USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 32
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Governor Slaughter in 1816 had noted the practice and councelled legislation against it. He feared for the state if the practice were con- tinued. "To furnish the strongest motives to men, to deserve well of their country," he said, "and to make public office and station the reward of qualifications and integrity, would seem to me congenial with the spirit and character of such a government. A practice, therefore, which tends to place merit without wealth in the shade, and to enable the rich to monopolize the offices of government, has at least an aristocratic ten- dency, and demands severe reprehension. I therefore recommend to the legislature a revision of the laws against selling offices, and the enaction of such provisions and penalties as are best calculated to suppress the mischief which seems of late to be increasing." 36 The following year he issued a further warning against the dangers of such a practice : "I regret the necessity of once more pressing on your attention the anti- republican and highly critical practice of selling offices which is becom- ing too common and indeed fashionable. Shall the public offices in the republic of Kentucky be an article of sale in the market, or the reward of qualifications and integrity? This is the question to be decided. If this practice is sanctioned or even winked at, it will prove that while we profess that the road to public station is open to all, the poor as well as the rich, that they are in fact confined exclusively to the latter. The
34 Kentucky Gazette, Aug. 9, 1821. For further information on the old system, see Ibid., Aug. 3, 1820, et passim, and Kentucky Reporter, April 24, 1826.
35 Kentucky Gazette, Dec. 2, 1824.
36 Niles' Register, Vol. II, P. 392.
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prevalence of such practice, especially if countenanced, is evidence of the decline, if not of the state, of the republican purity of the government." Again he recommended the enactment of laws to stop "this pernicious and illicit traffic." 87
Only one degree removed from selling offices outright was the prac- tice of hiring someone to perform the duties for a small fraction of the salary paid by the state, and of keeping the remainder. Governor Desha extended his warfare against office-selling to the holding of sine- cure offices. In 1825, he said, "It is worthy to enquire whether there are not now offices in this state, held by men who perform none of their duties, finding their salaries sufficiently liberal to hire deputies with a portion thereof, and live upon the residue. Why should not the state pay the deputies directly, and discharge the principals, thereby saving what she now pays for the support of incompetency or idleness?" 38
Betting on elections also grew into an evil which engaged the atten- tion of the officers of the Government frequently. It was not only op- posed as a species of gambling, but it received the stronger condemna- tion because of the incentive it presented of using money to influence elections. Elections were carried on over a period of three days, and opportunities of buying votes as well as repeating the vote were thus more easily found.39 A law was passed against this form of corruption and afterwards repealed, which lead Governor Powell in 1853 to say, to the Legislature, "I recommend that you pass such laws, as will sup- press, if possible, this evil, which has increased to an alarming extent, since the laws prohibiting it were repealed." 40 In response to this ap- peal, the Legislature passed a law imposing a fine of $100 for betting on elections and forfeiting to the state the money or property won.41 But this legislation seemed to have very little effect on the practice, for in 1857 Governor Morehead issued the following complaint: "The habit of betting on elections, with the almost necessary consequence of using money to procure or influence votes, is a great and growing evil, which demands your careful consideration." 42 It must not be inferred that the standards of honesty of state officials were low. As a general rule the members of the state government took a high and honorable view of their duties-sometimes rather grandiloquently on the part of the legislators especially. The state treasurer in 1817 was rather lax with the state funds, and when a shortage was discovered, he resigned.43
To make government more effective and render those in authority more efficient the revisal of the state laws was advocated by Governor Adair in 1821. He presented the situation then existing thus: "When laws have become so voluminous that none but men of leisure can read them-when they have been rendered by repeated amendments, repeals, and re-enactments, so intricate that they are difficult to be understood, except by men whose profession is to study and illustrate them-and when, by these frequent changes, they have been rendered so uncertain, that the people are afraid to contract on the face of them, lest they may have been repealed before the period of their general dissemination, it may, with justice be pronounced, that the protection of the citizen has measurably ceased to be secured by such laws." He feared that many magistrates would be deterred from searching out what was really law, and others would resign their stations.44 The Legislature authorized a
37 Niles' Register, Vol. 13, P. 388; Port Folio, Vol. 6, p. 70.
38 Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 222. For the salaries of state officials in 1831, see American Almanac, 1831, II, 244-247; for 1834, Ibid., 1834, 235.
