirty six, he did not object.
Though he did not condone rioting, he was more interested
in teaching a lesson to the radical abolitionists, who, in
his opinion, were most responsible for the damage done by
(21:46):
the mob. He wanted to send the abolitionists a message
they were not welcome in his city. That message would come,
he hoped, from the conviction and punishment of Reuben Crandall.
(22:09):
By the time his trial began on Friday, April fifteenth,
eighteen thirty six, Ruben Crandall had spent more than eight
months in jail. The city jail was a dismal place,
and Crandall was feeling the effects of his imprisonment. Reporters
in the courtroom noticed how pale he looked. Fortunately, Crandall
(22:33):
had his lawyers to support him. His family had hired
two respected Washington lawyers, Richard Cox and Joseph Bradley. After
his arrest, and the men had been by Crandall's side
every step of the way. They stood by him now
as he pled not guilty to the indictment in which
Key had accused Crandall of having quote most unlawfully, mischievously,
(22:57):
and seditiously contrived to traduce, vilify, and bring into hatred
and contempt among the good citizens the laws and the
government of the United States. In other words, Crandall was
accused of having committed seditious libel. If you aren't a
time traveling early American lawyer, which you probably aren't, the
(23:21):
charge of seditious libel is likely an unfamiliar one. Libel
in modern legal practice is the publication of an untruth
which will cause harm to its subject. Seditious libel is
something different in two ways. First, the subject of seditious
libel is always the government, and second, the statement need
(23:43):
not be untruthful in order to be found libelous. Seditious
libel entered the American legal practice via English law. British
government lawyers used seditious libel laws to punish citizens who
criticize the state. In the late eighteenth century, the American
Federalist Party pushed for the passage of the Alien and
(24:04):
Sedition Acts, which they used to prosecute journalists who criticize them.
Americans were less sympathetic towards the government's use of seditious
libel laws than their English forebears had been. The Alien
and Sedition Acts were extremely unpopular with the wider public
and expired in eighteen oh one. At the time of
(24:25):
Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, there was no
seditious libel law in the federal books. So what exactly
had Francis Scott Key charged Grandell with. The Answer to
this question requires a quick explainer of the District of
Columbia's bizarre legal status. Unlike US states, which are allowed
(24:45):
to make their own laws, the ultimate authority over DC,
which is not a state but a federal district, is
the United States Congress. The Constitution grants Congress oversight of
DC's laws. The city government of wahe Washington was and
is allowed to have some legal powers, but Congress retains
the power to oversee and overturn any local DC legislation.
(25:10):
The eighteen thirty three Code of Laws drafted for d
C contained a provision that specifically covered Reuben Crandall's crime,
people in d C were prohibited from quote knowingly publishing
and circulating any writing or pamphlet among the free, black
or slave population of this district tending to excite a
(25:32):
discontent or insurrection. Congress did not approve this provision when
it approved the Code of Laws, but according to historian
Neil S. Kramer, quote, this code accurately represented legal practice
in the District of Columbia at the time it was compiled.
Though it lacked the authority of law, the code was
(25:52):
used by the Circuit Court. It was this code that
Key was relying on to convict Crandall. Another note here
about to legal terminology. Most of us think the verb
to publish as meaning to print a text and make
it publicly available, but in this legal context, publishing simply
means making something known to an audience that can be
(26:14):
as small as one person. He was relying on this
legal definition because, unfortunately for his case, he had only
one concrete example of Reuben Crandall giving an anti slavery
pamphlet to another person, and Key now called that person
a man named Henry King, as his first witness. Henry
(26:40):
King was a Washington physician whose office was just down
the block from Crandall's. One day, King testified he had
dropped by Crandall's office to say hello. Finding Crandall busy
with his botanical work, King, like any good visitor, had
started to snoop. He was startled to find an abolitionist
(27:00):
pamphlet on a table. The latitude is too far south
for these things, he told Crandall, meaning that Washington was
too southern of a city for Crandall to safely possess
such pamphlets. Despite this warning to Crandall, though, King was
curious about the pamphlet's contents and asked if he could
borrow it. Crandall reluctantly agreed. Crandall's lawyer Cox objected here
(27:27):
that King's testimony was irrelevant. He was a white man,
not an enslaved or free black man. The group that
d c's quasi legal code prohibited distribution of pamphlets to
Key responded that King's testimony was necessary to establish a
chain of evidence, and the panel of judges judges Cramch, Morsel,
(27:48):
and Threston, agreed to admit it. Key soon began to
build the chain he had alluded to. His next witness
William Robinson described seeing the pamphlet that Crandall had give
King and added a crucial detail. At the top of
the pamphlet, there was a handwritten note that said read
(28:08):
and circulate. So Crandell hadn't simply given one person a pamphlet,
he had given them a pamphlet that instructed the recipient
to read the pamphlet and pass it on. It sounded damning.
