USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 1 > Part 47
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1 Bodley's Address.
361
SIMON KENTON'S FATE.
Of Simon Kenton, a faithful historian says: 1 "The crafty offsprings of peace, who slept in the lap of ease and security, while this noble pioneer was enduring the hardships of the wilderness, and braving the gauntlet and stake, and the tomahawk of the Indians to redeem the soil of the West, crept in when the fight, and toil, and danger were past, and by dishonorable trick, miserable technicality, and cunning procedure, wrested the possessions bought at such a terrible price from the gallant, unlettered, simple-hearted man, unversed in the rascality of civilization. He lost his lands, acre after acre, the superior skill of the speculator prevailing over the simplicity and ignorance of the hunter. What a burning, deep disgrace to the West, that the hero who had suffered so much and fought so well to win the soil of his glorious cane-land from the savage should, when the contest was ended, be compelled to leave it to those who never struck a blow in its defense! To- gether with Boone and numerous other brave old frontier men, who bore the heat and burden of the day, Kenton, like an old shoe, was kicked aside when he was no longer of any use, or had become too antiquated for the fashion of the times. Kentucky treated her earliest and staunchest defenders scarcely so well as they treated their dogs-after running down the game, she denied them the very offal.
"The fate of General Simon Kenton was still harder than that of the other simple-hearted fathers of the West. His body was taken for debt upon the covenants in deeds to lands, which he had, in effect, given away, and for twelve months he was imprisoned, upon the very spot where he first built his cabin in 1775, where he planted the first corn ever planted on the north of the Kentucky river by the hands of any white man, where he ranged the path- less forest in freedom and safety, where he subsequently erected his foremost station house, and battled the Indians in a hundred encounters, and, nearly alone, endured the hardships of the wilderness, while those who then reaped the fruits of his former sufferings were yet unborn, or dwelt afar in the lap of peace and plenty.
"In 1799, beggared by law-suits and losses, he moved into Ohio, and set- tled in Urbana. He was no longer young, and the prospect of spending his old age in independence, surrounded by plenty and comfort, which lightened the toil and sufferings of his youth, was now succeeded by cheerless anticipa- tions of poverty and neglect. Thus, after thirty years of the prime of his life. spent faithfully in the cause of Kentucky and the West, all that remained to him was the recollection of his services, and a cabin in the wilderness of Ohio. He himself never repined, and such was his exalted patriotism. that he would not suffer others to upbraid his country in his presence, without expressing a degree of anger altogether foreign to his usual mild and amiable manner. It never occurred to his ingenuous mind that his country could treat anybody, much less him, with neglect, and his devotion and patriot- ism continued to the last unimpaired.
I Collins, Vol. II., p. 452.
362
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
"In 1805, he was elected a brigadier-general in the Ohio militia, and in 1810 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. It is a consoling fact, that. nearly all the old fathers of the West devoted the evening of their stormy lives to the service of their Maker, and died in the triumph of the Christian faith. In 1813, the gallant old man joined the Kentucky troops under Gov- ernor Shelby, into whose family he was admitted as a privileged member, and was in the battle of the Thames. This was his last battle, and from it the old hero returned to obscurity and poverty in his humble cabin in the woods. He remained in Urbana till 1820, when he moved to the head of Mad river, Logan county, Ohio, in sight of Wapakoneta, where he had been tied to the stake by the Indians when a prisoner in their hands. Here he was harassed by judgments and executions from Kentucky, and to prevent being driven from his cabin by his white brethren, as formerly by the savages, to the forest for a shelter, he was compelled to have some land entered in the name of his wife and children. He still had many tracts of mountain land in Kentucky of little value, which. however, were forfeited to the State for taxes. In 1824, then seventy years of age, he undertook a journey to Frankfort, in tattered garments and on a sorry horse, to endeavor to get the Legislature, then in session, to release the claim of the State on his mount- ain lands.
