Chris Derose's 'Star Spangled Scandal' vividly recounts how the murder of Francis Scott Key's son left a lasting legal legacy. //

Chris Derose's new book, 'Star Spangled Scandal: Sex, Murder, and the Trial that Changed America,' vividly recounts how the murder of Francis Scott Key's son was one of the 19th century's most sensational murder trials and left a lasting legal legacy. This was hardly the first major violent confrontation between two major public figures. Most notably, just three years earlier, pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks beat abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner over the head with his cane on the Senate floor in retribution for the latter’s “Crimes Against Kansas” speech in which he supposedly libeled Brooks’ uncle.Brooks probably would have killed Sumner had his cane not broken. Sectional disputes over slavery routinely ended in violence, and it became commonplace for members of Congress to carry firearms and knives into the capitol.But even in this age of political firestorm, what transpired between Daniel Sickles and Philip Barton Key was distinctly personal. As Chris DeRose chronicles in his new and exciting book, Star Spangled Scandal: Sex, Murder, and the Trial that Changed America, the conflict between the two men was a tale as old as time. Weaving together the threads of their stimulating (and tragically intersecting) lives, DeRose inventively treats this narrative of adultery and murder as a kind of real-life play.