The Journal of Negro History Volume III Part 29

The actual number of manumissions which took place in Kentucky will no doubt never be known. Among the few statistics are those of the federal census for 1850 and 1860 and they include only the figures for the one census year. According to this source in 1850 only 152 slaves were voluntarily set free in the State or one slave out of every 1,388, a percentage of only .072; and in 1860 there were 170 Negroes recorded as freed or one out of every 1,281 slaves, a percentage of only .078. We can easily a.s.sume from the accounts which we have from papers of that time that these numbers were far short of those that were really set free by their masters. It was the custom of many owners who were about to free their slaves to take them to Cincinnati and there have them set free in the Probate Court.

Early in 1859, forty-nine slaves from Fayette County, mostly women and children, were brought to Cincinnati and set free and later sent to a colony of emanc.i.p.ated Negroes in Green County, Ohio.[353] In March of the same year Robert Barnet of Lincoln County, Kentucky appeared with eighteen slaves--a father, mother, nine children and three grandchildren and another woman and four boys, who were all emanc.i.p.ated in the Cincinnati Probate Court. Before crossing the Ohio, while in Covington, he was offered $20,000 for all of them but he stated that he would refuse even $50,000.[354] In January, 1860, William McGinnis, of Bourbon County, appeared with fourteen slaves before the same probate court and set them all free.[355]

The law of Kentucky plainly provided that no slave was to be emanc.i.p.ated unless bond were given that he would immediately leave the State. Hence it was but natural that a master who intended setting his slaves free should take them as slaves to a free State and there give them their freedom, thus satisfying his own conscience and at the same time removing any future legal trouble that might ensue on account of his former slaves being found in the State of Kentucky. For this reason it would seem that a large number of the kind-hearted slaveholders who freed their slaves did so outside the bounds of Kentucky and thus that State was deprived of the credit for many emanc.i.p.ations which took place voluntarily at the hands of her own slaveholders.

FOOTNOTES:

[285] _Littell's Laws_, 1: 32.

[286] Brown, John Mason, _The Political Beginnings of Kentucky_, p.

229.

[287] _Littell's Laws_, 1: 44.

[288] _Ibid._, 1: 161.

[289] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 113.

[290] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 114.

[291] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 116-117.

[292] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 117-118.

[293] _Littell's Laws_, 3: 403.

[294] _Ibid._, 2: 117-118.

[295] _Niles' Register_, February 2, 1830.

[296] _Littell's Laws_, 4: 223-224.

[297] Stroud, _Laws relating to Slavery_, p. 86. Littell & Swigert, 2: 1066-9; 1060-4.

[298] It would perhaps be well to point out here the general common-law difference between the treatment of real and personal estate in a will. The t.i.tle of the personal property of the deceased is vested in the executor and he holds it for the payment of debts and distribution according to the will of the testator. On the other hand the real estate vests in the devisees or heirs and does not go to the administrator, unless by statute enactment, which was in part true in Kentucky, in the case above, where the slaves, although real estate, were held liable for the debts of their master. _Littell's Laws_, 2: 120.

[299] _T. B. Monroe's Report I._, 23.

[300] Beatty _vs._ Judy, 1 Dana, 101. Plumpton _vs._ Cook, 2 A. K.

Marshall, 450.

[301] Rothert, _History of Muhlenburg County_, p. 343.

[302] Young, B. H., _History of Jessamine County_, p. 89.

[303] Session Laws, 1834, p. 726.

[304] _Ibid._, 1850, p. 51.

[305] _Ibid._, 1856, Vol. 1, pp. 42-44.

[306] _Ibid._, 1858, Vol. 1, pp. 47-48.

[307] Starling, p. 290.

[308] _Littell's Laws_, 1: 32.

[309] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 119.

[310] _Ibid._, 5: 293.

[311] _Ibid._, 5: 435-437.

[312] Barre, W. L., _Speeches and Writings of Thomas F. Marshall_, p.

115.

[313] Section 1 of the law 1833 read: "Each and every person or persons who shall hereafter import into this state any slave or slaves, or who shall sell or buy, or contract for the sale or purchase, for a longer term than one year, of the service of any such slave or slaves, knowing the same to have been imported, shall forfeit and pay $600 for each slave so imported, sold, or bought, or whose service has been so contracted for; recoverable by indictment of a grand jury or any action of debt, in the name of the Commonwealth in any circuit court, where the offenders may be found." Session Laws, 1833, pp. 258-261.

[314] Barre, W. L., p. 116.

[315] _Niles' Register_, January 23, 1841.

[316] Collins, Vol. 1, p. 83.

[317] Session Laws, 1860, Vol. 1, p. 104.

[318] _Ibid._, 1864, pp. 70-72.

[319] _Littell's Laws_, 2: 5-6.

[320] _Ibid._, 2: 5-6.

[321] Session Laws, 1835, pp. 82-83.

[322] _Ibid._, 1838, p. 158.

[323] Session Laws, 1823, p. 178.

[324] _Ibid._, 1831-2, pp. 54-55.

[325] Session Laws, 1838, p. 155.

[326] _Ibid._, 1830, pp. 173-175.

[327] _Western Law Journal_, 2: 232-235 (best report of the trial).

_Niles' Register_, December 21, 1844. Webster; Delia A., _Kentucky Jurisprudence_, pp. 1-84.

[328] Fairbank, _How the Way was Prepared_, pp. 53, 57.