One historian noted the following: "Judge Keyes, as he was called, was without early educational privileges, and, like many of his contemporaries, was being launched upon the world unaided and alone.
In 1820, Keyes, who opposed slavery, ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress against attorney Micah Sterling, a graduate of Yale College who owned a slave.
[2] Even though he won the vote in Watertown, N.Y., Keyes lost his bid for Congress because he did not have enough support in Jefferson County.
Keyes and his friend Silas Wright were both stalwart supporters of Martin Van Buren.
After his presidency, Van Buren described his deceased friend in the following way: "[W]hile [Keyes'] want of education was often embarrassing to himself and his friends, still his profound knowledge of the springs of human action always seemed to be an ample compensation; and that he had never met the man whom he thought the Almighty had created shrewder than Perley Keyes.