39 See Kentucky Gazette, Aug., 1822; Niles' Register, Vol. 40, p. 401.
40 Kentucky Yeoman, Jan. 6, 1854.
41 Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 70.
42 Lexington Observer and Reporter, Dec. 9, 1857.
43 Niles' Register, Vol. 14, pp. 14, 440.
44 Niles' Register, Vol. 21, p. 190.
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revisal of the laws, and almost within a year the legislation of the state from the first days of statehood on down to 1821 was put in a work- able form which might be used and understood by all.45 As an addi- tional aid to state officials as well as to the officers of all other states, the Legislature in 1843 suggested the desirability of a digest of all the deci- sions of the Supreme Court of the United States.46
The popular estimation of the Legislature was not always as high as the legislators, themselves, would have liked. Although the state's greatest statemen were cradled in this body, the general ability of the Legislature was most of the time mediocre. Some sessions passed dangerous legislation of a fundamental character, while others whiled away their time on local legislation, which the courts should have more properly handled. Governor Adair cautioned the legislators against "the prodigious increase" in such laws, and suggested that they should refrain from it for economy's sake if for no other reason.47 The Ken- tucky Gazette summed up a general feeling concerning that body, which represented others than its own: "The waste of time by legislative bodies has always been a subject of complaint, and will no doubt continue so long as it is necessary for the people to have a number instead of a few to guard their rights; but the waste of so much time on one bill has surely some remedy. It is said the laws of China punish a doctor with death for suffering a patient under his care to die. It might be a useful law in Kentucky, to render every member ineligible for - years that was present at the death of any bill more than one month old, or who ad- journed leaving any such bill to perish. We do not pretend to say that the public is much concerned in preserving the lives of such bills; but it might benefit the public by directing the attention of the state physi- cians to other patients and thereby save time which has always been considered as valuable as money." 48
The feeling that the Government ought to be of distinct service to the people, coupled with the broad ideas of humanitarianism that were sweep- ing over the land and which attained their great strength in the '30s, was well expressed in the attitude of the state toward the unfortunate mem- bers of its society. In early times the state cared for the insane in a very meagre way, but not in a central institution were they could receive competent medical attention and be surrounded by prospects that would ease their minds. In 1816 a private hospital for the insane had been or- ganized in Lexington by some of her philanthropic and benevolently in- clined citizens, but the existence of this institution was precarious from the beginning. However, it gave the idea and afforded the opportunity to the state of caring for the insane throughout the state in a more effective way. Governor Adair in 1820 advocated the taking over of this hospital by the state. There the insane could have "the best medical aid the state affords gratis-and if only one in twenty of those unfor- tunate beings, lahoring under the most dreadful of maladies, should be restored, will it not be a cause of gratulation to a humane and generous public !" 49 The next year he referred again to the melancholy condition of the insane: "It is not among the fragments of mouldering columns, scattered over the sands of the desert; it is not beneath a solitary arch of some decayed citadel of subverted empire, that, in the retrospect of the instability of human affairs, we learn the most instructive lesson of the vanity of human hopes. It is when we pause amid the ruins of the human mind ; when we contemplate the destruction of those intellectual powers, which rendered their possessor lord of creation; and behold the
45 Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 171.
