A charter was granted the new institution. In accordance with the requirements 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 machinery, 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 opportunity to work on the college grounds or on the farm, and receive compensation 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 taxable 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 lodgings 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 inaugurating 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

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

term.

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 parties 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 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

1 American Commonwealths, p. 190..

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 Kentuckians 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 questions. 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 politics 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 American 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,

knows no State bounds.

There have been few incidents in American history 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 outgoing 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 temporarily 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 throughout 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 resistance 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 occupying 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 probably 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.

1It 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 African element of the population represented in per cents. at the several decades, as follows. The upper line gives the per cent. of increase in the preceding decade in the black, the lower in the white, population: 1850. 1860. 1870. 20% 10/3 1523 7 26 13/3

Colored.
Whites

1800. 1810. 1820. 1830. 1840.

224 99

57

200 84

36

22

1 Shaler's Commonwealth.

-6

17

14

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.

Next, it should be noticed that the first into something essenThe land came into the hands

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. the whole system of Kentucky life fell from tially like the yeomanry system of England. 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 properties. 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. 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 responsible 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.

Nor was this

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