WEBVTT - The United States v. Reuben Crandall 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.800 You are listening to History on Trial, a production of 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:17.040 iHeart Podcasts. Listener discretion advised. In August eighteen thirty one, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:23.160 rebellion broke out in Southampton County, Virginia. Like the American 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:28.360 Revolution only fifty years before, the revolt in Southampton was 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:33.280 motivated by a desire for freedom, but the stakes here 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:39.360 were much graver than taxation without representation. The rebels in 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:43.800 eighteen thirty one were enslaved and free black people, led 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.640 by a charismatic enslaved man named Nat Turner, and they 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.639 were fighting for their freedom. Over the course of two 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.640 nights in late August, Nat Turner and his followers rode 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.880 from plantation to plantation, freeing enslaved people and killing their 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.960 masters before they were stopped by white authorities on the 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:07.560 morning of August twenty third. By that time, more than 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:13.240 fifty white Virginians were dead. Nat Turner's rebellion sent shockwaves 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.600 through the United States. Slave uprisings were not uncommon. The 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.520 historian Herbert Aptecker identified at least two hundred and fifty 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.720 revolts and conspiracies throughout the history of American slavery, but 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:30.360 the scale and violence of Turner's rebellion was unprecedented. The 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:34.280 violent retribution against Southampton's black community in the wake of 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:39.280 the rebellion was even deadlier than Turner's rebellion itself. Mobs 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.839 and militiamen killed dozens of free and enslaved black people, 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:47.480 many of whom had no affiliation with Turner. Still, all 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:50.480 that slave owners could think about was that they might 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:56.760 be next. One such worried slave owner was Francis Scott Key. Yes, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:00.560 that Francis Scott Key, author of Our National Anthem, which 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.920 features lyrics extolling the Land of the Free. Though Key 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.440 publicly criticized the cruelty of the slave trade, he owned 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.040 slaves himself, most of whom worked on his Maryland estate 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.760 and at his Washington, d c. Home. It was only 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:18.880 a matter of time Key fretted before a rebellion like 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.800 nat Turner's broke out in his neighborhood. Four years later, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:29.200 on August fourth, eighteen thirty five, Key's fears appeared to 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.320 come true. In the middle of the night, Anna Thornton, 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.800 a prominent Washington socialite whose late husband had designed the 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:44.320 US capital, awoke to a terrifying sight, standing silhouetted in 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.440 the door frame of her bedroom was a figure clutching 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:53.320 an axe. She recognized the man. It was Arthur Bowen, 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:59.840 an enslaved teenager who Thornton owned. Thornton also owned Bowen's mother, Maria, 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.680 who was asleep in the same room that night. Terrified, 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.280 Thornton raced out of the house and on to the street, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.520 screaming for help. In the meantime, Maria managed to get 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.880 her son out of the house and Arthur Bowen disappeared 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:19.040 into the darkness. Bowen had been drunk, Maria realized, so 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.600 drunk that he might not have even known what he 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:26.640 was doing. But to Anna Thornton's neighbors, Bowen's drunkenness was 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.640 no excuse. He had appeared in a white woman's bedroom 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.000 with an axe, and then he had fled with the 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:38.160 axe still in his hand. This was not Turner all 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:43.040 over again. It had to be. Newspapers leapt hungrily on 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:47.200 the story, embellishing as they went. Bowen was a maniac, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.520 they said, driven to murder by the shocking language of 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.720 abolitionist pamphlets that had recently begun popping up across Washington. 