Slave traders

From Thomas D. Clark A History of Kentucky (Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1988):

Many were the tricks resorted to by the trader in securing fresh stock in trade. The Weekly Frankfort Yeoman in 1854 berated the practices of the Negro thieves whose headquarters were in Maysville because of its proximity to the Ohio shore. The kidnapers [sic] had connection with the slave traders in the central part of the state, and no purchaser questioned as to where the slaves were secured. Once the slave was loaded on a southbound steamboat, he found himself without recourse to the courts. On one particular occasion, a gang of Maysville Negro thieves broke into a house in Ohio and stole a young girl. This child told passers-by in Maysville of her plight and thus aroused the suspicions of the citizens of the town. Upon investigating the child’s story, Maysville police found that Lewis Allen and Henry Young of Maysville were professional kidnapers. These men threatened to burn the town if the police insisted on making further investigation. Indeed it was necessary to appoint vigilance committees to extinguish numerous fires. During this trouble a number of Maysville slaves were spirited off to the central Kentucky market and eventually to the South. [p.200]

When I read this passage to my husband, he exclaimed, “That’s outrageous. That two men could hold a whole town hostage!” And the more I think about it, the more I think that somebody in high places must have been colluding and that possibly Allen and Young were what we would call today the fall guys.

According to Dr. Clark, about the time Lord Byron was writing his praise for Daniel Boone, the natural man of virtue and freedom, Kentucky’s slave trade with the plantation south was becoming established. Boone, by the way, owned at least one slave.

At first, such trade was held in contempt by the “better elements.” Nearly every religious denomination in Kentucky was strongly abolitionist, and pro-slavery forces wanted to portray themselves as paternalistic. So they tended to deny any notion that Kentuckians were systematically selling slaves south.

According to Clark, little credance should be given to accusations that Kentuckians were breeding slaves, as they bred livestock, to sell on the southern markets. Still, “circuit court records, contemporary newspapers, and acts of the Kentucky legislature” establish a paper trail of the trade.

As early as 1818, Henry Bradshaw Fearon records having seend fourteen flatboats loaded with slaves on the lower Mississippi where they had been brought by Kentucky traders. The Reverend Dickey, a traveling divine, was horrified in 1822, by an incident which occurred on one of his missionary journeys into the Blue Grass. While traveling from Lexington to Paris, Mr. Dickey heard strains of music and saw a flag bobbing up and down in the road ahead of him. Thinking that a patriotic procession was en route from Paris to Lexington, he drew over to the roadside to permit it to pass, but, to his sorrw, the procession was a coffle of slaves preceded by a burly African blowing a lively marching tune on a “French” harp. Slaves, chained together, were being driven to Lexington where they would be combined with a larger coffle to be shipped to the cotton belt. Upon arriving at an inn in Paris, the Reverend Dickey related his experience to his landlady. She informed him that the trader was her brother, who had an established business with New Orleans. [p. 195]

This hits close to home.

As time went on and slave owners became the most rich and powerful class in the state, churches were forced to become more acquiescent (except for the Presbyterians) and the trade came out into the open. And blatantly criminal elements began to operate in the open too. Or so the incident with which I open this post would make it seem.