REFLECTIONS UPON KENTUCKY HISTORY.

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monetary problems of the day. This claim was yet further established, as we note hereafter, by the conservative and skillful management of these banks during the perils and difficulties which beset them during the civil war. We quote here some very able and pertinent reflections. of a recent author upon Kentucky history: 1

"As we must shortly pass to the consideration of the events that immediately preceded the civil war, which made a new era in Kentucky history, it will be well to make a brief survey of the political and social conditions of the Commonwealth in the decade of 1850-60. So far, the life of Kentucky had been an indigenous growth, a development from its own conditions, singularly uninfluenced by any external forces. With only the germs of a society sown on this ground, there had sprung into existence a powerful Commonwealth, that now, at the end of eighty years of time, felt strong enough to stand alone in the struggles that were soon to rage about her. No other State in the Mississippi valley-hardly any of the original Southern States-had pursued its course with so little influence from external conditions. There had been relatively little contributions of population from other States, except from Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and but a small immigration from European countries since 1800. This made an indigenous development not only possible, but necessary.

"From 1774 to 1860, eighty-five years had elapsed. This period measures the whole course of Kentucky history, from the first settlement at Harrodsburg to the beginning of the great tragedy of the civil war. As before recounted, the original settlement and the subsequent increase of the Kentucky population were almost entirely drawn from the Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland colonies; at least nine-five per cent. of the popu lation was from these districts. Probably more than half of this blood was of Scotch and North English extraction-practically the whole of it was of British stock. The larger part of it was from the frontier region of Virginia, where the people had never had much to do with slavery.

"The total number of these white settlers who entered Kentucky in the first eighty-five years can not be determined with any approach to accuracy; but from a careful consideration of the imperfect statistics that are available, it seems reasonable to estimate the whole number of white immigrants at not more than one hundred and twenty thousand, while the slave population that was brought into the State probably did not amount to one-third this number. In 1860, the white population amounted to 919,484, and the slave population to 225,483; the free black population to 10,684. Of the white population of this census, 59,799 were born beyond the limits of the United States. This element of foreign folk was in the main a very recent addition to the State. It was mainly due to the sudden development of manufacturing interests along the Ohio border, principally in the towns 1 Shaler's Kentucky Commonwealths, pp. 221-29.

of Louisville, Covington, and Newport, and to certain new settlements of agriculturist Germans in the counties forming the northern border of the State. The foreign-born people had not yet become to any degree mingled with the native people, either in the industries or in blood.

"Before we can estimate the fecundity of this population, we must note the fact that from 1820 or thereabouts down to 1860 and later, there was a very great tide of emigration from Kentucky to the States that were settled in the other portions of the Mississippi valley. The southern parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois received a large part of their blood from Kentucky. Missouri was so far a Kentucky settlement that it may be claimed as a child of the Commonwealth. Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas, also received a large share of the Kentucky emigrants. The imperfect nature of the earlier statistics of the United States census makes it impossible to determine with any accuracy the number of persons of Kentucky blood who were in 1860 residents in other States; but the data given make it tolerably clear that the total contribution of Kentucky to the white population of the other States amounted in 1860 to at least one million souls. The increase in the black population was probably rather less than that of the white, but there is no data for its computation.

"If this estimate is correct the fecundity of the Kentucky population in the first eighty years of its life exceeds that which is recorded for any other region in the world. There are several reasons which may account for this rapid multiplication of this people. In the first place the original settlers of Kentucky were of vigorous constitution; they were not brought upon the soil by any solicitations whatever, nor were they forced into immigration by the need of subsistence. Access to the country was difficult, and for some decades the region was exposed to dangers from which all weak-bodied men would shrink. The employment of the early population was principally in agriculture, upon a soil that gave very free returns. There was plenty of unoccupied land for the rising generations, so there were no considerations of a prudential nature to restrain the increase of population. For a long time children were a source of advantage to the land-tiller, and apart from pecuniary gain there was a curious patriarchal pride in a plenteous offspring. The climate proved exceedingly healthy. There were no low-grade malarial fevers to enfeeble the body, and the principal disease of the early days, a high-grade bilious fever, though rather deadly, did not impoverish the life as the malarial troubles of other regions in the Mississippi valley have done. Thus the first population of Kentucky was from the purest spring that ever fertilized a country, and there was little to defile its waters. The principal evils that beset the population were two-first, the excessive use of tobacco and alcohol, which doubtless did something to lower the vitality of the population; second, the extremely defective system of education, which left the people essentially without the means of getting a training proportionate to their natural abilities.

race.