"Here, where he had roved in an unbroken wilderness in the early day, now stood a flourishing city, but he walked up and down its streets, an ob- ject of curiosity to the boys, a stranger, recognized by no one. A new generation had arisen to people and possess the land which he had defended, and his old friends and companions were gone. At length General Fletcher, from Bath county, saw and knew him, and by his means the old pioneer was clothed in a decent suit, and entertained in a kind and becoming man- ner. When it became known that Simon Kenton was in the town, numbers assembled to see the celebrated hunter and warrior, and testify their regard for him. He was taken to the capitol and placed in the speaker's chair : and there was introduced the second great adventurer of the West, to a crowded assembly of legislators, judges, officers of the government, and citizens. This the simple-hearted old man was wont to call the proudest day of his- life. His lands sold for taxes were at once released; and by the exertions of friends in Congress, shortly after, a pension of two hundred and forty- dollars a year was obtained for him, securing his old age from absolute want. Without further reward from the Government, or notice from his fellow- citizens, General Kenton lived in his quiet and obscure home, to the age of eighty-one. On the 29th of April. 1836, in sight of the place where the Indians proposed to burn him at the stake, he breathed his last, surrounded by his family and neighbors, and supported by the consolations of the Gos- pel."
We can easily see how unfit for civilized life were Boone and Kenton. suddenly transposed from an almost savage state of society, unsophisticated,
363
DISCONTENT AMONG THE KENTUCKIANS.
and simple-minded as they were. The questions of property, regulated by law, and liberty, and policy, in their profound subtleties, were to them as sealed books, which they had never studied. For more than twenty years, battling with savages, and enduring bitter privations with constant and necessary activity, they lived in the free wilderness, where action was unfet- tered by law, and where property was not controlled by form and techni- cality, but rested on the natural and broader foundations of justice and convenience. They knew how to beat back the invader of their soil, to bear down a foe in the field, or circumvent him by strategem, or in ambush. But they knew not how to swindle a neighbor out of his acres, by declara- tion, demurrer, plea, and replication, and all the scientific pomp of chicanery. They knew not how damages could solve a private injury, or a personal wrong. Hence, in the broad and glorious light of civilization, they were ingenuous, simple, or stupid, as it may be called, and this made them an easy prey to unscrupulous speculators or designing tricksters. Certain it is, that myriads arose to prey upon the simple patriarchs of the forest, and to drive them farther out into the wilderness, once more to brave its toils and perils, rather than to endure man's inhumanity to man, under civilization.
There was evidently a growing discontent with a number of the pro- visions and with the workings of the first constitution of the State of 1792. By virtue of an act of the previous Legislature, the people voted upon the question of calling a convention for the enactment of a new one in 1797. Of twenty-one counties in the State, there were five that made no return. Though out of nine thousand eight hundred and fourteen votes in the coun- ties reporting, five thousand four hundred and forty-six were for, and but four hundred and forty votes against, the call, yet the failure of the five delinquent counties to report defeated the requisite constitutional majority, and made abortive the proceeding.
At the next legislative session, a similar bill passed the House for a second vote on the question of the election of 1798, but was defeated in the Senate. A feeling of irritation and impatience increased among the people, until the suggestion was made, and very generally adopted, that the people vote an instruction upon their legislators, at the next assembling, to call a constitu- tional convention, and provide for the election of delegates thereto at the succeeding election. There were various and general discussions in the newspapers, and before the people in debate, in relation to the convention. The cry went out against an aristocratic Senate chosen by electors, and not by the people, who had the power of filling vacancies in their own body. The same electors also chose the governor, and thus both these important factors at the head of government were too independent, and too far re- moved from responsibility to the people. Other objections were urged with zeal, not always temperate. The country became much agitated: and at the election of members to the Legislature, the ballots were also cast both for and against a convention. The result was much like that in the first
364
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
instance. Ten counties failed to report, and, though the aggregate majority in those that did was large, the constitutional majority was wanting. The sentiment of the people, however, was ascertained; and at the assembling of the Legislature, a two-thirds vote was obtained from both houses, which, by the terms of the constitution, authorized the convention to meet for the enactment of another fundamental law for Kentucky.
