USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 16
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1 Hubbard Hinde Kavanaugh, D. D , was born on the 14th day of January, 1802, in Clark county, Kentucky: was converted in November, 1817; in Jan- uary of the following year he connected himself with the Methodist Episcopal Church : was licensed to preach at Pleasant Green, Bourbon county, in 1822; at the conference of 1323 was admitted as a probationer ; was married
HUBBARD HINDE KAVANAUGH.
1 Biographic Sketch, by T. J. Dodd, D. D.
552
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
July 24, 1828, to Mrs. Margaret C. Green, daughter of Mr. Charles Railey, of Woodford county; in 1837, was appointed by the governor to the super- intendency of public instruction of the State of Kentucky; was a delegate to the General Conference in New York in 1844, at which measures were instituted that resulted in the establishment of the Southern branch of the church, in which he was afterward a distinguished light. His wife dying in 1863, he was married a second time, two years subsequently, to Mrs. M. D. P. Lewis, at Cynthiana, Kentucky. He died, still actively engaged in the arduous duties of his office, March 19, 1884, at Columbus, Mississippi, after having attained the ripe old age of eighty-two years.
Bishop Kavanaugh was one of the comparatively few men who may be justly called both great and good. In him the conditions of development were more than ordinarily favorable to the germination and growth of the higher intellectual faculties and the nobler moral virtues.
In the year 1854, he was elected and ordained to the bishopric. To this high office he had passed up through all grades of appointments, and had experienced both the pleasures and the pains incident to life in the Metho- dist itinerancy. From the first his aim had been single. He had never, either by disability of any kind, or by any interest of his own, been deflected from the onward path of a dutiful son in the Gospel of his Lord. Through a long course of years of active ministerial service, therefore, he was qualified for the episcopal chair. In this new and exalted relationship new capacities were developed as new responsibilities were assumed.
Taken all in all, Bishop Kavanaugh was one of the best and greatest men our country has ever produced. Eloquent, powerful in the pulpit as he was, his greatest excellence was in his goodness. We seriously doubt whether the Church has known a better man. Pure, guileless. unsuspect- ing, he seemed not to know wrong. Earnest, humble, laborious, he preached around among his brethren as their kind, loving friend, and the most bashful boy felt at home in his presence.
The leading institution of learning of the Methodist Episcopal Church North, in Kentucky, is Augusta College, at Augusta. It is renowned in history as among the first attempts in the younger days of our Common- wealth to found a college of high grade for classical and scientific learning : but more than this, for its claim to be the first college ever established in the world under the patronage of the Methodist Church. It was founded in 1822, and among its former presidents were Martin Ruter, D. D., and Joseph S. Tomlinson. D. D. H. B. Bascom, D. D., and Burr H. Mccown, D. D., were of its professors. It enrolled a patronage of one hundred to one hundred and fifty students for years, and among its alumni were some of the ablest and most distinguished men of the country. Within a few years past it has ceased to exist as a college under denominational auspices. The buildings and grounds were converted to the popular uses of a local school for the town of Augusta.
553
THE STATE COLLEGE.
Dr. Daniel Stevenson is justly esteemed as one of the ablest ministers and leaders of his church, and is identified as an active and efficient factor in the educational history of the State. From 1863 to 1867, he served, by virtue of his election to the office, as superintendent of public instruction for Kentucky. Though his term of office was during the calamitous and disorderly period of the civil war, his administration was characterized by faithfulness and efficiency throughout. He yet lives to serve his people and the country in the cause of education and religion. as the efficient president of the college at Barboursville, Ky.
The Kentucky Wesleyan University was established at Millersburg, in 1866, under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, but removed and re-located at Winchester in 1891. Though the buildings and grounds are spacious and commodious, the endowment fund is inade- quate, as yet, to carry forward the plan of such an institution as was origi- nally contemplated. Situated in the midst of a beautiful and healthful portion of the bluegrass region, and with an able faculty and full course of college study, it offers attractions for the student who wishes to avail himself of a classical and scientific education of a high order.