He next read from the pamphlets Crandall was in possession of,
hoping that their abolitionist sentiments would alarm the jury and
(28:31):
make Crandall's seditious intentions clear. In one anti colonization pamphlet,
the author sarcastically claimed that given the immigrant heritage of
most white Americans, they were just as deserving of deportation
to Europe as black people were of being sent to
Africa for a colonization advocate like Key, such language was shocking.
(28:56):
Another pamphlet set bloody stakes for the conflict over slavery.
So long as slavery is tolerated, no peace can exist,
the pamphlet read, before exhorting slaveholding states to begin the
work of emancipation lest they risk quote the fiery indignation
of him, to whom vengeance belongeth. The threats contained in
(29:19):
this pamphlet weren't just divine. The slave, the pamphlet continued,
will become conscious sooner or later of his strength. His
torch will be at the threshold, and his knife at
the throat of the planter. As Key read these words aloud,
and he was a skillful, passionate speaker, he knew what
he was evoking. The specters of Southampton, the bloody legacy
(29:44):
of Nat Turner, and more recently here in their own city,
the outrages of Arthur Bowen. He made that connection more explicit,
describing Arthur Bowen as being inspired by pamphlets like the
very ones he had just read from. And he also
raised the connection between Ruben Crandall and the pamphlet campaign
(30:05):
that had flooded local mailboxes, but the judges were unsympathetic
to this argument. In the months leading up to the trial,
it had become clear that the American Anti Slavery Society
was responsible for these mailings. Unless Key could prove that
Reuben Crandall was a member of the society, he would
(30:26):
have to drop this claim. So Key attempted to prove
Crandall's membership. He had uncovered what he thought to be
a trump card, a record in the Society's roles of
a member named Phineas Crandall residing in Peaskill, New York,
just where Ruben Crandall had lived before coming to Washington.
The first names might not match, but what were the
(30:48):
odds of it not being the same Crandall? Well. Crandall's
lawyers were prepared for this argument and quickly submitted to
devastating depositions from secretaries of the Society, which revealed that
the longs contained a typo. The Phineas Crandall in question
was from Sandy Hill, not Peak Skill, and certified that
(31:10):
Reuben Crandall had never been a member at all. Key's
evidence seemed weak, but in the political climate of the day,
it might still have been enough for a jury to
convict Crandall. The defense team would have to present a
compelling rebuttal in their case. Joseph Bradley delivered the opening
(31:34):
for the defense, and he started strangely. As the jury
listened intently, Bradley began to read a passage discussing the
evils at the slave trade. It sounded a lot like
the pamphlets Key had read during the prosecution's case. After
some time, Judge Cranch interrupted Bradley to ask exactly what
(31:54):
he was reading. I'm reading, Bradley said, from a speech
made by the district attorney at a colonization meeting. Cranch
was shocked. I thought you were reading from some of
the libels given in evidence. He said, that, of course,
was Bradley's point. How libelists could these pamphlets really be
(32:16):
if the very district attorney prosecuting Crandell over them had
himself spoken so similarly on the topic. He was furious
and demanded a chance to respond, but the judges told
him in essence to get over himself. The rest of
Bradley's opening was much more standard and outlined the defense's case.
