in comparison with the later movement, it stood far in the direction of conservatism. In fact neither this society nor any other group of people or even responsible individuals favored an immediate emancipation of all slaves. It was a well-guarded and gradual emancipation that engaged the attention of the people in support as well as in opposition during this period of the movement. This early anti-slavery movement in Kentucky is important and significant of what might have been accomplished. Had the movement against the spread of the peculiar institution succeeded at the time when it could have succeeded best and had it succeeded at the place where the example would have meant most, the subsequent history of the nation might have been greatly changed. With Kentucky a free state the spread of slavery in the Mississippi Valley would have undoubtedly been much different. Though the movement was wide-spread over the state with the force of the religious organizations actively supporting it at times, the great propertied class which constituted the political leadership of the state was bitterly and uncompromisingly against tampering with slavery. Their power and influence was absolutely controlling; the success of emancipation was never a possibility after the formation of the Second Constitution; the opponents of slavery were routed in every conflict. But the extent to which the anti-slavery movement went bespeaks a character for Kentuckians differing from every other state of the day west of the Alleghanies. Kentucky around 1800 presents a community of people young, vigorous, and progressive, not only in a material way, but also intellectually. They were laying the foundation for a system of education with few faults, and their religious progress was marked. That a people composed of many elements, moved into the wilderness, established in their new homes not a quarter of a century, could have welded themselves into the state they now were, propelled forward by the intelligent forces it had developed, was indeed remarkable. The early Kentuckian was not only a home-builder but a state-builder, and out of the exigencies of isolation was formed an independence of character that has been one of the most marked characteristics of the native Kentuckian in both his social and political relations. CHAPTER XLV KENTUCKY IN THE WAR OF 1812 Kentucky was a close and interested observer of the tortuous course of America's relations with the principal European nations. She had noted with growing indignation and exasperation the tyrannical course England had been pursuing. The practice of impressing American seamen was no less resented by Kentucky than by Massachusetts, despite the fact that the former had no shipping interests or seamen to be interfered with. It was enough to know that a foreign nation was offering indignities to the United States of whom Kentucky considered herself an important part. France, whose policy was equally disregardful of American rights, excited little hostility among Kentuckians as she was less able to apply that policy than England, and there still lingered west of the mountains the memories of the ancient friendship between that nation and America. The prominence given to news of international affairs by the Kentucky newspapers shows the concern with which the people generally followed the events leading up to the second war with Great Britain. The attack of the British man-of-war, Leopard, upon the American frigate, Chesapeake, in 1807, produced great indignation. Mass-meetings were held in the principal towns of the state where resolutions were passed condemning the piratical acts of England, and pledging the undivided support of Kentucky in whatever course the nation might decide upon. But instead of following the warlike counsel of Kentuckians and others of his countrymen, President Jefferson decided to try a remedy short of war, the embargo. Willing to follow their chosen national leader, Kentuckians acquiesced in this policy and counseled loyal support, regardless of the fact that it at first seemed ruinous to them.2 But the embargo was after all not a solution to the international difficulties. The pressure for the repeal of this measure soon became so strong that in February, 1809, Jefferson was forced to agree to its abandonment. The non-intercourse act now followed, which opened up commerce to all the nations except France and England, the two great offenders. About this time the British minister to the United States, David Montague Erskine, who was a whig and well-disposed to America, made an arrangement very favorable to American interests in return for a relaxation of non-intercourse with Great Britain. But no sooner were the terms of this agreement known in London than they were disavowed and Erskine recalled. In his place was sent Francis James Jackson, who was studied in his insults to the United States. His recall was soon demanded. The tangled relations among the United States, England, and France seemed to defy solution. The so-called Macon Bill No. 2 next came as an attempt at settlement by opening up trade to all nations; but with the proviso that if either England or France should cease their violations of American rights, and the other country should not, then non-intercourse should be resumed against the obdurate nation. 1 See Kentucky Gazette and Palladium during July, August, and September of 1807. 