and which had made the most progress socially and intellectually, soon fell under the spell of the camp-meeting. Conditions there should have seemed to make it the last place where such religious practices would have found a lodging place. In speaking of the Great Revival's spread here, Rev. George Baxter, president of Washington Academy in Lexington, Virginia, said, "In the older settlements of Kentucky, the revival made its first appearance among the Presbyterians, last spring (1801). The whole of that country about a year before was remarkable for vice and dissipation, and I have been credibly informed that a decided majority of the people were professed infidels." 44 As if in punishment for its wickedness, this part of the state perhaps even surpassed the Green River country in the manifestations of religious fervor and zeal, in "holy laughs," "jerks," barking, great agony of mind and soul, and bodily contortions of various kinds. Rev. Barton W. Stone, who had come to Kentucky from North Carolina in 1796, and had been made immediately pastor of the Cane Ridge and Concord Presbyterian churches in Bourbon County near Paris, made a visit to Logan County early in 1801 to judge for himself the Great Revival. He came back fired with its spirit and related to his congregations what he had seen and heard. The effects of his new crusade were evident immediately. The “exercises" soon began to make their appearances. In August of 1801 the Cane Ridge meeting was held, which was perhaps the most wonderful manifestation of the Great Revival throughout the West. Situated in the very heart of the Bluegrass region, this camp-meeting drew not only heavily on the surrounding country, but thousands came from a great distance, some coming even from Ohio. Every road leading toward Cane Ridge was jammed with vehicles of various contrivance, with people on horseback and on foot. People not given to exaggeration and competent to estimate crowds declared that there must have been 20,000 souls present; while others estimated the number at 25,000. A contemporary wrote, "I am on my way to one of the greatest meetings of the kind perhaps ever known: it is on a sacramental occasion. Religion has got to such a height here, that people attend from a great distance; on this occasion I doubt not but there will be 10,000 people and perhaps 500 wagons. The people encamp on the ground and continue praising God day and night, for one whole week before they break up.” 45 number of vehicles at this week's camp-meeting was given at 1,143; and a half thousand candles, besides lamps, was given as the number used in lighting the camp at night. Many wonderful stories were told of the various forms of manifestation of religious sensations. Three thousand people, principally men, fell smitten by the Lord at these meetings.46 The This Great Revival, which swept over Kentucky and the West from 1797 to 1805 in its most vivid forms and manifestations, was undoubtedly born to a large extent of a simple but profound religious faith stirred up at the opportune time in the development of the state and in the experience of the people. It was looked down upon by the higher classes, and by the more intellectual. Despite the fact that the group psychology of the occasion often caused the scoffer and the intellectual superiors to fall with the simple and the lowly, many people never became reconciled to such methods of religious observances or practices. Francois Michaux declared that "The better informed people do not share the opinion with the multitude with regard to this state of ecstasy, and on this account they are branded with the appellation of bad folks. Ex 44 Quoted in Cleveland, The Great Revival in the West, 71. 46 Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 25; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, II, 580. cept during the continuance of this preaching, religion is very seldom the topic of conversation."47 It was largely due to this difference of opinion regarding the admissibility of such practices in the church, that schisms and troubles arose. The troubles were especially marked in the Presbyterian Church, resulting in the splitting off of the Cumberland Presbyterian branch. There also arose at this time another schism in the Presbyterian Church in which Barton W. Stone was the central figure and which resulted in the establishment of the Christian Church. The Baptists also had considerable trouble, but contradictory as it may seem, the final result was the welding together in the joys of these great religious sensations the Regular and the Separate Baptists. There entered the state about this time (1805), but in no way related to the Great Revival, a species of religious organization known to its members as the United Society of Believers but commonly called Shakers. It established itself at Pleasant Hill in Mercer County and soon entered a period of prosperity. In 1810 there were nearly 300 members. This society was particularly distinguished on account of its doctrines and practices of communion and celibacy-its new members coming by conversions from the outside. On account of their emotional nature and the fact that in their religious services they often exercised their bodies with great agitation and shaking of limbs, running and walking the floor, they received their popular appellation. But the immediate result, which was an outstanding fact from the whole movement was the surprisingly great numbers of new members added to the churches. All of the Protestant churches profited greatly in this respect. In 1800 the Baptists had 109 churches with a membership of 5,000; during the following year they gained 3,911 members; and during the period from 1800 to 1803 they added 10,000 new members and established 113 new churches. In two years of this period of the great Revival the Methodists added 6,250 new members to their faith. Besides these direct and immediate results, there was a quickening of the consciences of large numbers of people which caused them to assume an attitude toward many questions of the day, different from what otherwise might have been the case. There can be little question that the vigorous opposition that was soon to arise against the institution of slavery among many Kentuckians was indirectly a result of this religious movement; for that opposition was largely directed by the church organizations and especially by the denomination that had profited most from the religious revival and had felt most deeply its effect, the Baptists. Mutterings against the use of liquors also began to become. audible about this time, and were undoubtedly another result of the people's recent religious experiences.48 But the Great Revival was not responsible for the beginning of opposition to slavery. As already set forth, many people were against slavery even before Kentucky became a state and made a fight to prohibit that institution by attempting to insert a clause in the constitution against it. James Garrard, a Baptist minister, who afterwards became governor of the state, in 1791, as chairman of a committee of the Elkhorn Baptist Association, reported a memorial to that body favoring 47 F. A. Michaux, Travels to the West, 249. 