Historians In Awe Over Discovery At Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Property

Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Slavery

Francis Scott Key is best known for penning the poem that was to become the Star-Spangled Banner. He was also an attorney. The song has been the center of much debate recently particularly due to the NFL player’s protesting the treatment of black people in the United States.

Perhaps the protest becomes even a bit more potent when it is known that Key was a slaveowner and owned six slaves in 1820. In later years, however, it was said that he also set free a number of slaves. Although he once wrote an editorial opposing the cruelty of certain slaveowners, he also used his status as a United States attorney in order to suppress the abolitionist movement.