2 They, however, soon came to see a good in the embargo after all-it gave perfect protection to their growing and ambitious manufactories. But this policy seemed to lead nowhere and Kentuckians were as early in grasping this fact as people were on the seaboard. They had in fact deep in their minds believed when the embargo had been tried, that war was the only solution. Before this policy had been in force a week, the Kentucky House declared, "We cannot repress our indignation when contemplating the acts of perfidy and murder of the British navy, and with one voice express a wish that the general government may adopt prompt and effective measures to support the insulted and degraded majesty of the American nation, and convince her lordly enemies that her rights shall not be invaded, nor her dignity insulted, with impunity." It was quick to add that it not only was willing to express the public sentiment in resolutions but that it also stood ready. "to pledge our honor, our blood and treasure in support of such measures as may be adopted by the general government, to secure and protect the peace, dignity and independence of union against foreign invasion, and to chastise and bring to a state of reason our haughty and imperious foes." 3 The war fever was soon running high; it was born, however, not of the desire to embarrass the National Government, but in loyal and loud-spoken support of the Government, tempered with the feeling that the expression of such sentiments might spur the president forward to a sterner policy. Richard M. Johnson drew up a set of resolutions at Georgetown, which were unanimously adopted, expressing the united support of Kentucky. But the editor of the Reporter was more outspoken in the impatience he felt. He asked if there. were any Revolutionary soldiers or their children in Kentucky, "who believed a seven years' war and all its horrors, from '75 to '83, a cheap purchase for liberty and independence, and a freedom of a paltry duty of 4d. per lb. on foreign tea-that submit in 1808 to an eternal British tax on our cotton, our tobacco, our slaves, our grain, our rice, and every other product of our soil-and more than this, that not a single American vessel shall sail, without being furnished with a British license." 5 When, in 1808, a call was made upon Kentucky to have in readiness her quota of about 5,000 troops for possible use against hated Britain, Governor Scott called upon the people in a proclamation to come to the support of the National Government and by volunteering help to repel the insults of the insolent enemy. He followed up these sentiments in his message to the Legislature by reminding the people of the dearth of arms and military supplies in the state, and asking them to have in readiness their rifles. He believed that Kentucky should begin the manufacture of military supplies. There was no lack of patriots who would be willing to shoulder the rifles if they were only provided with them.7 The Legislature soon afterwards, not to be outdone by the governor in the expression of warlike sentiments and support of the Government, resolved, "That the General Assembly of Kentucky would view with the utmost horror a proposition in any shape, to submit to the tributary exactions of Great Britain, as attempted to be enforced by her orders of council, or to acquiesce in the violation of neutral rights as menaced by the French decrees; and they pledge themselves to the general government to spend, if necessary, the last shilling, and to exhaust the last drop of blood, in resisting these aggressions." 8 3 Palladium, January 21, 1808, quoted in McElroy, Kentucky in the Nation's History, 317. Reporter, September 26, 1808. 5 October 24, 1808. • This proclamation was issued November 17, 1808. Reporter, November 21, 1808. This call was in compliance with the Act of Congress of March 30th. 7 Reporter, December 15, 1808. 8 Reporter, December 22, 1808; Butler, History of Kentucky, 328-330; Marshall, History of Kentucky, II, 459, 460. The action of Great Britain in repudiating the Erskine agreement was severely condemned in Kentucky. Meetings at Lexington and other towns were called to denounce England for this latest act of perfidy. They called upon the United States to refuse to receive his successor.9 Shortly afterwards when Jackson had come and was speedily to leave Washington at the insistent demand of the United States, the Kentucky Legislature expressed its high approval and declared "that whatever may be the consequence resulting" from Jackson's recall, "the State of Kentucky will be ready to meet them, and will most cordially co-operate in the support of such measures as may be necessary to secure the interests, and maintain the honor and dignity of the nation." 10 In his message to the Legislature in 1809, Governor Scott was less insistent in his attitude for war. He would be understood as being the last who would bow to a foreign power, but mindful of the rising manufactories in the state, he would not rush into war, and thereby retard this promising development. "We have on the other hand," he said, "to give up only the luxuries of other nations for the sweets of independence and self-government. The people who could not do it with the country and resources we possess, are unworthy of the divine birthright of freedom." 