"Are you willing, gentlemen, to abandon your country; to permit it to be taken from you, and occupied by the Abolitionist, according to whose taste it is to associate and amalgamate with the Negro?" he said. "Or, gentlemen, on the other hand, are there laws in this community to defend you from the immediate Abolitionist, who would open upon you the floodgates of such extensive wickedness and mischief?"
Bradley replied that Key's case was based on a tissue of supposition and that punishing Reuben Crandall for sedition would set a dangerous precedent that would endanger every American's constitutional rights.
Anna Maria Thornton as painted by her friend Gilbert Stuart in 1804. In August 1835 Thornton was reportedly assaulted by a young ax-wielding Negro slave in her F Street home in August 1835. The incident set off Washington's first race riot.
(Courtesy National Gallery of Art)
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The jury deliberated for three hours and delivered a stinging rebuke to Key: The defendant was not guilty.
William Lloyd Garrison, the crusading editor of the anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator, hailed Crandall's acquittal and scorned the prosecutor. Key, he wrote, "seems to have cherished deep malignity of purpose" toward this "excellent but suffering man."
The sad truth was that Reuben Crandall, even though acquitted, already had been condemned to die, if only inadvertently. During his incarceration in the squalid city jail, he had contracted tuberculosis. After his release, he set sail for Kingston, Jamaica, to recuperate. It was no use. As he grew sicker, he welcomed God's grace. He never mentioned Key in final fond letters to his family. He would die in January 1838.
BY THE SUMMER OF 1836, some normality had returned to the community of free blacks of Washington. The Rev. Cook had come back from self-imposed exile to rebuild his church and school. Absalom Shadd, a free black man from Canada, would soon take over Snow's restaurant. The city imposed some new restrictions on free Negroes, but life would go on. (And on and on. Today, the church founded by Cook, 15th Street Presbyterian, is still going strong. The corner where Beverly Snow served dinner is occupied by a pricey steakhouse that caters, as he did, to the political class.)
The Rev. John F. Cook was targeted by a white mob in the so-called "Snow Riot" of August 1835. Cook worked as a teacher, preacher, government messenger and anti-liquor and anti-slavery activist. ( Cook Family Collection, Howard University)
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In June 1836, President Jackson dealt another blow to Key's vision of justice in the nation's capital. He ordered another respite for Arthur Bowen, this one lasting until August. Perhaps sensing advantage, Anna Thornton pressed on. She asked one of the judges in Arthur's trial, Buckner Thruston, to intercede with the president. It was a savvy choice because Thruston was a former senator from Kentucky and a political ally of Jackson's. Thruston wrote a letter to Jackson telling him that Arthur was inebriated and "temporarily insane" on the night of the alleged assault. Thruston said he supported Anna Thornton's petition for a pardon.
And then tragedy struck Francis Scott Key.
His son Daniel had just returned from a tour of duty with the Navy in the Mediterranean. Like Arthur Bowen, Daniel Key was 19 years old and a world of trouble to his elders. On the voyage home, he had quarreled with a fellow sailor named Sherburne and challenged him to a duel. Back in Washington, Daniel Key encountered Sherburne and challenged him again. In late June, they met at a dueling ground in Bladensburg, and Sherburne shot young Key dead.
When the body of Daniel Key was brought back to the Key house on C Street, the father faced a severe test of his religious faith. People who were there reported a scene of utter emotional desolation.
"This melancholy affair has caused a very deep sensation in our community," reported the Metropolitan newspaper. Sympathy for the Key family was said to be "strong and universal."
Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was pity. Perhaps he just wanted to be done with it. But three days after the duel, Andrew Jackson finally relented. He took up his pen and scrawled an order: "Let the Negro boy John Arthur Bowen be pardoned." Thinking his gesture should have patriotic impact, the president added that the pardon should "take effect on the 4th of July."
What Francis Scott Key thought of Anna Thornton's improbable victory is not known, but he seems not to have been proud of his actions in 1835 and 1836. In an admiring 1911 biography, a descendant of Key's made no mention of the pardon of Arthur Bowen or of the acquittal of Reuben Crandall.
Perhaps even Key came to recognize, before his death in 1843, that he had erred. Certainly, his twin defeats in 1836 constituted a modest victory for American justice.
Anna attended to the necessary final details to secure Arthur's safety. In return for the pardon, she agreed to sell Arthur to a friend of the president who promised to get Arthur training to become a servant on a steamship. A practical woman, Anna wanted to be paid $800 for Arthur. She reluctantly settled for $750.
On July 4, 1836, the day Arthur's release took effect, Ann Brodeau, Anna's long-suffering mother, finally expired. She died unaware that Arthur, the beloved boy whom she had watched grow to manhood, was going to live.
In the face of such cascading emotions, Anna wrote of her hopes for Arthur:
"I never intended to sell him for life, but could not now avoid & hope & pray that he may lead a new life and be happy."
A few days later, Arthur Bowen left Washington and embarked on his future in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Jefferson Morley, a Washingtonpost.com staff writer, answered quetions about this article on Feb. 7, 2005.