48 Acts of Kentucky, 1843, p. 267.
47 Message of October 22, 1822, in Niles' Register, Vol. 23, p. 172.
48 Jan. 4, 1821.
49 Niles' Register, Vol. 19, p. 171; Collins, History of Kentucky, II, 223.
Boys' Building
Girls' Building
Chapel THE KENTUCKY SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF
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imbruted madman, roving with dark and savage purpose through an afrighted land, which his philosophy had enlightened, his eloquence en- raptured, this valor emancipated, and his benevolence blessed, that we impressively feel the worthlessness of every attainment that does not dignify our motives, ennoble our pursuits, benefit our kind, and merit an everlasting reward. As the possession of reason is the glory and dis- tinction of our nature, so its deprivation may be regarded as its heavi- est calamity. The duties which we owe to the objects of such depriva- tion are of most sacred obligation." Again he suggested the use of the Lexington hospital.50
In 1824 the state took control of this institution, being among the earliest if not the first state to so care for its insane.51 In 1848 a second insane asylum was founded near Hopkinsville in Christian County.52 Even before the state had entered onto the program of taking better care of the insane, it had provided for an institution for the deaf and dumb, which was established in Danville in 1823.53 The blind were cared for in an institution set up for them in Louisville in 1842, and endowed in the beginning with $10,000 from the common school fund.54
The penitentiary, which had been made necessary when the state re- vised her criminal code from the death penalty for almost every crime, to imprisonment, had early come to be managed as a source of revenue for the state. Numerous articles were manufactured within the walls of the prison and sold throughout the state.55 In 1817 Governor Slaugh- ter called attention to the need for repairs to the building, which had become so insecure that the convicts often made their escape. Was it fair, he asked, to increase the sentence of those who were led to escape because of the ease with which it might be accomplished or the negli- gence of guards to perform their duties? "This institution, which origi- nated in a spirit of philanthropy, and a liberal, and enlightened humanity, ought not to be abandoned, or neglected." This institution had attracted the favorable attention of other states, and the state ought to see to it that it was not suffered to deteriorate. The penitentiary ought not to be solely considered as an instrument of punishment, and vengeance against the offending members of society, it ought to be used to reform the prisoner as well. He advised that "bibles, and books of morality" should be furnished the prisoners, and that "religious and moral instruction" should be given. "But little good is done," he said, "if the offenders go forth into the world unredeemed in any degree from the depravity for which they were cut off from their social state." 56
During the '20s prison reform was attracting attention throughout the country. More reformation and less vengeance was being urged by many individuals and by societies organized for the purpose.57 Governor John Adair became the champion for reform in Kentucky, urging at great length in his successive messages to the Legislature an ameliora- tion of the condition of the prisoners. He declared that the penitentiary had arisen out of the "wise and humane purpose of uniting mercy with justice," but it had sadly departed far from those principles.58 "By a public and prolonged exhibition of ignominious punishment, calculated to humble and debase a being, whose want of self-respect has betrayed him to the commission of meanness or of crime, by consigning to one
50 Niles' Register, Vol. 21, p. 189.
51 Collins, History of Kentucky, II, 223; North American Review, Vol. 44, pp. 112, 560.
52 Collins, History of Kentucky, II, 126.
53 Collins, History of Kentucky, II, 85.
54 Ibid., I, 47. See also Ibid., 69.
55 Niles' Register, Vol. 5, P. 337; Vol. 11, P. 392.
56 Niles' Register, Vol. 13, p. 386.
57 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, IV, 540-549.