(32:38):
They would prove Crandall's good character, Bradley said, prove that
he had no intention of distributing any pamphlets, and proved
that he had no involvement in the abolition movement. To
testify to Crandall's character, his lawyers had recruited prominent citizens
who had known Crandell in New York, including former Congressman
At Judson, spoke highly of Crandell and even revealed that
(33:02):
Crandell had opposed his sister's integrated school and begged her
to shut it down. None of Crandall's New York friends
or acquaintances had ever heard him speak about abolition. The
defense lawyers also brought in Crandall's former employers, mister and
Missus Austin, who offered an explanation for how Crandall had
even gotten the boxes of pamphlets to begin with. When
(33:24):
Crandall had lived with the family in New York, a
visitor named mister Dennison had left behind some anti slavery
pamphlets ahead of Crandall's move to d C. Missus Austin
had helped him by packing up his library and scientific
instruments she had, she testified, used the abolitionist pamphlets as
packing material to wrap the instruments. In jail, the night
(33:48):
after his arrest, Crandall had been questioned by Key and
several magistrates about the origins of the pamphlets. His explanation
had been garbled and occasionally contradictory, which Key pointed to
as evidence of his duplicity, but the general outline of
his story mashed what the Austins were saying, and Bradley
(34:09):
pointed out that Crandall had been questioned under extreme duress,
barricaded in a building as the crowds outside called for
his head. More than making any point about Crandall's character
or providing logistical explanations for the pamphlets, Cox and Bradley
used their time to argue against the validity of Key's
(34:29):
moral and legal case. Bradley wondered how Key could argue
that these pamphlets were so dangerous that even the transmission
to one person could lead to general rebellion, while also
reading the pamphlets aloud in the courtroom, guaranteeing that their
audience multiplied exponentially. Cox followed up on his colleague's point,
(34:51):
discussing how the language of the pamphlets was no different
than that used by thousands of Americans as they discussed slavery.
There is not one sentiment or one expression bearing upon
the subject of slavery, Cox said in his closing, which
I shall not show you to have been uttered by slaveholders,
by the statesmen and the legislators, the divines, the lawyers,
(35:14):
and the philosophers of the South. He proceeded to do
just that pulling passages from a variety of famous texts,
including ones by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Francis Scott,
key himself to show that there was nothing new or
particularly libelous about the text of these pamphlets. What's more,
Cox continued, was that possessing a pamphlet could not be
(35:38):
considered a crime if quote, I shall be indictable without
any overt act for sedition and subject as crandall has
been to an incarceration for eight months preparatory to trial,
and then denounced before the community in the unmeasured terms
(35:58):
you have applied to him and be told that for
such an offense as having in my private custody under
my own lock and key publications such as he had,
or for loaning one to an intelligent friend for his
single perusal, I shall encounter such consequences. Then to escape
(36:21):
such tyranny, would I fly to the remotest parts of
this once free land. This trial, Cox implied, was an
affront to the principles of free speech and democracy that
the nation held so dear Key, in his closing, would
(36:44):
not be subdued. He rejected Cox's comparison of the pamphlet's
contents to his own speeches, saying that he had never
called for emancipation, let alone insurrection. His speech had been
critical of the slave trade, but not of the slave
system or of the government, unlike the pamphlets, which, in
(37:05):
his words, declared that every law which sanctioned slavery is
null and void, that we have no more rights over
our slaves than they have over us. Does this not
bring the Constitution and the laws under which we live
into contempt? Is it not a plain invitation to resist them?
He asked, Summoning up his most fiery rhetoric, he argued
(37:28):
that what was at stake was not freedom of speech,
but the safety of the nation and the right of
Southerners to their way of life. If the jury allowed
men like Crandall to quote whisper their principles in chimney
corners and in byways, to come to the South in
a cold blooded manner and deluge the country with blood
(37:51):
and give the dwellings to the flames, then there was
an end to all protection for the lives and property
of the people of the se Would the jurors men
of the South themselves allow this? Francis Scott Key hoped
they would not. With this, the jurors were dismissed to deliberate.