Other colleges and academies of repute are established under the care and friendly auspices of the Methodist Church, for the education of both males and females. Conspicuous among these may be mentioned Science Hill Academy, at Shelbyville, so popularly conducted by Mrs. Julia Tevis for nearly fifty years, and with a patronage and success unsurpassed in the State. This famous female school is yet in a flourishing condition, under the management of President Poynter and his able faculty. Russellville Female College, under the charge of President Murphy, and others, are also quite noted.
Among the new factors of influence in our educational advancement may be ranked the State College of Kentucky. Agricultural and mechanical col- leges in the United States owe their origin to an act of Congress passed in 1862, donating public lands for their endowment. The amount donated was thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in the Federal Congress. Under this allotment, Kentucky received three hundred and thirty thousand acres. This, if judiciously disposed of, would have formed an ample endowment. The land scrip was sold for fifty cents per acre, and the amount realized, one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, invested in Kentucky six per cent. bonds, of which the State became custodian in trust for the college.
The connection formed with Kentucky University was severed in 1878. The city of Lexington, anxious to retain the college, offered to the State its city park, containing fifty-two acres of land, as a site for its buildings. The city and county supplemented this offer by fifty thousand dollars in city and county bonds, to be used for the erection of buildings, which was ac. cepted.
554
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
A charter was granted the new institution. In accordance with the re- quirements of the organic act, " those branches relating to agriculture and the mechanical arts, including military tactics," are obligatory; but the Board of Trustees, nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate, are allowed a wide discretion in regard to the addition of other departments of study.
The State College of Kentucky occupies fifty-two acres of ground within the city limits, the gift of the city, the estimated value of which is $250, 000. The buildings erected upon it represent a value of $130,000. The machin- ery, cabinets, museums and apparatus represent $40,000 more. Besides these, the college owns a farm, used for experimental work in agriculture, worth $25,000. The material assets of the college in grounds, buildings, farm and equipments represent not far from $450,000. Its course of study is as follows: Agricultural; two scientific courses; civil engineering ; mechanical engineering; classical course; veterinary course ; two normal school courses and an academy, designed to prepare students for the college classes. The number of professors in the college and employes in the station is twenty-six, and more than six hundred students have been enrolled in the various courses of study within the last year. Students who desire to supplement their resources by the products of their labor have an oppor- tunity to work on the college grounds or on the farm, and receive compen- sation therefor at the rate of six to ten cents per hour.
The income of the college is, approximately, fifty thousand dollars yearly, derived from the interest on the bonds held by the State Treasurer, for its benefit, and from a tax of half of one cent on each hundred dollars of tax- able property in the State, and other sources.
Free tuition is provided by law for four students from each legislative representative district, and also for a like number of beneficiaries in the normal school.
The buildings are new, and consist of a college structure capable of accommodating five hundred students, dormitory, with dining-room and lodg- ings for one hundred ; president's house and commandant's house.
The institution is in a prosperous condition, with an apparently bright future before it. Its president, J. K. Patterson, has labored with untiring activity for its good, and his friends will credit him with a large share of its success.
In 1832, John Breathitt was elected Governor, and James T. Morehead. Lieutenant-Governor, and Lewis Sanders made Secretary of State ; thus in- augurating a Jacksonian Democratic administration for the succeeding four years in Kentucky. In the same year, Jackson defeated Clay for the Presi- dency of the United States, in a contest in which the issues of the great national parties were never more distinctively defined, as upon the question of a national bank, the tariff for protection, the internal improvement policy, etc. The prejudice against Mr. Adams was an incubus upon the prestige
555
FINANCIAL DISTRESS.
of Clay, especially after the rancorous controversy over the allegations of bargain and collusion. Any man of less resistant and recuperative power than Mr. Clay must have been borne down by the military and magnetic force of Jackson. As it was, Kentucky gave her favorite son a majority of over seven thousand. The ascendancy he had gained in his State was retained until the feebleness of age marked the turning point in his brilliant career. It was his mission at home, while taking no prominent part in questions of State economy, to found and strengthen a conservative spirit that came with the increase of wealth and culture of the people. No other man living could have then breasted the onward and sweeping wave of Jackson's popularity in the Commonwealth; and amid the changes of par- ties and politics which have come and gone, the spirit with which the great statesman and orator impressed Kentucky has never ceased to inspire.