11 A rather strange and unusual way of showing her extreme antipathy toward Great Britain and all things British was adopted by Kentucky about this time. By a law of the General Assembly it was declared that all reports of cases adjudged in England since July 4, 1776 "shall not be read nor considered as authority in any of the courts of this commonwealth, any usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding. It was only with much difficulty that Henry Clay was able to prevent the law from covering all British reports. The patriotic ardor attached to the date of limitation set may have had some weight. Later in his practice in one of the courts, Clay was forbidden to read from a report coming within the prohibited period a reference to a case adjudged before July 4, 1776.12 Another example of the thoroughness with which the people were seeking to eradicate all British influence is seen in a procedure taking place directly after war was declared. David Ballengall, an assistant judge of the Nicholas County Circuit Court, was a Scotchman, appointed to his position in 1805, who had neglected to secure American citizenship. On this fact being made known to the Legislature, it resolved that he "being an alien, and subject to the King of Great Britain, is unfit to hold the office aforesaid, and ought to be removed therefrom * * *"'13 The irresistible expansive force of the frontier made greater and greater inroads upon the lands yet occupied by the Indians. Directly south of the Ohio the Indians were all but dispossessed; but to the northward they controlled many square miles of fertile prairies and river valleys. Treaties were being constantly made for the relinquishment of these lands, and they were about as often misunderstood and broken. Tecumseh and his brother, Olliwochica, the prophet, saw the utter ruin and destruction of the Indians if the present system continued. They therefore conceived the pregnant idea of binding all the Northwest In 9 Reporter, August 12, 1809. Among the other towns where meetings were held was Springfield in Washington County. 10 Acts of Kentucky, 1809, 168. This resolution was passed January 22, 1810. 11 Reporter, December 9, 1809. 12 L. N. Dembitz, Kentucky Jurisprudence (Louisville, 1890), 7; Annual Reports of the American Historical Association, 1896, II, 188; Marshall, History of Kentucky, II, 454. This law was strictly enforced for a few years, but by 1821, it had fallen into disuse, and it was finally removed from the statute books in 1852, by omitting it in the revision of that year. 18 Acts of Kentucky, 1812, 106. No date is given. dians into a confederacy and allying it with a southern confederacy they would build up. This was the most ambitious scheme yet adopted by the Indians to stop westward migration, and one that had more elements of success. The frontiersmen became alarmed, and with little difficulty they found cause for war. William Henry Harrison, with a regiment of regulars and a number of Kentucky volunteers, in the fall of 1811, set out up the Wabash with the intention of taking possession of certain lands secured by a recent treaty and of punishing, if possible, Indian marauders who had murdered a white man. On November 7th, he came in contact with the redmen in the low bottomland of the upper Wabash, and fought the battle of Tippecanoe. Although heralding it as a great victory, Harrison lost 188 men killed or wounded, and of these thirty-four were officers.14 Among those lost in this battle was Joseph Hamilton Daviess, the prosecutor of Aaron Burr and a staunch Federalist. To Kentuckians this seemed almost their fight alone. A strong wave of patriotic sorrow ensued for the loss of their fellow citizens, and a feeling of gratitude was expressed to those who escaped. The Kentucky House, believing "That it is a country's gratitude that compensates the soldier for his scars, perpetuates grateful recollections of his services, and induces the living to emulate the heroic deeds of the dead that it is a country's gratitude that softens the rugged pangs of those left to mourn husbands, fathers and friends lost in avenging a country's wrongs," resolved, "That the brave deeds of our officers and soldiers in the late battle on the Wabash, deserves not encomiums only, but unfading fame in the hearts of their countrymen." In memory of the dead the members voted to wear crape on the left arm for thirty days, and as "a further tribute to their memory" to invite John Rowan to deliver a funeral oration "on the death of the late colonels Daviess and Owen, and the other heroes who fell in the battle on the Wabash."15 A few weeks later Harrison was declared to have "behaved like a hero, a patriot, and a general; and that for his cool, deliberate, skillful and gallant conduct in the battle of Tippecanoe, he well deserves the warmest thanks of his country and the nation." 16 Indian troubles had long beset the Kentuckians-in fact they had been cradled in savage warfare. They firmly believed that the British were guilty of inciting the Indians against the whites at every time and place possible. They had not forgotten the evidences of English intriguing in the Indian uprisings finally put down by "Mad Anthony" Wayne in 1794; and General Harrison kept the charges of British interference before them by declaring directly after the battle of Tippecanoe that assistance by Great Britain "has been afforded in as ample a manner as it could have been, if war had actually prevailed between us and that power. Within the last three months, the whole of the Indians on this frontier have been completely armed and equipped out of the King's stores at Malden. The Indians, had moreover, had an ample supply of the best British glazed powder-some of their guns had been sent to them so short a time before the action, that they were not divested of the list covering in which they were imported." 17 Harrison also said he was always able to judge the relations between the United States and Great Britain by the behavior of the Indians. The Legis * * 14 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, III, 531-536. For a full account of the expedition with special reference to Kentucky see Alfred Pirtle, The Battle of Tippecanoe (Louisville, 1900), 158 pages. Harrison's report is in Marshall, History of Kentucky, II, 494-506. 15 Niles' Register, Vol. I, p. 297. 16 Niles' Register, Vol. I, p. 391. 17 Letter to John M. Scott of Frankfort, December 2, 1811, quoted in Niles' Register, Vol. I, pp. 311, 312. |