(38:15):
It did not take them long. After only an hour
or so of discussion, the jury returned a verdict on
the charges of seditious libel. Ruben Crandall had been found
not guilty. Ruben Crandall was free, but he did not
(38:37):
yet feel safe. The papers and public officials who had
once condemned him were now commenting on the weakness of
Key's case, but Crandall knew that many Washingtonians still saw
him as a scourge. Terrified that a mob might seize him,
Crandall asked to be taken back to jail until his
safety was guaranteed. Later that night, Congressman William Jackson, a
(39:00):
prominent anti slavery activist, arrived at the jail to personally
escort Crandall home, but Crandall was too afraid to return
to Georgetown. Jackson invited Crandall to come to his own
boarding house, where Crandall stayed for several hours before fleeing
to his parents' home in Connecticut. Writing to a friend,
(39:21):
Jackson wrote of the toll the past nine months had
taken on Crandall. Thus an amiable and respectable young man's
prospects are all overturned, his property sacrificed, and his health
greatly injured by long imprisonment, and after a full proof
of his innocence, he is compelled to flee from the
(39:42):
capital of his country for his life, like a felon
in the dark. Jackson was not exaggerating about the ill
effects imprisonment and had on Crandall. Sometime during his pre
trial detainment, Crandall had contracted tuberculosis. His health both never
fully recovered, and he died less than two years later,
(40:04):
on January eighteenth, eighteen thirty eight, aged only thirty two.
He may have been acquitted, but Key's persecution had ultimately
meant a death sentence for Reuben Crandall. Crandall's actual role
in the abolitionist movement is uncertain. Though Bradley and Cox
had made a compelling case that Crandall had only accidentally
(40:26):
obtained the pamphlets, there were hints that he was more
involved in the abolitionist movement than the public knew. Remember
how Crandall's former employer, mister Austen, testified to a man
leaving anti slavery pamphlets at his home after visiting Crandall.
That visitor was none other than Charles Denison, editor of
(40:48):
the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and a leader of the
American Anti Slavery Society. Key seems not to have realized
who Denison was during Austin's testimony and did not dig
into the relationship further, so it remained unexplored. Crandall's true
connection to the abolitionist movement is still unknown. There are
(41:10):
two more key players in the Riots and Trials of
eighteen thirty five whose fates are worth mentioning. Beverly Snow,
the black restaateeur whose business had been destroyed by the mob,
tried to return to Washington in the summer of eighteen
thirty six. He was immediately recognized and harassed by a
(41:31):
group of white men, who chased him down and threatened
to lynch him. Luckily, the mayor, a personal friend of Snow,
intervened and convinced the mob to release Snow. After spending
a night in jail for his own safety and undergoing
a public interrogation, Snow and his wife left for Canada.
(41:51):
He became a successful businessman in Toronto, opening several popular
restaurants before dying in eighteen fifty six. The other man
at the heart of Washington's tumultuous year was Arthur Bowen,
the enslaved nineteen year old accused of attempting to murder
his owner, Anna Thornton. Thornton had come to believe that
(42:12):
Bowen never meant to harm her, and in the lead
up to Bowen's trial, she had petitioned endlessly for his release.
Key denied her at every turn. Arthur Bowen was convicted
of attempted murder and sentenced to death on January twenty third,
eighteen thirty six. Horrified, Thornton intensified her campaign to free him.
(42:34):
After a series of stays of execution, President Andrew Jackson
issued Bowen a pardon on June twenty fifth, eighteen thirty six.
But a reprieve from prison did not mean freedom for
Arthur Bowen. Anna Thornton believed that he would never be
safe in Washington, d c. Given the notoriety of his
alleged crime. She had always made it clear in her
(42:57):
petitions to the authorities that she would see sell Bowen
out of the city if he was freed. Upon his release,
Thornton did just that. We know that Bowen was sold
to a man in Florida. In June eighteen thirty seven,
he wrote to his mother Maria that his new owner
mistreated him. Thornton arranged for the new owner to sell
(43:18):
Bowen to a man who worked in the pensacle And
Navy Yard, and in eighteen thirty eight Bowen wrote to
his mother that he was doing well and working on
a steamboat. But after that he disappears from the historical record.
We do not know the ultimate fate of the teenaged
boy whose drunken actions on an August night sparked a
(43:38):
riot in the nation's capital and led to his own
exile from the only home he had ever known. Unlike
Arthur Bowen, Francis Scott Key is firmly enshrined in history.