48 For the religious statistics see Cleveland, The Great Revival in the West, 19, 65, 66, 130, 131. J. D. Monette, History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley, II, 26, gives a short account of the Great Revival, which is, however, unreliable as to details. Accounts other than those cited may be found in Richard McNemar, The Kentucky Revival, or a Short History of the late Extraordinary Outpouring of the Spirit of God (Cincinnati, 1808), and in the church histories referred to in the discussion on the early church history. Also see S. P. Fogdall, "The Religious Development of Early Kentucky" in The Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, Vol. 19, No. 56 (May, 1921), 9-30. the exclusion of slavery from the commonwealth by constitutional enactment. The movement failed with the First Constitutional Convention, and slavery was therefore legally instituted in the state. The earliest legal status of the slave here was determined by the laws of Virginia. According to these laws no slaves might be brought into the state except under certain specific conditions. On separating from Virginia, Kentucky continued this code for the time being. The first legislation on this subject came in the session of November, 1792. This law prohibited any person from trading in any articles whatsoever with slaves without a written permit describing the article. Infraction of this law laid a person open to a penalty of four times the value of the article bought or sold. In 1798 the Virginia code was abandoned by the enactment by the Legislature of a Kentucky code consisting of forty-three articles. The foreign slave trade was prohibited by a clause declaring that no person should be considered a slave who was not such in 1795 or who was not the descendant of a slave. The movements and duties of slaves were regulated in considerable detail. No slave might travel about with a written permit, carry a gun, shot, powder, club, or other weapon, participate in riots, assemblies, trespasses, or engage in seditious utterances, or testify for or against a free white person. Penalties for infractions of these laws ranged from ten to thirty-nine lashes. Slaves convicted of capital crimes and executed were paid for from the public treasury. This code taken as a whole was characterized by humanitarian sentiments, and just concern for the welfare of the slave. "It is believed," by an early Kentucky writer, "that, so long as Kentucky shall permit slavery on her territory, she will have no cause for desiring to withhold from her sister states, or the world, a knowledge of the treatment they receive; even in her legal code, whose apparent rigour is much relaxed in the execution." 49 The rigors of this code were much reduced from the old Virginia code which it supplanted. This is especially evident in the number of lashes that might be administered in each case. But one of the most important parts of the slave legislation of this year was the provision prohibiting the importation of slaves into the commonwealth for sale. This was an attempt to curb slavery as a business beyond the use of their labor in the home and field, as well as to prevent a disturbing element arising in the entry into the state of viscious and unruly slaves. It, of course, did not prevent the settler from bringing into the state all the slaves he desired for his own personal use; and in this it opened a loop-hole for an easy evasion of the law. Actuated by the feeling that free negroes were to a great extent a nuisance in the commonwealth and that their position in the social structure was anamolous if not almost impossible, the Legislature in 1807 passed an act to prevent the future migration of free negroes or mulattoes to the state. Any person of this description entering the commonwealth should be arrested and forced to give bond for $500 to depart within twenty days and never return.50 This soon proved to be cumbersome and unworkable; and so the following year the Legislature passed an amendatory act allowing free mulattoes to remain and their kindred to come to them provided they should enter the state before Christmas of 1809. Although the lot of the Kentucky slaves was not hard, still some of them ran away when opportunity offered itself. Notices of runaways 49 Marshall, History of Kentucky, II, 69. For the early condition of the slave also see McDougle, Slavery in Kentucky, 31-39. 50 For attempting to do this very thing, Missouri in 1820 was refused admission into the Union; and only after she had side-stepped it through the second compromise arranged by Henry Clay was she permitted to become a state. become rather frequent in the papers of the state by the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.51 There was, despite the absence of aggravating slave conditions, a feeling that the slaves might sometime rise up and create trouble, if the situation were not carefully controlled. Although the Legislature had prohibited the importation of slaves into the state for sale, Lexington passed an ordinance in 1802 declaring that, "WHEREAS the slaves in the Southern states appear strongly bent on an insurrection" no slaves coming from outside the state should be sold in that city,52 Although defeated in their attempt to make Kentucky a free state. when her first constitution was formed those opposed to slavery continued their opposition. Of all the denominations opposing the institution, the Baptists were earliest and most active in the fight. In 1794 some of the churches of this faith were so bitter in their opposition and so uncompromising in their principles that they refused to commune with slave holders. There were many Baptists who, however, refused to go this far, so that there resulted strained relations among some of the congregations, which actually resulted in a break. The Methodists in considerable numbers, also, opposed human slavery. The Presbyterians had early shown their attitude in their agreement