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:58.880 When Bowen turned himself in at his mother's urging three 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:04.640 days later, Washingtonians bade for his blood. Francis Scott Key, 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.360 now the District Attorney for the District of Columbia, was 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.840 responsible for seeing that justice was done. To Key's credit, 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.560 he was an interested in mob justice. When an unruly 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.520 crowd gathered outside the jail and called for Bowen to 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.520 be lynched, he talked them down. But he also wasn't 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:28.640 interested in granting clemency to Bowen, despite the protestations of 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:33.880 Bowen's owner and alleged intended victim, Anna Thornton, who had 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:36.960 now come to believe that Bowen had simply been drunk 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.680 and never meant to hurt her. Key wasn't really that 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.400 interested in Bowen at all. Truth be told, he cared 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.880 more about what he believed had motivated Bowen, the abolitionist 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.520 pamphlets that had inundated the city's mailboxes that summer. These 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.479 pamphlets Key thought were more dangerous than one man with 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:01.640 an axe would. Their graphic depictions of the horrors of 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:06.920 slavery and their frank appeals for immediate emancipation, these pamphlets 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.960 might very well inspire a whole army of men with axes. 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:15.040 In Keys view, the pamphlets had to be shut down, 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.039 and Key thought he knew the pamphlet's source, an unassuming 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:24.440 recent transplant from the North named Reuben Crandall, whose neighbors 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:29.040 claimed he kept abolitionist pamphlets in his office. Quickly, Key 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.039 convened a grand jury, who granted him a warrant to 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:36.280 search Crandall's home and office. This search would set off 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:40.200 a chain of events more shocking and destructive than anything 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.560 Arthur Bowen had ever done, and lead to a trial 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.599 that questioned the very nature of the right to free speech. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.080 Welcome to history on trial. I'm your host, Mira Hayward. 0:05:53.839 --> 0:06:04.360 This week the United States the Ruben Crandall. By the 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.440 time of Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, it 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.479 had been more than two decades since the act. Francis 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:15.200 Scott Key is best known for today writing the lyrics 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.839 to the Star Spangled Banner. Key had written the lyrics 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:23.240 originally a poem called Defense of Fort McHenry in eighteen fourteen, 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.360 inspired by events he witnessed during the War of eighteen twelve. 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.000 Key composed the poem to fit the meter of a 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:35.440 popular British song. After the poem was printed, it quickly 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.839 caught on appearing in newspapers across the country with a 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.240 note about the tune it could be sung to. The 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:46.040 resulting song, which became known as the Star Spangled Banner, 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.560 was a mainstay of patriotic performances throughout the nineteenth century, 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.599 though it wouldn't become the official national anthem until nineteen 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.640 thirty one. Key was well known in his day for 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:01.480 his work on the poem and song. Key was only 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:06.320 an amateur poet. His true profession was lawyering. He worked 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.400 in private practice for more than three decades before a 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.200 close political relationship with President Andrew Jackson led to his 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.920 nomination as District Attorney for the District of Columbia in 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:21.040 eighteen thirty three. In his early career, Key had been 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:24.480 an idealist and had defended black people in court often 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.280 enough to be known by some as the Black's lawyer. 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:32.200 Jefferson Morley, in his book about the events surrounding the 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:37.119 Crandall trial, titled Snowstorm in August, describes the young Key 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:42.560 as a pious dreamer, a sensitive poet, a tranquil philanthropist. 