We have given elsewhere the main political events of this administrative term. In 1836, James Clark became governor, and Charles A. Wickliffe, lieutenant-governor, and James M. Bullock was appointed secretary of state. Clark dying in September, 1839, Wickliffe succeeded him. During this term, the bubbles of speculation which had been blown began to explode over the country, and the pall of financial distress to spread in Kentucky, as elsewhere. But the most hopeless and desolate period the people of the Commonwealth have ever known was in 1840 and 1841, when, upon the Whig ticket, Robert P. Letcher was made governor, Manlius V. Thomson lieutenant-governor, and James Harlan secretary of state, and of which we have written elsewhere.
The views are so pointedly and lucidly expressed. that we quote the passages from Shaler's Kentucky on this interesting period: "This episode closed the remarkable events in the history of the financial development of the State. From this time on the Commonwealth's banks were singularly sound and efficient institutions. They were commonly domestic in their system; they trusted for their strength to a mixture of control exercised by the State through its ownership of stock and the citizen. stockholders. They gave to the people a better currency than existed in any State west of the mountains. Even in the trial of the civil war they stood, as they still stand, unbroken. Their strength is so great that although their currency has been destroyed by the laws of the United States, they remain the mainstays of the business of the Kentucky people outside of one or two of the larger cities."
There is no other case in the history of these American States, where the problem of an exchange system has been so beautifully shown in all its various workings. In the first period of the State's history, we had a long time in which the industry was carried on in the main by barter. Then came the period when the Spanish currency of the dollar was the mainstay of commerce. It is likely that the singular philo-Spanish party got some of
t American Commonwealths, p. 190.
556
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
its influence from the use of this currency. A sense of kinship comes with a common money. Relations with Spain that now seem so impracticable probably looked more natural to a people who used Spanish money in the most of their transactions. When the want of small money became great, as it did about the beginning of the century, the need was met by cutting the Spanish dollar into four or eight parts, called "quarters" or " bits." These angular fragments of " cut money " passed current for thirty years or so, and were the subject of several legislative enactments. This plan of dividing coins into segments was a singular, if not unique, device, and long served a good purpose.
When the commerce of this people came to the point where a better system of money became necessary, we find them learning the hard lesson of banking by the dear way of experience, and profiting by that experience in a singularly practical fashion. Moreover, the advance of the Kentuck- ians in the methods of government can, to a great degree, be attributed to the complete discussion of the principle of public faith that they had then to decide in the matter of the Commonwealth Bank and the new court ques- tions. In no other American State can the money problem be found in such a good position for study. The careful student will there find a wonderful catalogue of monetary expedients.
From their trials in business the people more than once turned, with their usual eagerness, to the questions of national politics. The wide habit of thought bred in their early wrestle with national problems, such as the first forty years of the life of the Commonwealth opened to them, made such matters always of paramount interest.
The Harrison phenomenal " Hard Cider " presidential campaign of 1840 was decided, as was the first Jackson campaign, on the memories of the war of 1812. Van Buren received 32,616, while Harrison's vote was 58, 489. a majority of nearly two to one, and this despite the fact that Richard M. Johnson, the candidate for vice-president with Van Buren, was a Kentuckian of Kentuckians. The Whig vote was doubtless reduced by the popularity of this illustrious citizen.
In 1844, Clay was the Whig candidate for the presidency. Although he was supported by his party with unsurpassed ardor, his majority in the State was only about nine thousand, a great falling off from the majority given to Harrison four years before This marks a peculiar phase of poli- tics in Kentucky, which we must now explain-another testimony to the belief in our manifest destiny.
