Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

From Loyalist to Congressman: The Career of Philip Barton Key

On January 21, 1808, the U.S. House of Representatives went into the Committee of the Whole to hear a report on a routine contested election case. Three months earlier, voters in Maryland’s Third Congressional District filed a petition claiming that Representative Philip Barton Key had not been a resident of the state at the time of the election in violation of the Constitution. After investigating the claims, the House Elections Committee declared Key eligible and allowed him to keep his seat. But before the House could vote to approve the committee’s findings, Representative James Witherell of Vermont rose from his seat and accused Key of something even more troubling: “Mr. Key, the sitting member, either now was, or had been, a British pensioner,” Witherell declared. “An inquiry ought to be had in this matter, as, were it true, it would certainly be a disqualification.”

When it was his turn to speak, Key did not dodge the accusation. Almost three decades earlier, he had served in a loyalist regiment that fought alongside British regulars working to put down the American Revolution. This was common knowledge, he said, noting that constituents back home “knew me from infancy, and knew my follies” and voted for him anyway. Hoping that further inquiry by the House would put the whole matter to rest, he seconded Witherell’s motion to open a new investigation.

Like many early lawmakers, Witherell had served in the Revolution as a volunteer in the Continental Army. He had fought to secure the nation’s independence. But what of those who did not? During the war, many loyalists sought refuge elsewhere in the British empire with no intention of returning. Meanwhile, loyalists who stayed in America often faced persecution through arrests, banishment, and violence. But now, three decades later, to what extent did someone’s former loyalty to the Crown determine their place in the young nation?

For Key, the answer to that question was simple. “I had returned to my country, like the prodigal son to his father, had felt as an American should feel, was received, forgiven, and restored to the confidence of the people,” he said. What more did Congress need to know, he asked. “The most convincing proof that could be adduced is my election to a seat in this honorable body.”

Congress, however, was not so sure.

Early Foibles

Philip Barton Key was born on April 12, 1757, in Cecil County, Maryland, to a prominent Maryland family which traced its American roots back to the early eighteenth century. Both Key’s father, Francis, and his maternal grandfather were respected lawyers in Maryland. When Francis died in 1770, he left his entire estate to Philip’s older brother, John Ross Key. John subsequently divided the land and gave a portion of it to Philip.

When fighting erupted between continental and British forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, John joined a Maryland regiment which hastened to Boston to assist American forces. Philip, however, stayed behind and continued his legal studies. In the summer of 1777, British forces sailed up the Chesapeake Bay with the intention of capturing Philadelphia, America’s de facto capital at the time and home to the Continental Congress. Maryland’s governor, Thomas Johnson, aware of the nearby British fleet, quickly mustered two militia companies of “every one who can be called a man” and ordered them to march to the Susquehanna River to prepare a defense against the invaders. Key was among those the governor summoned, but he refused to go.

In December 1777, after British forces captured Philadelphia, Key made his way to the city and offered his service to the British army. He was commissioned as a captain in Philadelphia’s loyalist regiment which in 1778 left to occupy New York. The British later sent Key to Florida to fight the Spanish, where he was captured and imprisoned in Havana, Cuba, before being paroled and ultimately sent to England.

After continuing his legal studies in England, Key returned to Maryland in 1785 and passed the bar, completing his tutoring under a prominent lawyer—and future Representative—named Gabriel Duvall. During his absence, the Maryland government had confiscated his lands and indicted him for treason. Although the charges were later dropped, the state kept his property. Key opened a legal practice in Annapolis and in 1790 married a daughter of George Plater, a wealthy lawyer who had previously served as a Delegate to the Continental Congress from Maryland. In 1794, Key was elected to the Maryland state general assembly where he represented an Annapolis district for five years. During that time, he also served as Annapolis mayor.

By the time Key entered public office, he had aligned himself with America’s Federalists and the presidential administrations of George Washington and John Adams. During the election of 1800, Key became embroiled in a public spat with his former law tutor Duvall in which Key publicly acknowledged, for the first time, his loyalism during the Revolution. He also revealed that although he had received a British military pension, he had sold the rights to it before serving in the state house and was no longer a pensioner of the Crown. He sold it, he said, so that he “might stand an independent man.”

Key served in Maryland’s general assembly until 1799. In 1801, as part of a series of “midnight appointments” President Adams made in the final moments of his administration, Key was nominated to serve on a new federal circuit court. Key served on the bench until Congress dissolved the court in July 1802.