Thus, after seven years from the first, the second constitutional conven- tion met on the 22d of July, 1799, and elected Alexander C. Bullitt, of Jefferson county, president, and Thomas Todd, secretary.
No report of the debates of the body is known to exist, although proposals for taking down and publishing them are contained in the newspapers of the day. The various points of division can not, therefore, be stated; but as a substitute for this narration, a brief analysis of the important alterations in the government by the new constitution will be offered. The first radical change was the constitution of the Senate and executive, the former of which, instead of being elected by a college of electors, was distributed among a certain number of senatorial districts, not less than twenty-four, and an additional senator to be chosen for every three representatives which shall be elected above fifty-eight. One-fourth of this body was renewed every year, so that, after the first three years, the senators held their offices for four years.
The governor, instead of being elected by the same college of electors as the Senate, was chosen every four years by the voters directly, but, instead of possessing the effectual negative of the old constitution, he was overruled, on disapproving a law, by a simple majority of all the members elected. Thus was the executive responsibility swallowed up by the Legislature, and the representative of the whole Commonwealth was scarcely capable of exercising any effectual check in behalf of the people over the mistakes inci- dent to all popular bodies, and which are so usefully subjected to the re- 'examination of the community, as well as to that of their representatives, by an efficient veto. The executive veto was calculated to bring that de- partment of the government into contempt, by its imperfect powers of withstanding the moral force so characteristic of popular bodies. The pat- ronage which the governor possessed, in so simple and economical a com- munity, furnished a very confined and indirect influence. Most of the offices within his gift were irremovable at his pleasure. With these two essential alterations, the new constitution was reported. after the labors of twenty- seven days, on the 17th of August. It declared the former frame of gov- ernment to be in force until the Ist of June, 1800, when the new fundamenal law of the State was to go into operation.
It is, the author thinks, a matter of regret that alterations of our consti- tution should not be submitted to popular vote by the ordinary Legislature whenever two-thirds, or other number beyond such a majority, should think them necessary, without prohibiting the assemblage of a convention whenever
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365
MONROE'S RECALL FROM FRANCE.
substantially and unequivocally required by the people. A provision like the above, such as is introduced into the constitutions of many other States, is better designed to save the community from the hazard of submitting the whole frame of its fundamental law to the ordeal, often so dangerous, of an unlimited convention.
This session closed the legislative functions under the old constitution, after having added six hundred and fifty laws to the statute book in eight years, rather more than eighty per annum. Whoever attends to the subject will be struck with the frequent changes in the courts, and in the execution of the unsteady laws. Relief, also, of one kind or other, either to private individuals who should have been left to seek it in a court of law or equity, or to public functionaries who had violated the laws and ran to the Legis- lature to cover their ignorance or design from the consequences, by legalizing what was illegally done, makes a figure in the code; besides those acts of direct interference between creditor and debtor, which, taken together, show a considerable moral laxity of law-makers, and, taken separately, furnish precedents for every species of irregular and incorrect legislation. Not that there were no good laws, for, indeed, there were many. But so radical and licentious was the disposition to change that but few acts escaped, di- rectly or indirectly, the effects of legislative ignorance, malice, partiality, or prejudice. Such were the reflections of Marshall.
The sympathy of the people of Kentucky for the French was, in 1797 and after, put to the severest test. The relations of the latter and our own Government were becoming strained. The late treaty with Great Britain was the cause of much chagrin and umbrage, not only to Frenchmen, but to their hosts of friends in the United States. It was alleged to be in bad faith, after the partialities shown by France and the many expressions of as- surance of return of favors when the emergency of need might require. In the background of all this was the intense hatred and malediction of Eng- land for her bad faith in carrying out the provisions of the peace treaty of 1783, and for her atrocious inhumanity in inciting Indian barbarities on the borders while affecting to be at peace. James Monroe was superseded by Charles Pinckney as minister to France. The Government, with much hauteur, refused to receive him, and thus shut the door to the friendly over- tures intended. Indeed, this French question had entered with lively interest into the presidential contest. and the election of Mr. Adams was a sore dis- appointment to the people of that nation.