"The institution of slavery tended to keep the industrial and the related social development confined within narrow lines. At the beginning of the century the State had an industrial spirit that was fit to compare with that of New England and the other Northern free States. Many of the arts that were exercised by the whites took on a rapid advance, but the negro is not by nature a good general citizen, nor could he be expected to develop his capacities in the state of slavery. Gradually manual labor, except in agriculture, became in a way discreditable and distasteful to the mastering The mechanical industries, except those of the simpler domestic sort, were generally abandoned, even before northern and eastern competition came in. This want of manufacturing life was by no means an unmitigated evil, for it kept the people in more wholesale occupation; but it served to restrain the growth of wealth, on which the progress of education and the development of capital much depend. The development of slavery was also marked by the progressive separation of society into a richer and a poorer class, though, from the failure of the slave element to increase with the rapidity normal in the more Southern States, the effect was not as great as in these districts. The middle class of farmers in Kentucky-those who, though fairly well to-do, were not slave-owners-always remained a very strong, in fact, a controlling, element in the Kentucky population. The greater part of the tide of strong life that went from Kentucky to other States, in the four decades that preceded the civil war, was from the yeoman class, the reddest, if not the bluest, blood of the State.

"Despite these hindrances to social development, the commercial advance of Kentucky in the first eighty years of her history was marvelously great, especially as it was accomplished practically without the aid of any foreign capital whatever. This absence of immigrant capital in Kentucky in the first sixty or eighty years of its history is something that well deserves to be considered in measuring the development of the State. Until the close of the civil war there was scarcely an improvement in the Commonwealth that was not the result of the capital won by the people. In connection with this, it should be remembered that the expenditure of labor required to bring an acre of Kentucky land under tillage is many times as great as that required to subjugate prairie land. The mere felling of the forest and grubbing of the roots require at least twenty days' labor to the acre of ground.

"It requires a vivid imagination, or some personal experience, to conceive of the enormous amount of physical labor involved in the bringing of forest land into a shape for the use of civilized man. In all the Northern States, the work of subjugation and construction which is necessary on new ground was, in good part, accomplished by the aid of capital that was brought into the country in its settlement. None of these outside aids were offered to Kentucky. The first settlers had little capital beyond the price of their lands and a few household effects that could be packed on horses or wagoned

over the mountains. All their wealth they had to win from the soil and from their little factories.

"Two circumstances greatly helped this people to establish the foundation of their wealth. The settlements at the mouth of the Mississippi afforded, in a very early day, a considerable market for certain products of the soil, especially for tobacco. This plant, which had given a basis for the early commerce of Virginia, helped in turn the development of Kentucky. As early as 1790, there was a considerable shipment of this article. General Wilkinson, whose last shipments were in 1790, received, as was found in his court-martial, as much as $80,000 for a small part of his tobacco alone from the Spanish agents, and he was only the pioneer in this business, which afterward grew to be a great commerce, even before the cession of the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

"In 1860, Kentuckians had already won nearly one-half of the State's surface to the plow. The remainder was still in forests. At no time had there been any pressure for means of subsistence upon the people. The soils of the first quality were now actively under tillage or in grass. Nearly onethird of the State was still covered with original forests, rich in the best timbers, and the mineral wealth of the State was essentially untouched. The geological survey of Dr. David Dale Owen had shown that this country was extraordinarily rich in coal-beds and iron-ore deposits, but the State, in the main, drew its supply of timber, coal and iron from beyond its borders. All its principal industries were agricultural, and its exports were raw products and men-exports, as has been well remarked, that naturally go out together, and to impoverish a country.

"Its growth of population was now, in the later decade of its existence, relatively slow; not that the people were less fecund than of old, but the trifling incoming of settlers along its northern borders did not in any degree replace the constant westward-setting tide of emigration."