History of slavery in Kentucky

The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the Civil War. Kentucky was classified as the Upper South or a border state, and enslaved African Americans represented 24% by 1830, but declined to 19.5% by 1860 on the eve of the Civil War. The majority of enslaved people in Kentucky were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington, in the fertile Bluegrass Region as well the Jackson Purchase, both the largest hemp- and tobacco-producing areas in the state. In addition, many enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Few people lived in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky. Those that did that were held in eastern and southeastern Kentucky served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.

As a border state positioned between free states to the north and fellow slave owning states to the south, with both independent, hardscrabble white farming families as well as plantations like those of the deep south, Kentucky had economic ties to slavery and engagement with northern free state industrialism and also western frontier ethos.

Kentucky entered the Union as a state deeply divided over the issue of slavery. The conflicting pulls of northern economic relations, westward expansion, and fundamental support for slavery and southern-style plantations caused Kentuckians to be morally divided over the issue of slavery before, during, and immediately after the Civil War.

Overview

Prior to 1792, Kentucky formed the far-western frontier of Virginia, which had a long history of slavery and indentured servitude.

In early Kentucky history, slavery was an integral part of the state's economy, though the use of slavery varied widely in a geographically diverse state. From 1790 to 1860, the slave population of Kentucky was never more than one-quarter of the total population. After 1830, as tobacco production decreased in favor of less labor-intensive crops, much of the planter class in the central and western part of the state sold enslaved Africans to markets in the Deep South, where the demand for agricultural labor rose rapidly as cotton cultivation was expanded. It was lucrative for slave owners to sell the people they enslaved to the deep south, shipping approximately 80,000 stolen Africans southward between 1830 and 1860.

Kentucky's enslaved population was concentrated in the "bluegrass" region of the state, which was rich in farmland and a center of agriculture. In less populated mountainous areas of Kentucky with independent farmers, slave ownership was much less frequent. In 1850, 28 percent of Kentucky's white families held enslaved African Americans. 5% of slave owners had 100 or more slaves. In Lexington, enslaved people outnumbered the enslavers: 10,000 enslaved were owned by 1,700 slave owners. Lexington was a central city in the state for the slave trade. 12 percent of Kentucky’s slave owners enslaved 20 or more people, 70 white families enslaved 50 or more people. Fluctuating markets, seasonal needs and widely varying geographical conditions characterized Kentucky slavery.

The enslaved people were a key part of the settlement of Kentucky in the 1750s and 1760s, as permanent settlers started arriving in the late 1770s, especially after the American Revolution, some brought slaves to clear and develop the land. Early settlements were called stations and developed around forts for protection against indigenous peoples such as the Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Osage, with whom there were numerous violent conflicts. Most of the early settlers were from Virginia, and some relied on slave labor as they developed larger, more permanent plantations.

Planters who grew hemp and tobacco, which were labor-intensive crops, held more slaves than did smaller farmers who cultivated mixed crops. Subsistence agriculture could be done without any slave labor, although some subsistence farmers held a few slaves with whom they would work. Some owners also used enslaved African Americans in mining and manufacturing operations, for work on riverboats and along the waterfront, and to work in skilled trades in towns.

Early farms in Kentucky tended to be smaller than the later plantation complexes common in the Deep South, so most slaveholders had a small number of slaves. As a result, many slaves had to find spouses "abroad", on a neighboring farm. Often, African American men had to live apart from their wives and children.

It was not infrequent for slaves to be "hired out," leased on temporary basis to other farmers or business for seasonal work. This was a common practice across the upper south. Some historians estimate that 12% of the slaves in Lexington and 16% of the slaves in Louisville were hired out.

Kentucky contained small but notable free black hamlets throughout the state. About 5% of Kentucky's black population was free by 1860. Free Negroes were among the slaveholders; in 1830, this group held slaves in 29 of Kentucky's counties. In some cases, people would purchase their spouse, their children, or other enslaved relatives in order to protect them until they could free them. After the 1831 Nat Turner's slave rebellion, the legislature passed new restrictions against manumission, requiring acts of the legislature to gain freedom.''Notable Kentucky African Americans Database: Slave Owners, Slaves, Free Blacks, Free Mulattoes in Kentucky, 1850-1870 [by county N-Z]'', University of Kentucky, accessed 2 December 2013
/ref>

Kentucky exported more slaves than did most states. From 1850 to 1860, 16 percent of enslaved African Americans were sold out of state, as part of the forced displacement to the Deep South of a total of more than a million African Americans before the Civil War. Many slaves were sold directly to plantations in the Deep South from the Louisville slave market, or were transported by slave traders along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to slave markets in New Orleans