The words he wrote in eighteen fourteen are sung daily
(43:59):
in the school room, on the sports field, and in
the halls of government. Though he was criticized for his
actions in the Crandell case, Key continued on as District
attorney for another two years. After eventually resigning from the
post in eighteen forty, Key worked in private practice until
his death on January eleventh, eighteen forty three, his legacy
(44:22):
as a lawyer would be a checkered one. In his
earliest years of practice, Key had defended people of color
against abuses of power. But as district Attorney, Key had
abused the power of his office against the most vulnerable
members of society, all in the interest of maintaining the
status quo. He is certainly not alone in this. Throughout
(44:45):
American history, particularly in times of unrest, the law has
been used to penalize the most outspoken among us. During
Reuben Crandall's trial, one of the judges, Buckner Thruston, recognized
the slippery slope that Key he was hurtling down with
this case. Threston, a slave owner himself, was not sympathetic
(45:06):
towards the abolitionist cause, but he was a passionate defender
of Crandall's right to express his opinions. Every man has
an unquestionable right to his own moral or religious sentiments.
There is no crime in this, Threston said, as part
of his descent on a certain evidentiary ruling. He further
(45:27):
noted that quote bad as the tendency of these writings
may be, I know not how much less danger would
result if, led by our feeling, we bend the rules
and principles of law from expediency or the supposed political
(45:48):
necessity of convicting the accused. If we invade the panoply
which the law has provided for the protection of the
accused against arbitrary or vindictive judgments, we establish precedence, the
evil consequences of which cannot be calculated. In other words,
(46:10):
Francis Scott Key may have thought he was protecting the
land of the Free and the home of the brave
by trying Reuben Crandell, But had he succeeded in convicting
the man, he would have created an even greater threat
to our democracy. That's the story of the United States v.
Reuben Crandall. After the break, one more look into Francis
(46:33):
Scott Key's surprising influence on the US legal system. Francis
Scott Key's most impactful legacy, besides the extremely difficult to
sing national anthem that he wrote, might be the lobbying
(46:53):
work that he performed on behalf of one of his
best friends. Key first met Roger Taney in the late
seventeen nineties when they were both practicing law in Fredericktown, Maryland.
The two men immediately hit it off, and their relationship
only grew closer when Taney married Key's sister Anne in
eighteen oh six. Taney, an ambitious man who admitted to
(47:16):
desiring quote high rank and social position, was drawn to
politics before Key was. He became Attorney General from Maryland
in eighteen twenty seven, and then United States Attorney General
in eighteen thirty one. Francis Scott. Key was instrumental in
securing the latter job for Taeney, negotiating the resignation of
(47:38):
the previous Attorney General and clearing the way for his friend.
While Attorney General, Taeney became extremely close to President Andrew Jackson,
and when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall died in
July eighteen thirty five, the President nominated Taeney as Marshall's replacement. Again,
(47:58):
Key acted as Teeney's chief support, lobbying senators to confirm
the appointment. On March fifteenth, eighteen thirty six, the Senate
approved Tainey, and two weeks later he was sworn in
as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Twenty years later, Taeney would author the Court's decision in
(48:20):
dread Scott v. Sandford. This was the notorious opinion that
declared that people of African descent were quote beings of
an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the
white race, and not entitled to legal protections or the
(48:40):
right of citizenship. Further, the dread Scott decision denied Congress's
power to ban slavery in federal territories. The outcry over
this decision is often regarded as one of the inciting
incidents of the Civil War. Just how the dread Scott
case would have been decided without Tane is impossible to know,
(49:02):
but the inflammatory racist language he used in writing the
opinion made him infamous and sparked outrage across the country,
and it's likely that Teaney would not have risen as
high as he did, allowing him to have as much
impact as he had without the help of his best friend,
Francis Scott Key. Thank you for listening to History on Trial.
(49:27):
The main sources for this episode were the trial transcripts
and Jefferson Morley's book Snowstorm in August, Washington City, Francis
Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of eighteen thirty five.
For a full bibliography, as well as a transcript of
this episode with citations, please visit our website History on
(49:48):
Trial podcast dot com. History on Trial is written and
hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Trevor Young and
executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward.
(50:09):
Learn more about the show at History on Trial podcast
dot com and follow us on Instagram at History on
Trial and on Twitter at Underscore History on Trial. Find
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