58 Message to Legislature, October 17, 1820, in Niles' Register, Vol. 19, p. 170.
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Little Boys' Cottage
Little Girls' Cottage
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common mansion of guilt, all convicts of whatsoever grade, and com- pelling the high-minded, the enlightened, the unfortunate victim of a venial error, to consort with the atrocious murderer or ignoble thief ; and from the influence of such a system, and the contagion of such as- sociations to hope for final reformation, bespeaks a lamentable ignorance of human character. The pride of our legislation has never stooped to the ball and chain-its humanity admits, but on awful exigencies, the horrors of the gallows. To the honor of Kentucky it will hereafter be recorded among the acts on which posterity will love to dwell, that in the very infancy of her government, she was among the first to assert the permanent triumph of civilization over the barbarous infliction of sanguinary punishments." He advocated the institution of a number of reforms. Solitary confinement should be adopted to induce introspection and to bring the criminal to a sense of the enormity of his sins against society. "Virtue herself wanders with melancholy aspect in the regions of exile-and sinks with disparaging anguish amid the gloom of the dungeon, from which she is never to emerge. But absolute and compul- sory solitude, when adopted as a punishment, and inflicted for a season only, has been found productive of the most beneficial results. It is the inquisitor of the soul, and the tyrant of every vice." Religious and edu- cational instruction should be given the prisoner, and a small pittance with which to begin life over again, when he shall have been freed, should be afforded him. Was it too much to hope, he asked, that the Legislature would make a small appropriation "sufficient to enable some pious, respectable clergyman to devote his sabbaths to the benevolent purpose of instructing this unfortunate and degraded class of men?" The penitentiary was not "a money making or money saving project. It is a magnificent plan, devised by the spirit of philanthropy and ap- proved by the profoundest wisdom, to accelerate the progress of civiliza- tion, to diminish the sufferings, and amend the morals of human kind." There ought to be reward for merit and the infliction of corporal pun- ishment ought to be stopped.59
The state found it hard to get away from the idea that this institu- tion should be used as a money maker.60 Various plans were carried out, with the penitentiary at times being sold for a stated sum to a private individual who used it for his own gain.61
Not directly connected with the state, but still of considerable inter- est to the people of the state was an Indian school set up at Blue Springs in Scott County, known as the Choctaw Academy. By a treaty with the Choctaws in 1825 the United States agreed to give them annually forever a sum of $6,000, which for twenty years should be devoted to the education of the Choctaw youths.62 Richard M. Johnson was in- terested in the project, and it was largely through his efforts that the school was set up in Kentucky, near his home. The direct management of the institution was vested in the Baptist Church, which made its re- ports of the work directly to the United States Indian Office. It was the desire of the Indians that their boys should be educated away from the tribe itself, and that they should be taught things that would fit them for ordinary American citizenship. The regulations for the management of the school stated that "The system of education shall embrace reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, practical surveying,
59 Message of October 16, 1821, in Niles' Register, Vol. 21, pp. 188, 189; message of October 22, 1822, Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 172; message of November 4, 1823, Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 203.
60 From March, 1839, to November, 1840, the state made a profit of $42,512.12 from the penitentiary. Niles' Register, Vol. 59, P. 342. See also Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 224.
61 In 1858 it was rented for a period of four years for $12,000 annually. Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 79.
02 Indian Treaties and Laws and Regulations relating to Indian Affairs, 171-174. Date of treaty January 20, 1825.
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astronomy, natural philosophy, and vocal music." 63 In line with the idea of making Americans out of the youths, they were given in addition to their tribal names well-known American names. John C. Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, Richard M. Johnson, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay, were all Indian boys at the Choctaw Academy, striving, no doubt, to emulate the lives of the men whose names they bore.6+ Other tribes made arrangements to patronize this school. In 1826 the Creeks prepared to send twenty of their boys, and in the same year the Pottawatomies set aside $2,000 from the amount due them from the United States, for the purpose of sending youths to the school.63 In 1826 there were 53 Choctaw youths in attendance, and their "examination exercises" were attended by 500 people, who were much pleased at the progress being made.66
The academy was soon in a thriving condition with 174 boys of the various Indian nations there in 1835-this being the greatest number ever in attendance at one time. But by the early '40s the school had begun to decay, and it soon ceased to exist.67 The Indians, themselves had by this time lost interest in the academy, as they now believed that the education received by their boys made them lose their tribal customs and attachments, and caused them to become effeminate.68 Also many Americans, who disagreed with the policy of removing the Indians to the regions west of the Mississippi and thereby disrupting their homes and civilization, believed that no good could come from educating the Indians to be again turned loose in a wild life. Hezekiah Niles said, "If these children, when educated, are to be driven into the wilderness, remote from the seats of civilized life, they had better be discharged from school before they are disqualified to enjoy the small portion of solid comfort that belongs to the hunter-state." 69
The interest of Kentucky in the political welfare of people was not bounded by their own limits. They hated tyranny wherever they knew it existed, and some of the more impetuous ones were not content to oppose it with words, as will appear hereafter. But hardly had Ameri- can independence been won from perpetual European entanglements before Kentucky was cheering for the South Americans in their con- test to win independence from Spain. Governor Slaughter in 1817 could not refrain from imploring Providence "to extend his kind and protect- ing care to our southern brethren now struggling for freedom and inde- pendence. As republicans we cannot be indifferent to their cause. That they ought to be independent of the powers of Europe, nature herself has decreed. From the school of freedom which we have established, there is reason to hope they will learn to institute republican forms of Government; and although it may not be necessary or expedient for us to participate in their contests, let us beseech the same kind Provi- dence that watched over us in times of difficulty and trial, to crown their efforts with success." 70
These were not the sentiments of the governor alone; both branches of the Legislature brought up separate series of resolutions condemning the tyrannies of Europe and expressing sympathy for the struggling South Americans. The Senate hoped to see the South Americans
63 "Choctaw Treaty-Dancing Rabbit Creek" in Executive Documents, 26th Cong., 2 Sess., No. 109, p. 22.