An extra session of Congress was called for the 15th of June, 1797, and in the president's message. adverting to the speech of the president of the French Directory on the departure of Minister Monroe, he says: "Senti- ments are disclosed more alarming than the refusal of a minister, because more dangerous to our independence and union, and at the same time studi- ously marked with indignities toward the Government of the United States." President Adams, attempting further friendly negotiations, instituted the com-
366
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
mission of Messrs. Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, with instructions to use all proper efforts toward conciliation. The French cabinet haughtily refused to receive them. 1Great forbearance was exercised to avoid or postpone a declaration of war. Yet, a state of war actually existed, and the dilemma of the Government was painful. French ships of war were depredating on American commerce, and decrees were issued by the French Directory sub- jecting to seizure all American vessels having on board British goods or products, or which had sailed from British ports.
In retaliation and defense, an act of Congress suspended commercial in- tercourse between the United States and France and her possessions. Mer- chant vessels were authorized to be armed in their voyages to the West Indies or Europe. The president was empowered to increase the standing army and the navy by large additions. Pending these belligerent threatenings, parties divided in Kentucky, the Democratic still in sympathy with their old friends and allies, and the Federal supporting the administration of Adams. Many assemblies passed resolutions of the tenor of the day, of which the following at a Lexington meeting are a sample :
"Resolved, That the present war with France is impolitic, unnecessary, and unjust, inasmuch as the means of reconciliation have not been unremit- tingly and sincerely pursued, hostilities having been unauthorized against France by law while a negotiation was pending.
"Resolved, That a war with France will only be necessary and proper when engaged in for the defense of our territory, and to take any part in the present political commotions of Europe will endanger our liberty and inde- pendence. Any intimate connection with the corrupt and sinking monarchy of England ought to be abhorred and avoided."
Against this, a meeting of citizens of Mason county presented an address to the president, numerously signed, which brought a response of grateful encomium, from which address we quote : "We have seen, with the anxiety inseparable from the love of our country, the situation of the United States under the aggressions of the French nation on our commerce, our rights, and our sovereignty. As freemen, we do not hesitate; we will rally around the standard of our country and support the constituted authorities. An in- sidious enemy shall in vain attempt to divide us from the Government of the United States, to the support of which, against any foreign enemy, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Other similar addresses ac- companied this.
Washington was appointed commander-in-chief and all made ready for war, with an impression that France would invade our territory, or attempt it. No declaration of war yet came from either side ; still, war was begun. The United States frigate Constitution, of thirty-eight guns, on February 19, 1799. fell in with the French frigate La Insurgent, forty guns, and after a hot fight of an hour, captured her. On February 1, 1800, the Constitu-
1 Statesman's Manaal.
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367
AFRICAN SLAVERY IN KENTUCKY.
tion met the La Vengeance, of fifty-four guns, and after an action of five hours, the latter hauled off and escaped, by a favoring squall, after being silenced, with a loss of one hundred and sixty killed and wounded. Three hundred private American vessels had been armed for self-defense, while much damage had been done to American shipping by French vessels. A change in the French Government was effected by Napoleon becoming first consul. It was intimated that commissioners would now be received at the French capital. Messrs. Murray, Ellsworth, and Governor Davis, of North Carolina, were appointed such commissioners, and proceeded in November, 1799, to France. Toward the close of 1800, a treaty was ratified between the two countries and further hostilities avoided.
