The condition of married women under the statutes of Kentucky is much ameliorated, as compared with their status at the common law. Able reports upon the injustice of some portions of the common law to this class of our citizens have produced these changes. The femme sole act, recently become a part of our law, enables a married woman, under proper restrictions, to become a femme sole, and vests her with all rights of making wills, deeds, and contracts incidental to the unmarried condition of life. At the same time, an act of justice has been done to the husband by relieving him of all responsibility for the ante-nuptial contracts of the wife where he gets nothing from the marriage.

A strong desire to provide for insolvent debtors and their families, under proper restrictions and conditions, is manifested by the law of 1866, giving the debtor a homestead exemption, in real estate, to the amount of one thousand dollars. This landed exemption, supported as it is by laws providing exemptions of personal property, with late amendatory additions of a liberal kind, gives about all that could be asked for this class of our citizens. The body of law as developed by the decisions of our Appellate and Superior Courts during the period now under treatment will compare favorably with that of our sister States. Many of these rulings have been of general They have been reported in all the standard

interest to the country at large. legal journals of the country.

These laws of the different periods, as thus passed under review, have been developed under three different State constitutions. Two of these have long outlived the average of the American State constitution. The first constitution of 1792 was largely pervaded by a spirit of distrust of the people, imbibed from the English law. The election of the governor and Senate was taken from the people and transferred to electors chosen by them. The right of suffrage as given by this Constitution was not made to depend on the possession of a freehold estate in land. This feature was a great step in advance of the Constitution of the parent State of Virginia.

Popular dissatisfaction with the provisions of the first constitution in regard to the mode of electing the governor and the Senate led to the formation of the second constitution in 1799. This instrument went into operation in 1800 and remained in force fifty years, until 1850. It is said to be mainly the work of John Breckinridge.

The debates upon this second constitution have, unfortunately, not been preserved. It is known that a fiery discussion arose in the convention on the question of making the Appellate Court independent of the Legislature. Some of the delegates were in favor of that court being under the control of the legislative body, as were the other courts of the Commonwealth. It was mainly through the instrumentality of Judge Caleb Wallace that it was made independent of legislative control. This constitution puts no property qualification upon the right of suffrage. The judges were appointed by the gov ernor and held office during good behavior. This policy of appointment

SKETCH OF GEORGE D. PRENTICE.

745 during good behavior may seem plausible, to be the better mode of securing purity and stability in the judiciary arm of our government, to the minds of many; yet there have been, and are, very able men who have as plausibly asserted and argued the advantages of an elective judiciary as provided in the succeeding constitution of 1850. The ablest presentation of the facts and arguments in favor of the latter resort may be found in a memorable speech of Ben Hardin on an occasion of historic interest.

The third constitution, which took effect in 1850, removed all barriers. on the direct exercise of popular sovereignty, and makes even the judges all elective by the people. Some of its distinctive features are the prohibition of legislative aid to internal improvements. The public credit is sustained by rendering inviolable the revenues of the sinking fund, and requiring the faithful application of the fund to the payment of the public debt. The promotion and diffusion of knowledge is secured by the dedication of the school fund to a system of public instruction in elementary schools. The personal, civil, and political rights of the citizen are declared and secured by an appropriate bill of rights, and by guarded limitations upon power. The instrument is the product of concession and compromise, and has secured for Kentucky the objects of a good constitution-the safety of life, liberty, and property.

Editors of Kentucky.-George Denison Prentice, Kentucky's most famous journalist, wit, and poet, was born at Preston, Connecticut, December 18, 1802; received a good classical education, and showed in early years that precocity which presaged his brilliant career as a writer. He studied law; but entered journalism in Connecticut in 1825, and was associated with the poet Whittier, in 1828-30, in publishing the New England Weekly Review. He came to Kentucky in 1828, to write a campaign life of Henry Clay, and soon after located in Louisville and established the Journal, which he edited thirty-eight years. He made this paper one of the most renowned in the land. It made and unmade poets, poetesses, essayists, journalists, and politicians, who appeared in the West, for over the third of a century. At the breaking out of the civil war, Mr. Prentice threw the whole weight of his powerful organ against the cause of secession, and for the preservation of the Union. In 1835, he was married to Miss Henrietta Benham, by whom he had two sons, William Courtland, who

GEORGE D. PRENTICE.

[From an early painting, owned by the Polytechnic was killed in battle at Augusta, Ken

WALTER N. HALDEMAN.

tucky, and Clarence J., who lost his life by being thrown from his buggy, near Louisville, in 1873. Mrs. Prentice died in 1868, and her husband, January 21, 1870.