The same year Key was nominated to the court, he moved to Washington, DC, in the vicinity of the Georgetown neighborhood. He opened a legal practice, and employed his nephew, a young man named Francis Scott Key.

Philip Key became enmeshed in Washington’s legal society and during the 8th Congress (1803–1805), Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase hired Key to defend him in his impeachment trial before the Senate, which ended in an acquittal. In late 1805, Key announced his retirement and left his legal practice in the hands of his nephew Francis. Less than a year later, he was elected to represent Maryland’s Third Congressional District in the 10th Congress (1807–1809). The seat stretched north from Georgetown to the Pennsylvania border and included parts of Montgomery and Frederick Counties.

“Content with Any Course the House Should Take”

When the House took up Witherell’s challenge to Key’s qualifications in 1808, the Elections Committee focused on Key’s residency in Maryland. Around the time Key had moved to Washington, he purchased 250 acres of land in the young city from his brother-in-law, Continental Army general and former U.S. Representative, Uriah Forrest. Key built a house on the property which he named Woodley. A short while later, in November 1805, Key purchased 1,000 acres of land a few miles north in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland. He moved into a new home there on September 18, 1806, one month before his election to the House.

As part of the Election Committee’s investigation, Key told lawmakers that because his new home in Maryland had not properly been winterized, he only stayed a month and moved his family back to his Woodley estate in the District of Columbia from October 1806 until July 1807. This, the committee concluded was sufficient to establish his Maryland residency, and deemed him eligible “to attend his duties in Congress.”

The rest of the House, however, was less convinced. Because the committee had largely skirted the issue of Key’s service in the British army and his time as a British pensioner, the House sent Key’s case back to the Elections Committee with instructions to look deeper into his service during the Revolution.

A month later, on February 24, Representative William Findley of Pennsylvania read the committee’s amended report which confirmed much of what Key had earlier revealed: Key had been a commissioned officer in the British army who was later captured by the Spanish and eventually paroled and sent to England without the opportunity to return to the United States until after the war ended. His regiment was then disbanded and “placed on half pay”—in other words, given a pension—which he continued to receive even after returning to Maryland in 1785.

The committee discovered that Key pulled his pension for another nine years until 1794 when “he sold his half pay to General Forrest, his brother-in-law.” Forrest, in turn, collected the half pay until 1802 when he declared bankruptcy, due in part to debts owed to Key. To cover what he owed, Forrest transferred the pension back to Key, who, because of their friendship and family ties, allowed Forrest to continue to draw the pension until he died in 1805. After Forrest’s death, Key collected his British military pension until January 1806, when he finally resigned his rank in the King’s army, cancelling his pension in the process. The Elections Committee was careful to note that despite his time serving the British military Key had never “taken the oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain, but that he had taken oaths required by laws of Maryland of persons in the public service of that State.”

Representative John Rowan of Kentucky moved to scrap the committee’s findings given that the next election was only months away, and Maryland voters would soon have “an opportunity to declare their opinion” on whether Key deserved his seat in Congress. But Key requested to hear the report stating that he would “be content with any course that the House should take.” Ultimately, the committee found in Key’s favor and determined that he was “entitled to his seat.” After delaying a final vote on the issue until the next day, the House approved the committee’s findings, 57 to 52, and Key remained a Member of Congress.

House Career and Legacy

The debate in the House over Key’s British service during the war did little to dampen his chance at re-election: in 1808 he won with 66 percent of the vote for a seat in the 11th Congress (1809–1811) and in 1810 he ran unopposed to the 12th Congress (1811–1813).

In the House, Key focused on local issues pertaining to the nation’s new capital. On January 21, 1808, he authored a bill to create the Committee of the District of Columbia, a new standing committee, to focus on the creation of a uniform series of laws for the city and help “simplify the business relating to the District,” he said. The House approved the new committee on January 27, 1808, and Key was named its first chair. After just one week as chairman, he fended off a proposal supported by many northern Members to move the capital from Washington back to Philadelphia.

Key also urged caution as the relationship between the United States and Great Britain grew increasingly fraught. In March 1812, as lawmakers accused England of blocking America’s merchant ships and impressing American sailors, Key sought unity among his colleagues. “Whatever difference of opinion may exist among ourselves, there can be none as to the propriety of supporting the integrity of the Union. There can be no doubt that the people of this country, of all descriptions, will rally around the Constitution,” he stated. Just three months later, the House voted to declare war against Great Britain. Key was one of 44 Members, from both major parties—Federalists and Democratic Republicans—to vote against the war declaration. Key declined to run for re-election that fall. 