African slavery, transplanted from the other States, was now deeply rooted in the civil and social soil of Kentucky. From the first immigra- tion and settlement of 1775, to this date, slaves often formed a part of the family retinue, or swelled the body of colonists, who usually combined for - mutual safety. In the solitudes of the wilderness, and the isolations of the settlements, the intense longings for the society of human kind made the companionship of master and household with the colored slaves an essential condition to the contentment and happiness of both. If Uncle Ben and Black Sam felled the trees for fencing and fuel, plowed the corn-ground, or hoed the garden, Mars Tom often bore a hand with them; and when he did not, they knew he was on an Indian scout, or supplying the wants of the household with spoils of the hunt, or sharing in some other way the diligent toils and exposures incident to the rude life and home. If Aunt Dinah or Jenny plied the loom, spun the yarns, or cooked the meals, Mis- tress Anna was often pressed to direct and aid, or diligently employed in other domestic duties. Together the children played, together they went errands, and together they did the lighter work of boys and girls; and if sometimes it became necessary, the boys were ever ready to fight for each other, almost forgetting the difference of race and color. Conversational intercourse, between the females especially, was cheerful and confiding, and only restrained by the respectful deference which the slave always mani- fested to the master or mistress. Hence, while the relations were civilly and socially so distinct, they were mutually confiding and affectionate. The white and colored elements were thus pleasantly blended in the household unit, ever respecting the differences which nature and fortune had prescribed. yet useful and happy in the respective spheres in which they were placed. Of these relations we may have to speak further on, and from the personal experience and study of a lifetime.
In 1798, the Legislature passed an act concerning slaves, modifying the previous laws to some extent. Good treatment was enjoined upon the master, and all contracts between the two positively forbidden. The execu- tion of the law was placed under the jurisdiction of the county courts. and these were authorized to admonish the master for any ill-treatment toward
368
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
his servant. If persisted in, the court had the option and power to dis- charge the abused slave. Moderate chastisement with stripes, as in the punishment of children, was not considered ill-treatment. In this law, white and colored being free-but from any cause reduced to servitude-were rec- ognized alike. Any purchase of a white servant by a colored man or an Indian was prohibited.
In 1797, the great orator and statesman, Henry Clay, came to make Kentucky his adopted home, at the early age of twenty-one years. Among his first declaration of principles was an avowed advocacy of the emancipa- tion of slaves, and the abolishment of the institution, pending the discus- sions of the issues of a constitutional change. There were many persons then in the State who were averse to the institution of slavery. from scruples of conscience, and from a conviction that it would prove a great social and political evil to the country.
1 In 1792, Rev. David Rice, an eminent pioneer minister of the Presby- terian Church, was one of the members of the first constitutional conven- tion, at Danville. He introduced and advocated a resolution in that body for the gradual extinction of slavery, but without success, though he found sympathy and support.
In 1804, a formidable movement, under the lead of Revs. Tarrent, Bar- row, Sutton, Holmes, and other ministers of the Baptist Church, was con- certedly made in the same direction. They openly declared for the abolition of slavery, alleging that no fellowship should be had with slaveholders, as in principle and practice slavery was a sinful and abominable system, fraught with peculiar evils and miseries, which every good man should condemn. They are known in the records of the times as Emancipators. but styled themselves Friends of Humanity. The movement compelled the attention of the associations, which passed resolutions, declaring it improper for min- isters, churches, or associations to meddle with the question of the emanci- pation of slaves, or any other political subject. This gave such offense to the Emancipators, that they withdrew from the General Baptist Union, and, in 1807, formed an association of their own, called the Licking-Locust As- sociation, Friends to Humanity. They did not proselyte with aggressive success, and in time died out as a distinct body, seeming to be consumed in the intensity of their own zeal. Expressions of hostility from other quar- ters signalized a disposition to agitate the question of abolition; but slavery had already become an interest and a sentiment among the people of Ken- tucky, too deep-rooted and entwined in every branch and fiber of the Com- monwealth, to be dissevered and torn away by anything less than the cyclone of civil war.
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