![]() Moreover, several of the pamphlets apprehended in Crandall’s apartment attacked the American Colonization Society directly, which made it seem to the jury as if Key, a known supporter of the group, was out to settle scores rather than to seek justice. He could never prove that Crandall intended to foment rebellion. It was an open appeal to white supremacy masking the fact that Key didn’t really have a case. In his closing statement, Key continued this line of attack by arguing that to not prosecute abolitionists would be to hand the country over to those who wish to amalgamate the races and offer equal citizenship to people of color. “The 'great moral and political evil’ of which I speak, is supposed to be slavery – but is it not plainly the whole colored race? But if I did say this of slavery, as I am quite willing to say it, here and on all fit occasions, do I not also in the same breath speak of emancipation as a far greater evil?” While trying to fend off allegations from Crandall’s defense that he himself had called slavery a “great moral and political evil,” he said: In the courtroom, Key defended the right of people to own slaves and built his case around the idea that anti-slavery activism fomented rebellion among enslaved people and was thus a matter of public safety. Nevertheless, Key took this as his chance to make an example of abolitionism once and for all. The evidence was skimpy: Police had found an assortment of anti-slavery pamphlets in Crandall’s office with instructions to distribute. In a case that made national headlines, Key, then district attorney for Washington, charged local botanist Rueben Crandall with trying to foment rebellion among area slaves. The 1836 trial of Reuben Crandall was Key’s final public performance. Abolitionists responded by making him a villain, often mocking the “ Star-Spangled Banner” by adding the words “in the home of the free and the land of the oppressed.” A final gesture He became more conservative, and he eventually began attacking abolitionists as rabble-rousers intent on sowing the seeds of rebellion.īy the 1830s Key had become an open enemy of the anti-slavery movement and of anti-slavery publishers in particular. When hit with the winds of change, he moved in the opposite direction. He never left the American Colonization Society. Key did not find a home in this new movement. Their goal was the immediate end to slavery, not the tepid and undeniably racist gradualism of the American Colonization Society. It was also the abolitionism of the American Antislavery Society, formed in 1831. This was the abolitionism of activists like William Lloyd Garrison – publisher of “ The Liberator,” America’s leading anti-slavery newspaper – and Fredrick Douglass, the escaped slave and renowned activist and orator who would become the most famous abolitionist in the country. Moreover, opposition to the American Colonization Society in the 1820s and ‘30s gave rise to a new and more radical form of “immediatist” abolitionism. ![]() And most Black leaders scoffed at the idea of leaving the U.S. Free people of color denounced the organization as serving the interest of slaveholders. Enemy of anti-slavery movementĪs Key evolved into a strong supporter of colonization, the American Colonization Society fell under attack. ![]() Key was an original member, and he would later become one of the organization’s staunchest defenders. Founded in 1816, the group, run mostly by Southerners, supported the migration of freed people to Africa. Instead, he channeled his anti-slavery views through the American Colonization Society. Corbis via Getty ImagesĪs a result, Key was never completely comfortable with slavery.Īs a young, D.C.-based lawyer, he argued against the international slave trade and defended enslaved people in court, including those suing for freedom. ![]()
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