64 Ibid., 40, 41.
65 Ibid., 117-179.
66 Niles' Register, Vol. 31, p. 159.
67 The funds from the United States were appropriated for only twenty years for school purposes.
68 Josiah Gregg, "Commerce of the Prairies"; in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, XX, 306.
69 Niles' Register, Vol. 32, p. 322.
70 Message to Legislature, December 2, 1817, in Niles' Register, Vol. 13, P. 389.
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"throw off and break in pieces the yoke of Spanish despotism," and al- though there were the blessings of peace in preserving a just neutrality, still it could not be insensible to the great importance of independent countries in South America "as respects the probable commercial and political relations between the two portions of the same great conti- nent." We were under no obligations to favor "old Spain" in this con- test, and it would be well for us not to read too much into our duties as a neutral. And it were well also to remember that "if the general government of the United States is prepared to take a side in this con- test, the many unredressed wrongs, and the outrageous insults of old Spain to this government, together with the strong claims of suffering humanity upon our sympathy, leave no room to doubt which side the free people of the only republic upon earth are prepared to take." The House entered into a more philosophical examination of liberty, and found that the South Americans were entitled to it, and that the United States Government ought to recognize forthwith those provinces which "have declared themselves free and independent, and have shown a rea- sonable ability to maintain their independence." 71 Clay, who had become so thoroughly interested in South American independence and its imme- diate recognition by the United States, took occasion to keep his fellow Kentuckians interested in the subject by referring to it in his speeches to them.72
The Kentuckians also noted with lively interest the struggle of the Greeks for independence from the tyranny of the Turks, and in the ses- sion of 1823-1824, the Legislature took occasion to voice its accord with the United States in recognizing the South American republics, and to heartily agree with President Monroe in his doctrines concerning the attempts that might be made by European nations "to reduce those re- publics to provincial subjection." 73 By 1842 the Irish had come to attract the sympathetic interest and concern of Kentuckians to a rather remarkable degree. It had advanced beyond more or less perfunctory resolutions of the Legislature, for at this time a "highly respectable" gathering came together in the legislative chamber in Frankfort to express their sympathy for Ireland and to condemn the tyranny and misrule of England. The editor of the Frankfort Commonwealth said that Irish- men and Kentuckians were after all much alike. "They are both con- stitutional lovers of fun-both indomitable foes to oppression, and a fiery, soul-stirring species of eloquence is peculiar to each." 74
One of the most remarkable examples of the patriotic fervor of Ken- tuckians for downtrodden peoples was the part they played in the Lopez expeditions to free Cuba from the Spanish power. Although chiefly actuated by patriotic impulse, Kentuckians also had a deep-rooted dis- trust of foreign nations controlling the island approaches to the United States. As early as 1823, Kendall had said of the likelihood of England getting Cuba that "its possession by that power ought to be prevented by all hazards; for it would be almost as fatal to the western country as the occupation of her of the mouth of the Mississippi." 75 In an era when filibustering was a favorite pastime with too many Americans, Gen. Narcisco Lopez, a Cuban leader sought to engage as much of that activity as possible to the purpose of freeing Cuba. In 1850 he visited the United States, passing down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and visiting Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He organized three regiments, with the largest one from Kentucky under the com- mand of Theodore O'Hara with 240 men. This force landed at Cardenas
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