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Keys Days
James Crawford Keys
On October 5, 1865, James Crawford Keys, his son, and two other men were accused of murdering three union soldiers
that were guarding James Keys' cotton at Brown's Ferry on Savannah River. The cotton had been confiscated by the Union
Army at the end of the Civil War. The three murdered soldiers' horses were found running loose on James Keys' land. So,
the four accused men were tried in a military court and found guilty of the crime, then sentenced to hang. There was no
evidence found that these men had actually committed the crime, and they all denied doing it. Two days before
the scheduled hanging in 1866, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by President Andrew
Johnson. Later that year, they were released because their trial had been held in a military court instead
of a civil court. The men returned home to Anderson, S.C. The citizens of Anderson never believed
the four men were guilty in the first place, so charges were never brought against them again.