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:49.560 But after becoming close with President Jackson, Key changed. Morley 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:54.320 calls this new Key a militant warrior of galvanized conviction, 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.560 Key became a political operator determined to defend the status 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.679 quo as defined by the president. Part of that status 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:08.600 quo was slavery. As district attorney, Key controlled a group 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.040 of constables ostensibly charged with enforcing the law. What his 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.240 constables mainly did, however, was harassed people of color for 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:21.600 fun and for profit. When an editor named Ben Lundy 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.840 wrote in his newspaper that quote, there is neither mercy 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.800 nor justice for colored people in this district, Key was 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:35.800 furious and filed charges against Lundy. Despite Key's role in 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:40.440 prosecuting runaway slaves and anti slavery activists, he still liked 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:44.000 to think of himself as a humanitarian. Key was a 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:48.480 founding member of the American Colonization Society, a group which 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:53.200 advocated for the resettlement of freeborn black Americans and emancipated 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:58.320 slaves in Africa. Colonization proponents argued that their cause was 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.439 in the best interest of black Americas and that they 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.480 only wanted to provide Black Americans with their own country. 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.559 But the truth was that many of the Colonization Society's 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.920 members were racist and believed that a racially integrated society 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:17.680 was impossible. By the eighteen thirties, a portion of anti 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:22.800 slavery advocates had begun to reject colonization and supported immediate 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:29.760 emancipation instead. To ardent colonization believers like Key, immediate emancipation 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:35.000 was a horrifying idea. As district attorney, he was determined 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:38.280 to keep Washington, d c. Free of even a whiff 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:43.960 of abolition, and in Key's mind, Ruben Crandall practically wreeked 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:52.880 of the stuff. First of all, Reuben Crandell was from 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:57.000 the North New York to be exact home to the 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:01.400 American Anti Slavery Society, the abolition group founded in eighteen 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:05.640 thirty three. Several of Crandall's friends from Yale, where he 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.640 had earned a medical degree in eighteen twenty eight, were 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:12.880 high ranking members of the American Anti Slavery Society, and 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:17.280 Crandall had an even closer tie to advocates of racial integration. 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:22.160 In eighteen thirty two, his school teacher, sister Prudence, had 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:27.560 become notorious nationwide for welcoming a black woman into her classroom. 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:32.080 When Prudence's white students quit her school in protest, Prudence 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.480 decided to double down and make her school only for 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:41.280 black women. An angry mob eventually forced Prudence to flee Connecticut, 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.920 but she never abandoned her belief in the equal right 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:50.240 to education. At first glance, Crandell himself didn't seem as 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.360 politically active as his friends and family. He was known 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:57.240 to be an outspoken advocate for temperance abstaining from alcohol, 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.720 but besides that, his main passionate sae of his medical 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.600 work was botany. Twenty nine years old, he had originally 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.360 come to Washington, d c. As the live in physician 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.800 for a family from Peakskill, New York. Liking what he 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:15.080 saw of DC, Crandall had decided to stay. He secured 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.520 a position as a science teacher at a school in 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:22.360 nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and found a home and office space 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.960 in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. A month after Crandall's 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:32.240 arrival in June eighteen thirty five, mysterious pamphlets began appearing 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:37.320 all across Washington. Copies of abolitionist papers like The Anti 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:42.920 Slavery Reporter and The Emancipator arrived by the bushel. These 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:47.880 pamphlets spoke out strongly against slavery, discussing the cruelty of 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:52.600 slave masters, the humanity of enslaved people, and the arguments 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:59.000 for immediate emancipation. The pamphlets were addressed to influential political, intellectual, 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:04.160 and religious leaders across the city. Government officials were baffled 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:09.280 where had they come from. In truth, these mailings were 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.120 the work of the American Anti Slavery Society. In May 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.679 eighteen thirty five, at the Society's second annual meeting, members 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.480 had approved a plan to send pamphlets to the entire country. 