In this election, the Democratic party represented the sentiment for the annexation of Texas, which now was becoming a burning question in Amer- ican politics. The attempt which Texas was then making for independence of Mexico claimed and gained the keenest sympathy from Kentucky. Many of the leaders in that remarkable conflict were from this Commonwealth, and they all represented the motives of that Western life which, in time of trial,
557
SYMPATHY FOR TEXAS.
knows no State bounds. There have been few incidents in American his- tory so calculated to interest the spirit of adventure. The struggle was romantic in its object and its details. For years the Kentucky people had been deprived of all share in the excitement of war. War for political objects has always had an absorbing interest to a people who have the out- going type of mind, combined with rude vigor. Moreover, the growing interest in the slavery problem led many strong advocates of that institution to desire an extension of territory in the South-west, into which the slave population might find its way. These influences led many persons tempo- rarily to detach themselves from the old Whig or conservative party, and to join the other, that advocated aiding Texas in her conflict with Mexico and her admission into the United States. The same influence acted through- out the Union, but with more energy in Kentucky than elsewhere, because the force of sympathy with the Texan cause was stronger than in any other Whig State. Nothing else could show so well the gain in the conservatism of Kentucky as the fact that, despite all these natural incentives to sympathy with Texas, the State was held by a majority of over nine thousand in resist- ance to the project of a war with Mexico. The basis of Clay's opposition to the annexation of Texas was the probable tendency to the extension of slavery that this annexation would bring about.
The defeat of Clay was the final blow to his long-deferred hopes of occu- pying the chair of the presidency at Washington. He still remained the foremost figure of Kentucky politics, but his loftiest aim ended with this defeat. This failure of their candidate was the more exasperating because treachery in New York determined the issue against him. The nation at large abandoned the cautious policy that, strangely enough, had come to be the motive of Kentucky, which in the preceding generation was the most radical State in the Union. Had it been left to Kentucky, despite her natural sympathy with Texas and the pro-slavery South, there would prob- ably have been no annexation of new territory for many years, and slavery might have been hemmed within its old bounds. Such was the potent influence of one great mind over the constituency of a Commonwealth.
1 It will easily be seen that the first settlers of Kentucky, though they came from slave-holding colonies, brought few negroes into the State. As soon as the pioneer life began to give place to a commercial activity, and men took to planting for profit, and not for subsistence, the negro population rapidly increased. From 1790 to 1840, there was a rapid gain of the Afri- can element of the population represented in per cents. at the several dec- ades, as follows. The upper line gives the per cent. of increase in the preceding decade in the black, the lower in the white, population :
1800.
1810.
1820.
1830. 2013
1840. 10%
1850. 1860.
1870.
Colored
224
99
57
1525
-6
Whites
. 200
84
36
22
131/3
26
7 17
14
I Shaler's Commonwealth.
558
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Thus the African race increased more rapidly than the white up to 1830. In 1840, the white population shows a notable increase over the black. This gain is more marked in 1850; it is extended in 1860, and in 1870 the black population shows an absolute decrease. In a small way, this actual decrease in 1870 may be due to the emigration of the negroes during the war, but it will be noticed that it very nearly agrees with the series of changes belonging to the earlier decades. We may say that this decrease would have come about in the natural succession of changes, even if the war had not been fought or emancipation established. There is great difficulty in analyzing the history of slavery in Kentucky. There are no sufficient records on which to base the study of the problem.
