The Anti-slavery Movement in Kentucky Prior to 1850, Issue 29, Part 1

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ANTI-SLAVERY IN KENTUCKY 1800-1830 CHAPTER III The emancipationists were indeed defeated in the constitutional convention of 1799 but they by no means accepted their defeat as final. On the contrary, they made attempts almost every year to secure the passage of a bill ordering that the sense of the people be taken on calling a new convention.1 These bills frequently passed the House. Although they were designed to secure only the gradual, not the immediate, abolition of slavery,2 the pro-slavery men viewed with such uneasiness and alarm every attempt on the part of the anti-slavery minority to reopen the question in any form that the bills were always defeated in the Senate. Niles, in his Weekly Register, summed up the situation in these words: In Kentucky, I am told by several gentlemen of high standing, there is so strong an opposition to slavery, that the chief slave-holders have long feared to call a convention to alter the constitution, though much desired, lest measures should be adopted that might lead to gradual emancipation. He then predicted that before many years Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri would follow the lead of Pennsylvania and cease to be slaveholding states as well from principle as from interest.3 Slavery was brought before the legislature in many other ways. Bills intended to encourage voluntary emancipation, to ameliorate the condition of the slave, and to secure the enactment of more rigid importation laws were repeatedly introduced. The advocates of these measures declared openly that the purpose of such legislation was to prepare the state for gradual emancipation through a change in the constitution.4 The question of slavery was brought before the people of Kentucky in 1819 and 1820 in connection with the discussions in Congress conce...