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.400 They wanted to shake white Americans out of their apathy 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:30.520 about slavery. They wanted to start a conversation. They would 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.640 certainly get their wish, but even the most radical of 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:39.480 the Anti Slavery Society's members could not foresee what impact 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:43.560 their pamphlet plan would have in Washington, d c. In 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:47.079 the summer of eighteen thirty five, no one in Washington 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:50.480 knew yet about the Anti Slavery Society's role in the 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.600 pamphlet campaign. No one was quite sure where these pamphlets 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:58.960 were coming from. But Reuben Crandall's neighbors had an idea. 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.520 Crandell seemed like a mild mannered man, several Georgetown residents 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:09.400 had uncovered a shocking secret when visiting his office. Alongside 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:14.440 his boxes of plant specimens and medical instruments, visitors noticed 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:19.840 that Crandell possessed many abolitionist pamphlets. Some of the pamphlets 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.880 people observed even had a handwritten note at the top 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:30.120 read and circulate. When news of what Crandall's neighbors had 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.199 seen reached Francis Scott Key, he was sure that he 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.400 had found the man responsible for sending out the pamphlets 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:44.199 to prominent Washingtonians and in turn inspiring Arthur Bowen's alleged 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:49.840 attempted murder of Anna Thornton. On August tenth, having obtained 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.360 a warrant to search Crandall's office and home, Key sent 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.440 two of his constables to detain the man. He believed 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.679 that by arresting Crandall, he could cut off the source 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:05.960 of agitation at its root, but in reality, Key's actions 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:15.720 would spark something far far worse. Word quickly spread that 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:20.480 a man was being arrested for, in Key's words, exhibiting 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:26.160 and circulating dangerous and insurrectionary writings and thereby attempting to 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:31.560 excite an insurrection. As two constables searched Crandall's residence. A 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:35.360 crowd gathered outside, waiting to hear what the men found. 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.520 They would not be disappointed. When one of the constables, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.240 Madison Jeffers, stepped out to fetch a torch, a voice 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.800 in the crowd asked how many pamphlets he had found, 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.880 More than I expected. Jeffers responded, we found one hundred 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:55.520 and fifty, maybe one hundred and sixty pamphlets. The crowd 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.680 was outraged. We ought to take the damned rascal and 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.720 hang him up on one of those trees. A man shouted, 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.360 Seeing that the crowd might just do such a thing. 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.440 Crandall and the constables agreed that jail was the safest 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.960 place for him. As the group made its way by 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.920 carriage to the jail behind City Hall, the constables started 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:22.120 questioning Crandall. Why did he have so many pamphlets? They 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:27.680 asked to get information from Crandall said. When they pushed 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.880 him on why he had multiple copies of certain pamphlets, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.680 Crandall refused to explain, but also stood firm on his principles. 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.800 I'm an anti slavery man, he said, don't you think 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:44.000 it very dangerous? At the present time to set all 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:49.000 the slaves free. Constable Henry Robertson asked Crandall did not. 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:54.720 From Crandall's responses, it became clear to the Constables that 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:59.440 Crandall believed that quote the slaves ought to be all 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.400 free and had as much right to be free as 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:07.400 we had. To the constables, Crandall's proclamations were as good 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:12.480 as a confession. Yes, he had denied distributing the pamphlets 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:14.960 when they asked him about it in the house, but 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:19.640 he wasn't denying his abolitionist views. What else could an 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.800 abolitionist want with so many pamphlets if not to distribute them. 