In 1836, he prosecuted the young doctor Reuben Crandall for possessing copies of The Liberator and The Anti-Slavery Reporter in his luggage. While eventually acquitted by a jury, Key kept Crandall in jail for several months up to that point. During the stay, he contracted a fatal case of tuberculosis. The trial drew national attention, and Key used the platform to advance his racism: “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?”