Walter N. Haldeman, president of the Courier-Journal Company, was born at Maysville, Ky., April 27, 1821, and educated at Maysville Academy, along with U. S. Grant, W. H. Wadsworth, T. H. Nelson, R. H. Collins, and others of note. In 1840, he became book-keeper in the Louisville Journal office; in 1844, he started the Daily Dime paper, soon converted into the Morning Courier, which he conducted successfully until 1861, when it was suppressed by military domina

tion. It reappeared soon at Nashville, and at other points in the Confederacy, after. At the close of the war, in 1865, Mr. Haldeman resumed the publication of the Courier in Louisville, with marked success, until 1868, when, in concert with Henry Watterson, of the Journal, the two dailies were blended, and appeared as the Courier-Journal, which has since been the leading paper of the South, under the same management.

The Louisville

Democrat was soon also absorbed into this combination. The Courier-Journal building is the finest newspaper edifice west of the Alleghanies, completed in 1876. Mr. Haldeman is a man of most versatile, but practical, talents, and endowed with remarkable energy, persistency, and sagacity in business venture. His life has been a series of marvelous successes, often under the frowns of discouragement.

Hon. Henry Watterson was born in Washington City, February 16, 1840, and was well educated, mainly under private tutors. He began his literary and editorial career in New York and Washington until the civil war. Casting his fortunes with the South, he edited the Nashville Banner, afterward the Rebel, at Chattanooga. After the war, he returned to the Banner, visited Europe in 1866, and on his return became editor of the Louisville Journal, and finally of the Courier-Journal, after the consolidation, and yet holds that position. He was elected to Congress in 1876, in which year he was mainly instrumental in the nomination of Tilden for the presidency. Mr. Watterson is distinguished for his brilliancy and elegance as a writer and speaker, and has proved himself an adroit and powerful political leader for the last twenty years. His defective eyesight greatly interfered with his

EDITORS OF KENTUCKY.

studies in youth, and gave a desultory cast to his education.

He began, at nineteen, a regular writer on the States, a Democratic paper of Washington City. Next, he became editorial manager of the Democratic Review, to the breaking out of the war. In 1865, he was married to Miss Rebecca Ewing, of Tennessee, a daughter of the Hon. Andrew Ewing.

747

Emmett Garvin Logan, editor of the Louisville Evening Times, was born in Shelby county, Kentucky, October 9, 1848; attended "old field" schools in winter, and worked on a farm in summer, until eighteen years of age; attended Professor J. W. Dodd's Classical School, in Shelbyville, for three years; then Washington University, Lexington, Virginia, under the presidency of General Robert E. Lee; was one of the guard of honor to conduct. the burial services at his death; was elected editor of the college paper; returned to Kentucky, and established the Shelby Courant; afterward accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Courier-Journal, taking charge of the Kentucky and Southern news department, and making it a decided feature of the paper, the originality, the brilliancy, and wit of his writings being

EMMETT G. LOGAN.

In

everywhere recognized. Joining with
Governor Underwood and Colonel E.
Polk Johnson in the publication of
the Intelligencer, at Bowling Green,
for a time, he was soon recalled to
take charge as managing editor of the
Courier-Journal, writing many of the
leading editorials of that day.
1882, when Governor Underwood es-
tablished the Cincinnati News, Mr.
Logan was selected as the managing
editor, at a liberal salary. Under his
leadership, that paper became a main
factor of political power in Ohio, es-
pecially in aid of the election of Gov-
ernor Hoadly. In 1884, he joined
with Colonel E. Polk Johnson again,

in the establishment of the Evening Times, and which he yet continues to edit with ability and brilliancy. Mr. Logan is gifted as a versatile and ready writer, and especially for the terse, piquant, and pungent style which has marked his individuality as an editor.

Colonel Robert Morrison Kelly was born at Paris, Kentucky, September 22, 1836, and educated in the schools of Paris and vicinity. Here he

taught school two years, and two years more in Owingsville Academy. Studied law under Hon. J. Smith Hurtt, and opened an office for the practice at the county-seat of Bath county. In 1860, he removed to Cynthiana and formed a partnership with Garrett Davis, his uncle by marriage. In 1861, he entered the Federal army as captain of a company in the Fourth Kentucky infantry, under Colonel Smith S. Fry; was promoted to be major, lieutenantcolonel, and colonel, successively, to October, 1864, and mustered out September 1, 1865, after over four years of service. In 1866, he was appointed collector of internal revenue for the Seventh district, with office at Lexington. Resigned in 1869, to take the editorial control of the Louisville Commercial. In 1873, he was appointed pension agent by President Grant, which office he in time. vacated and transferred to his successor, General Don Carlos Buell, March, 1886, resuming editorial charge of the Commercial.

Kentucky has been as fruitful in the production of editors of talent who have won distinction in their day, and wielded a power that, perhaps more than any other one agency, shaped the parties and governments of the country, both Federal and State, as her sister commonwealths. We might add to the list such men as Bradford, Wickliffe, Penn, Harney, and a host of others, did the occasion admit. It may justly be said that the editorial profession has shown itself worthy of encomium in the faithfulness with which it has performed its duty as an educator of the people. Indeed, it is an important factor in the educational forces, ceaselessly at work in the great cause of human enlightenment.