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.560 Don't say too much or speak too freely, Constable Robertson 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.760 warrened Crandall, we might be witnesses against you. The rest 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:36.160 of the carriage ride passed intent silence. Upon arriving at 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.080 the jail, Crandall was escorted to a cell on the 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.760 first floor and locked in. Back in Georgetown, the crowd 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:49.440 gathered outside Crandall's house was growing increasingly angry. They had 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.320 been denied the chance to lynch not one but two men, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.760 both Arthur Bowen and Reuben Crandall, sat safely, if uncomfortably, 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:04.320 in jail cells. What kind of justice was this? Over 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.760 the next two days, their discontent only grew. Many in 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.560 the crowd were white men who felt they had been 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.879 replaced in the labor market by d c's growing population 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.040 of freed black men. Many in the crowd were also 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.919 poor and felt that they had suffered disproportionately in the 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:26.120 recent economic crisis caused by President Jackson's war with the banks. 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.040 These men were sick of the freedoms granted to black 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.800 people just when they felt their own voices were being suppressed. 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:39.359 They were racist, and they were angry. Arthur Bowen and 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:44.440 Reuben Crandell's alleged crimes were the final straw. On Wednesday, 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:49.760 August twelfth, more than three thousand men gathered in Judiciary Square, 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:53.520 where both City Hall and the jail stood, and demanded 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:58.119 the authority's hand over the prisoners. Key, who had just 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.639 finished conducting an interrogation of the terrified Crandall, managed to 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:07.840 calm the crowd, telling them Crandall will be punished if 0:18:07.880 --> 0:18:12.359 you let the trial progress. Grudgingly, the crowd dispersed and 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:21.720 slunk off home. But the crowd's anger wasn't quelled for long. 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.600 The next morning, a mob swarmed the Epicurean Eating House, 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:30.560 a restaurant run by a free black man named Beverly Snow. 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.440 A rumor had spread that Snow, a well known larger 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:40.600 than life character, had spoken inappropriately, either to or about 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.560 a white woman. That was enough for the crowd to 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.960 demand his life. Snow managed to slip out the back 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.280 of his restaurant and run to safety, but the mob 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:56.919 destroyed his business, and that was only the beginning of 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.439 the violence. The mob split into small raiding parties and 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:06.040 began destroying black owned businesses and cultural centers across the city. 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:12.199 They tore apart schoolhouses and boarding houses, brothels, and churches. 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:17.960 It was a targeted campaign designed to terrorize DC's black residents. 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.960 These events became known as the Snow Riot after the 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:30.720 destruction of Beverly Snow's restaurant. Metropolitan newspaper reporting on the 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:35.800 violence said, the property of every colored person who rendered 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:41.399 themselves obnoxious to the mob was devoted to destruction for 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:46.440 the crime of being obnoxious or, in other words, of thriving, 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:52.119 or even of simply existing. Many black people lost everything 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:56.680 they had spent a lifetime building up for twenty four hours, 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:01.760 the mob held Washington hostage. By the morning of August fourteenth, 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.720 their energy spent, the men began to disperse, though small 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.399 groups continued to wreak havoc for the next few nights. 