A little more than two years later, Key died at his home in Washington at the age of 58. While he may have started as an opponent to independence, he was an active participant in the formation of the new nation spending half of his life in public service. The House Committee on the District of Columbia long outlived Key, providing lawmakers a means to manage the capital city more directly for more than 180 years until the committee was terminated at the start of the 104th Congress (1995–1997). And Key’s estate in the District, Woodley Mansion, served as a home to several Presidents, politicians, and dignitaries.

Although Key had opposed the War of 1812, it was that same conflict which enabled his family to leave perhaps its most lasting legacy. In 1814, Key’s nephew, Francis Scott Key, by then a successful lawyer in Maryland, was tasked by American officials to negotiate the release of U.S. troops being held captive by the royal navy in Baltimore Harbor. During one set of negotiations, Key watched as the British fleet bombarded American troops stationed at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. That scene stayed with him and he later described the spectacle in a poem he wrote titled, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Sources: Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (4 November 1807): 803; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (21 January 1808): 1486-1487; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (21 January 1808): 1489-1493; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (21 January 1808): 1493-1495; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (22 January 1808): 1495-1496; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (27 January 1808): 1512; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (2-5 February 1808): 1531-1576; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (24 February 1808): 1679-1680; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (17 March 1808): 1845-1846; Annals of Congress, House, 10th Cong., 1st sess. (18 March 1808): 1848-1849; Annals of Congress, House, 12th Cong., 1st sess. (9 March 1812): 1192-1193; Senate Executive Journal, 6th Cong., 2nd sess. (20 February 1801): 383; An Act to provide for the more convenient organization of the Courts of the United States, 2 Stat. 89 (1801); An Act to repeal certain acts respecting the organization of the Courts of the United States; and for other purposes, 2 Stat. 132 (1802); Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1907): 732; Adopting the Rules of the House of Representatives for the One Hundred Fourth Congress, H. Res. 6, 104th Cong. (1995); Captain Caleb Jones, Orderly Book of the “Maryland Loyalists Regiment,” June 18th, 1778, to October 12th, 1778, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: Historical Printing Club, 1891): 6-10; The Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists, 1783–1785, ed. Hugh Edward Egerton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915): 387, 388; Lists of indictments against Loyalists, 1780–1781, S991-10-72, 4617-26, 01/06/05/011, Maryland State Papers, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD, https://guide.msa.maryland.gov/pages/item.aspx?ID=S991-10-72; “Annapolis, October 9,” 9 October 1794, Maryland Gazette: 3; Philip B. Key, “For the Maryland Gazette. To Gabriel Duvall, Esquire,” 4 September 1800, Maryland Gazette: 1; Philip B. Key, 27 December 1805 National Intelligencer: 4; “By His Excellency Robert Bowie, Governor of Maryland, A Proclamation,” 13 November 1806, Maryland Gazette: 4; “Died,” 9 August 1815, Daily National Intelligencer and Washington Express: 3; Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York: Vintage Books, 2011): 40-41, 318, 343-350; Gary L. Browne, “Key, Philip Barton,” American National Biography, vol. 12 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 640-641; F. S. Key Smith, “A Sketch of Francis Scott Key, with a Glimpse of His Ancestors,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 1909, vol. 12 (1909): 72; Edward S. Delaplaine, The Life of Thomas Johnson (New York: The Grafton Press, 1927): 259-260; The Federal Cases: Comprising Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Federal Reporter, Arranged Alphabetically by the Titles of the Cases and Numbered Consecutively (Buffalo: William S. Hein &Co., Inc., 1995): xiv; Harold Donaldson Eberlin and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard, Historic Houses of George-Town & Washington City (Richmond: Dietz Press, Incorporated, 1958): 150, 155; Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From Its Foundation Through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, vol. I (New York: Macmillan Company, 1914): 413; Richard E. Mezo, “Key, Francis Scott,” American National Biography, vol. 12 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 639-640; “Witherell, James,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/W000657; “Key, Philip Barton,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/K000159; “Annapolis Mayors, Maryland,” 2 December 2025, Maryland Manual On-Line, https://msa.maryland.gov; Winston Bowman, “The Midnight Judges,” accessed 14 January 2026, Federal Judicial Center, https://www.fjc.gov/history/spotlight-judicial-history/midnight-judges.