with and support of David Rice in his fight in the first Constitutional Convention. But their opposition was not radical or unreasoning. They realized that emancipation would have to come very slowly, if it came at all. In line with this view, the Transylvania Presbytery in 1794 adopted a resolution calling upon all members of the church to teach their slaves to read the Scriptures so that they might be prepared to receive their freedom when it should come. The church was loath to enter into a vigorous campaign for emancipation as it believed that that subject lay largely out of the field of activity of a religious denomination. In 1796, the Presbyterians resolved, "That, although the Presbytery are fully convinced of the great evil of slavery, yet they view the final remedy as alone belonging to the civil powers; and also do not think that they have sufficient authority from the word of God to make it a term of church communion. They, therefore, leave it to the conscience of the brethren to act as they may think proper, earnestly recommending to the people under their care to emancipate such of their slaves as they may think fit subjects for liberty; and that they also take every possible measure, by teaching the young slaves to read and giving them such other instruction as may be in their power, to prepare them for the enjoyment of liberty, an event which they contemplate with the greatest pleasure, and which they hope, will be accomplished as soon as the nature of things. will admit." 53 The most concerted and vigorous campaign against slavery in these early times was waged in 1798 and 1799 in the campaign for the second constitutional convention, and, as already noted, it was at this time that Henry Clay first took up his pen for emancipation. But again the movement failed in a most decisive defeat, so disheartening that the vigor of the movement largely vanished for a time. For the old opponents of slavery it was a great good fortune that the Great Revival speedily followed their disaster in the second Constitutional Convention. The quickened consciences of the people produced by this religious awakening gave new force to the anti-slavery movement. Numbers of slaveholders in the joys of their new-found lives manumitted their slaves. One revival leader declared that "this revival cut the bonds of many poor slaves." The Methodists continued a rather strong opposition to the institution; they adopted a ruling that no minister could be a slaveholder. The Bap51 For instance see Kentucky Gazette, 1798 et seq. 52 Kentucky Gazette, July 2, 1802. 53 Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, 337. tists again ran into troubles and schisms in trying to determine the attitude they would assume toward the institution. About 1804 a number of prominent Baptist ministers and their congregations declared outright. for the abolition of slavery, and maintained that no fellowship should be extended to slaveholders as slavery was an abominable and sinful institution surrounded with evils and miseries which should be abandoned and opposed by all good men. This was a program far too radical for most Baptists to follow. Their associations generally declared that it was not within the province of the church to meddle in political affairs and advised their members to have nothing to do with the subject in their religious capacities. Deserted thus by their church, these radical ministers and congregations, calling themselves "Friends of Humanity," withdraw from the General Union of the Baptist Church and formed an organization of their own bearing the high-sounding and involved appellation, "The Baptized Licking-Locust Association, Friends of Humanity." This was effected in 1807. Two years later, due to the negro question, another schism took place within the Baptist Church and resulted in the splitting off of the "Licking Association of Particular Baptists." 54 Although throughout this early period the religious denominations had assumed an active interest and leadership in the movement against slavery, they did not constitute the only organized effort being put forth. In 1795, or soon thereafter, there arose in Kentucky small anti-slavery groups or societies which carried on a correspondence with like organizations in the East. They were weak, and exerted very little influence; still they constituted societies built up on the idea of anti-slavery alone— differing thus from churches which were organizations primarily for other purposes, but interesting themselves in this subject. They antedated by eighteen years any other like organization west of the Alleghanies.55 In 1802, as a result of the anti-slavery sentiment which had been stirred up, a petition was sent to the Legislature by sundry citizens demanding that the slaves be freed and a bill was introduced providing rules and methods for a general emancipation. This mode of procedure was perfectly permissible as the constitution left the subject of emancipation directly with the Legislature. Protests against freeing the slaves were immediately lodged. It was argued that the slaves had no rights to freedom and political liberties as the American Revolution was won by the freemen and that if defeat had come they alone would have suffered.56 The first well-organized anti-slavery society in the state arose in 1808. It had its direct beginning in the group of Baptists that had split off from the main church in 1807, the "Friends of Humanity." At the second meeting of their association the question arose as to how far they should go in their concern over slavery, and as to whether there was not some danger of the association putting that interest above its religious mission. The prevailing opinion was that slavery should be given a subsidiary position in the affairs of the church. This led to an out-and-out abolition society organized by the radical members, and called the Kentucky Abolition Society. Although springing out of the Baptized Licking-Locust Association, it was not antagonistic to it; neither were all of its members of the Baptist faith. This abolition society. was the recognition of the feelings and demands of its members that a vigorous fight be kept going in favor of emancipation. Although it was considered radical by the majority of Kentuckians of its day, still 54 Cleveland, Great Revival in the West, 156-159; Marin, Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky, 33-40; Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 419. 55 Martin, Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky, 25. 56 Kentucky Gazette, November 16, 1802. |