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.359 Washingtonians would soon learn that they were not the only 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:18.200 cities subject to such chaos. Throughout eighteen thirty five, mobs 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:21.520 popped up all across the country, most of them stirred 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.080 to anger by the same anti slavery pamphlet campaign that 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:29.520 had led to Reuben Crandall's arrest. Many white Americans saw 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:33.760 the American Anti Slavery Society's writings as a direct attack 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:36.880 on their way of life, and they did not hesitate 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:41.200 to fight back physically. The United States had been founded 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:45.520 on a central contradiction, a land of liberty undergirded by 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.200 the institution of slavery, and in the summer of eighteen 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:54.480 thirty five, that contradiction seemed to reach ahead. The rule 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.960 of law, writes Jefferson Morley, was buckling under the realities 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:04.560 of a slave holding democracy. As District Attorney Francis Scott 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.680 Key both derived his power from that rule of law 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:12.560 and was also sworn to protect it, but his actions 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:16.120 after the Snow riots showed that he was more interested 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:21.480 in preserving the system of slavery than the rule of law. Yes, 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:25.000 his office arrested and charged a dozen of the rioters, 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.919 but when a jury recommended mercy in sentencing after the 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:33.080 men's trial in March eighteen thirty six, he did not object. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.920 Though he did not condone rioting, he was more interested 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:42.280 in teaching a lesson to the radical abolitionists, who, in 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.480 his opinion, were most responsible for the damage done by 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:52.239 the mob. He wanted to send the abolitionists a message 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:57.280 they were not welcome in his city. That message would come, 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:03.600 he hoped, from the conviction and punishment of Reuben Crandall. 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.840 By the time his trial began on Friday, April fifteenth, 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:18.040 eighteen thirty six, Ruben Crandall had spent more than eight 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:22.920 months in jail. The city jail was a dismal place, 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:27.560 and Crandall was feeling the effects of his imprisonment. Reporters 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:33.000 in the courtroom noticed how pale he looked. Fortunately, Crandall 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.639 had his lawyers to support him. His family had hired 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:41.320 two respected Washington lawyers, Richard Cox and Joseph Bradley. After 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:44.600 his arrest, and the men had been by Crandall's side 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.240 every step of the way. They stood by him now 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:51.560 as he pled not guilty to the indictment in which 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:57.800 Key had accused Crandall of having quote most unlawfully, mischievously, 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:04.120 and seditiously contrived to traduce, vilify, and bring into hatred 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:08.040 and contempt among the good citizens the laws and the 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:12.359 government of the United States. In other words, Crandall was 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:16.760 accused of having committed seditious libel. If you aren't a 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:21.480 time traveling early American lawyer, which you probably aren't, the 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:25.920 charge of seditious libel is likely an unfamiliar one. Libel 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.639 in modern legal practice is the publication of an untruth 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:33.639 which will cause harm to its subject. Seditious libel is 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:38.240 something different in two ways. First, the subject of seditious 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:42.960 libel is always the government, and second, the statement need 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:47.439 not be untruthful in order to be found libelous. Seditious 0:23:47.480 --> 0:23:51.840 libel entered the American legal practice via English law. British 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:56.200 government lawyers used seditious libel laws to punish citizens who 0:23:56.240 --> 0:24:01.080 criticize the state. In the late eighteenth century, the American 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:04.040 Federalist Party pushed for the passage of the Alien and 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:09.120 Sedition Acts, which they used to prosecute journalists who criticize them. 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:13.200 Americans were less sympathetic towards the government's use of seditious 0:24:13.280 --> 0:24:17.040 libel laws than their English forebears had been. The Alien 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:21.120 and Sedition Acts were extremely unpopular with the wider public 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:25.000 and expired in eighteen oh one. At the time of 0:24:25.040 --> 0:24:28.600 Reuben Crandall's trial in eighteen thirty six, there was no 0:24:28.680 --> 0:24:33.040 seditious libel law in the federal books. So what exactly 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:37.399 had Francis Scott Key charged Grandell with. The Answer to 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.760 this question requires a quick explainer of the District of 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:45.600 Columbia's bizarre legal status. Unlike US states, which are allowed 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:48.800 to make their own laws, the ultimate authority over DC, 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:51.760 which is not a state but a federal district, is 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:56.760 the United States Congress. The Constitution grants Congress oversight of 0:24:56.840 --> 0:25:01.200 DC's laws. The city government of wahe Washington was and 0:25:01.440 --> 0:25:05.000 is allowed to have some legal powers, but Congress retains 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:09.560 the power to oversee and overturn any local DC legislation. 