Francis Scott Key Biography Quotes 4 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Francis Scott Key was born on August 1, 1779, at Terra Rubra in what is now Frederick County, Maryland, to John Ross Key and Ann Phoebe Charlton Key. Raised in a household that valued education, faith, and civic duty, he attended schools in Annapolis and graduated from St. Johns College in 1796. He read law under the guidance of his uncle, the prominent lawyer and statesman Philip Barton Key, whose example and training shaped the younger Keys legal habits and ambitions. By 1801 Francis Scott Key had been admitted to the bar, and he began a practice that would move from Frederick to Georgetown and the growing federal city of Washington.

Marriage and Family
In 1802 he married Mary Tayloe Polly Lloyd, a union that connected him to the influential Lloyd family of Maryland. Their home life was large and energetic, with many children and a constant stream of relations, clients, and clergy moving through the household. Among their children, Philip Barton Key achieved prominence as a Washington lawyer before his sensational death in 1859 at the hands of Congressman Daniel Sickles. A daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles Howard, the son of Revolutionary War hero and Maryland governor John Eager Howard, drawing Key more closely into Baltimores social and civic orbit. His sister Anne married Roger B. Taney, who rose to become Chief Justice of the United States; the two brothers-in-law were linked by family, by the Maryland bar, and by engagement in questions that defined the early republic.

Law and Public Service
Keys legal career developed along the Potomac, where he handled land cases, criminal matters, and commercial disputes in Maryland and the District of Columbia. His reputation for diligence and eloquence led President Andrew Jackson to appoint him United States Attorney for the District of Columbia in 1833. In that office, which he held until 1841, Key prosecuted federal cases arising in the capital, including the trial of Richard Lawrence, who had attempted to assassinate President Jackson. He navigated a city riven by partisan and sectional tensions and saw firsthand how national controversies about slavery, speech, and public order played out in courtrooms and streets.

War of 1812 and the Anthem
Keys most famous moment came during the War of 1812. In September 1814 he sailed down the Chesapeake with American agent John Stuart Skinner under a flag of truce to seek the release of Dr. William Beanes, a Maryland physician taken prisoner by the British. Brought aboard the flagship of the British fleet, under Admiral Alexander Cochrane and Admiral Sir George Cockburn, Key argued successfully for Beaness release. Because he and Skinner had learned of British plans against Baltimore, they were detained with the fleet as it advanced. On the night of September 13-14, 1814, Key watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry, commanded by Major George Armistead. The immense garrison flag, sewn by Baltimore flag maker Mary Pickersgill with the help of her family, remained visible through flashes of rockets and exploding shells. When dawn revealed the flag still flying, Key drafted verses he titled Defence of Fort MHenry. Printed in Baltimore, the poem soon gained circulation across the country and, when set to the well-known tune To Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith, it became The Star-Spangled Banner. Friends, printers, and civic leaders such as Joseph Hopper Nicholson helped popularize the song, which would be formally recognized by Congress as the national anthem in 1931 and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.

Faith and Civic Involvement
Key was a devout Episcopalian whose life revolved around parish commitments and charitable projects in Georgetown and Washington. He served on church vestries and supported religious education. His lyrical gifts extended beyond patriotic verse; he wrote the hymn Lord, with glowing heart I would praise thee, which entered American hymnals and reflected the piety that shaped his private life and public conscience.

Controversies and Views on Slavery
A man of his time and region, Key owned enslaved people during parts of his life and benefitted from a slaveholding economy. Yet his record was complex. He sometimes represented enslaved individuals in petitions for freedom and manumitted people he held in bondage, while also opposing immediate abolition in the District of Columbia. As U.S. Attorney he brought charges in 1836 against the abolitionist Reuben Crandall for circulating antislavery literature, a prosecution that drew national scrutiny and underscored the era's fierce conflicts over speech and slavery. Key supported the American Colonization Society, which advocated the migration of free Black Americans to Africa, and he cooperated in that movement with prominent figures such as Henry Clay and Bushrod Washington. These actions, taken together, have left a record that historians read as both principled and contradictory, revealing how moral conviction, paternalism, and legal duty coexisted uneasily in the antebellum capital.

Later Years and Death
After leaving the prosecutors office in 1841, Key returned to private practice, dividing his time between Washington and Baltimore, where family connections through Elizabeth and Charles Howard were strong. He remained a sought-after counselor and continued to write occasional verse and hymns. He died in Baltimore on January 11, 1843, while visiting his daughters household. Initially interred in Baltimore, he was later reburied in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland, where a prominent monument marks his grave and the town preserves his memory.

Legacy
Francis Scott Keys life joined law, letters, and faith at a moment when the United States was defining its institutions and symbols. The anthem he penned during the peril of 1814 became a unifying national song long after his death, tying his name permanently to Fort McHenry, the flag Mary Pickersgill made, and the defense organized by Major George Armistead. His legal service connected him to consequential figures, from Andrew Jackson and Roger B. Taney to clients and adversaries whose cases traced the capitals struggles over violence, dissent, and race. Family ties, including the later tragedy of his son Philip Barton Keys killing by Daniel Sickles, kept his name in public view. Remembered today as the author of The Star-Spangled Banner and as a prominent lawyer of the early republic, he also stands as a window onto the contradictions of the American experiment in the first half of the nineteenth century, when ideals of liberty and the realities of slavery clashed in courtrooms, churches, and on the field of battle.

Our collection contains 4 quotes who is written by Francis, under the main topics: Faith - Military & Soldier - War - God.

Other people realated to Francis: James McHenry (Politician)

• 1857 Poems of the Late Francis Scott Key, Esq. (Book)
• 1814 Defence of Fort McHenry (Poem)

• Wikipedia