In the first place, the reader should remember that only a small part of the Commonwealth is fit for anything like plantation life. The greater part of the area requires the thrift and personal care of the owner to make its cultivation remunerative. Even that part of the land of Kentucky that may be used for tillage in a large way is decidedly more profitable in the hands of farmers who cultivate small areas. Next, it should be noticed that the whole system of Kentucky life fell from the first into something essen- tially like the yeomanry system of England. The land came into the hands of small landholders, who, in the main, worked with their own hands. Each year increased this element of the State at the expense of the large proper- ties. The principle of primogeniture, which in Virginia outlasted the laws that supported it, never gained a place in Kentucky. The result was that each generation saw the lands more completely divided. There was also in this yeoman class, as well as among the more educated men of fortune, a growing discontent with the whole system of slave labor. Nor was this dislike to slavery based on economic considerations alone. There came to be a prejudice against all forms of commerce in slaves. This notion came to its height in the decade between 1830 and 1840, and is probably respon- sible for a part of the rapid relative decrease of slaves within those years. From the local histories the deliberate student will easily become convinced that if there had been no external pressure against slavery at this time there would still have been a progressive elimination of the slave element from the population by emancipation on the soil, by the sale of slaves to the planters of the Southern States, and by their colonization in foreign parts.
In the decade from 1840 to 1850, the activity of the Abolition party in the North became very great. All along the Ohio river there were stations for the rescuing of slaves and conveying them to safe places beyond the border. The number of negroes who escaped in this way was small-it probably did not average more than one hundred a year-but the effect upon the state of mind of the people was very great. The truth is, the negroes in Kentucky were not generally suffering from any bonds that weighed heavily upon them. Slavery in Kentucky was of the domestic sort ; that is, it was to the most of their race not a grievous burden to bear. This is
1
559
CLAY'S "TRUE AMERICAN " SUPPRESSED.
.
well shown by the fact that thousands of them quietly remained with their masters in the counties along the Ohio river, when in any night they might have escaped across the border. Still, this underground railway system, although it did not free many slaves, profoundly irritated the minds of their owners, and even of the class that did not own slaves. Accompanied as was this work of rescuing slaves by a violent abuse of slavehold- ing, it destroyed, in good part, the desire to be rid of the insti- tution which had grown on the soil, and gave place to a natural, though unreasonable, determi- nation to cling to the system against all foreign interference.
1 Among the leading inci- dents of many that served to inflame the public passion on the slavery issue, in June, 1845, , Cassius M. Clay established and published at Lexington an anti- slavery paper, entitled the True American, which he edited with daring boldness, reckless of per- sonal consequences, that is char- CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY. acteristic of the life of one of the most remarkable men Kentucky ever produced. It was meant and understood to be an open war upon an institution which had the sanction and support of the dominant element, and which had entwined itself in vital relationship with almost every great interest in the Commonwealth. On the 18th of August ensuing, a " committee of sixty " prominent citizens were, by a large public assem- bly of men at Lexington, who had four days previously requested a discontinuance of its publication as dangerous to the peace of the commu- nity and to the safety of their homes and families, and which request was defiantly refused, authorized to take possession of the obnoxious press, type and printing apparatus, pack them up, and send them forthwith to Cincin- nati, which was done, and the freight charges and expenses paid thereon. Its publication was continued at Cincinnati for a year or two. The com- mittee of sixty were tried on a charge of riot, and a verdict of " not guilty" rendered.
I Collins, Vol. I., p. 330.
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565
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
CHAPTER XXVI.
(1846-60.)
Kentuckians and Texan independence.
War with Mexico.
General Zachary Taylor commands.
March to the Rio Grande.
Battles of Palo Alto, of Resaca, of Mon- terey.
Louisville Legion.
Second Kentucky infantry.
McKee, Henry Clay, Jr., and Fry
First Kentucky cavalry.
Humphrey Mar-hall, John P. Gaines.
Captain John S. Williams' company.
Generals Butler and Marshall.
Withdrawals from Taylor's army to re- enforce Scott.
Taylor's critical position.
Battle and victory at Buena Vista.
Report.
McKee, Clay, and others killed.
Marshall's cavalry.
Captain Williams at Cerro Gordo.
March to and capture of Mexico city. Peace treaty.
New Mexico, Arizona, California, Ne. vada, Utah, and Colorado purchased.
General Taylor's military success makes him president of United States in :848. His life.
Crittenden governor. New Constitution voted.
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