0:25:10.240 --> 0:25:13.679 The eighteen thirty three Code of Laws drafted for d 0:25:13.800 --> 0:25:18.359 C contained a provision that specifically covered Reuben Crandall's crime, 0:25:19.320 --> 0:25:24.240 people in d C were prohibited from quote knowingly publishing 0:25:24.359 --> 0:25:28.560 and circulating any writing or pamphlet among the free, black 0:25:28.640 --> 0:25:32.480 or slave population of this district tending to excite a 0:25:32.560 --> 0:25:37.240 discontent or insurrection. Congress did not approve this provision when 0:25:37.280 --> 0:25:40.720 it approved the Code of Laws, but according to historian 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:46.120 Neil S. Kramer, quote, this code accurately represented legal practice 0:25:46.160 --> 0:25:49.000 in the District of Columbia at the time it was compiled. 0:25:49.400 --> 0:25:52.520 Though it lacked the authority of law, the code was 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:55.720 used by the Circuit Court. It was this code that 0:25:55.880 --> 0:25:59.560 Key was relying on to convict Crandall. Another note here 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:02.840 about to legal terminology. Most of us think the verb 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:05.720 to publish as meaning to print a text and make 0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:10.840 it publicly available, but in this legal context, publishing simply 0:26:10.960 --> 0:26:14.600 means making something known to an audience that can be 0:26:14.680 --> 0:26:18.600 as small as one person. He was relying on this 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:23.800 legal definition because, unfortunately for his case, he had only 0:26:24.040 --> 0:26:28.200 one concrete example of Reuben Crandall giving an anti slavery 0:26:28.200 --> 0:26:32.040 pamphlet to another person, and Key now called that person 0:26:32.520 --> 0:26:40.720 a man named Henry King, as his first witness. Henry 0:26:40.880 --> 0:26:44.000 King was a Washington physician whose office was just down 0:26:44.040 --> 0:26:48.199 the block from Crandall's. One day, King testified he had 0:26:48.240 --> 0:26:52.560 dropped by Crandall's office to say hello. Finding Crandall busy 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:56.480 with his botanical work, King, like any good visitor, had 0:26:56.520 --> 0:27:00.960 started to snoop. He was startled to find an abolitionist 0:27:00.960 --> 0:27:04.920 pamphlet on a table. The latitude is too far south 0:27:05.000 --> 0:27:08.480 for these things, he told Crandall, meaning that Washington was 0:27:08.520 --> 0:27:11.520 too southern of a city for Crandall to safely possess 0:27:11.560 --> 0:27:16.760 such pamphlets. Despite this warning to Crandall, though, King was 0:27:16.880 --> 0:27:20.240 curious about the pamphlet's contents and asked if he could 0:27:20.240 --> 0:27:27.120 borrow it. Crandall reluctantly agreed. Crandall's lawyer Cox objected here 0:27:27.200 --> 0:27:30.600 that King's testimony was irrelevant. He was a white man, 0:27:31.000 --> 0:27:34.159 not an enslaved or free black man. The group that 0:27:34.280 --> 0:27:37.840 d c's quasi legal code prohibited distribution of pamphlets to 0:27:39.160 --> 0:27:42.960 Key responded that King's testimony was necessary to establish a 0:27:43.080 --> 0:27:48.400 chain of evidence, and the panel of judges judges Cramch, Morsel, 0:27:48.520 --> 0:27:52.679 and Threston, agreed to admit it. Key soon began to 0:27:52.680 --> 0:27:56.120 build the chain he had alluded to. His next witness 0:27:56.200 --> 0:28:00.000 William Robinson described seeing the pamphlet that Crandall had give 0:28:00.320 --> 0:28:04.439 King and added a crucial detail. At the top of 0:28:04.480 --> 0:28:08.240 the pamphlet, there was a handwritten note that said read 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:14.200 and circulate. So Crandell hadn't simply given one person a pamphlet, 0:28:15.000 --> 0:28:18.280 he had given them a pamphlet that instructed the recipient 0:28:18.359 --> 0:28:23.200 to read the pamphlet and pass it on. It sounded damning. 0:28:24.400 --> 0:28:27.399 He next read from the pamphlets Crandall was in possession of, 0:28:28.080 --> 0:28:31.600 hoping that their abolitionist sentiments would alarm the jury and 0:28:31.640 --> 0:28:37.119 make Crandall's seditious intentions clear. In one anti colonization pamphlet, 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:42.280 the author sarcastically claimed that given the immigrant heritage of 0:28:42.360 --> 0:28:46.400 most white Americans, they were just as deserving of deportation 0:28:46.600 --> 0:28:49.720 to Europe as black people were of being sent to 0:28:49.800 --> 0:28:55.080 Africa for a colonization advocate like Key, such language was shocking. 0:28:56.120 --> 0:28:59.600 Another pamphlet set bloody stakes for the conflict over slavery. 0:29:00.520 --> 0:29:05.000 So long as slavery is tolerated, no peace can exist, 0:29:05.360 --> 0:29:09.640 the pamphlet read, before exhorting slaveholding states to begin the 0:29:09.680 --> 0:29:15.280 work of emancipation lest they risk quote the fiery indignation 0:29:15.560 --> 0:29:19.800 of him, to whom vengeance belongeth. The threats contained in 0:29:19.880 --> 0:29:24.840 this pamphlet weren't just divine. The slave, the pamphlet continued, 0:29:25.200 --> 0:29:28.960 will become conscious sooner or later of his strength. His 0:29:29.080 --> 0:29:31.719 torch will be at the threshold, and his knife at 0:29:31.760 --> 0:29:35.640 the throat of the planter. As Key read these words aloud, 0:29:35.920 --> 0:29:39.480 and he was a skillful, passionate speaker, he knew what 0:29:39.600 --> 0:29:44.240 he was evoking. The specters of Southampton, the bloody legacy 0:29:44.280 --> 0:29:48.400