mary of the
existing economic problems of slavery. "There are," said he, "about
$61,000,000 worth of slave property in the state which produces less
than three per cent profit on the capital invested, or about half as
much as the moneyed capital would yield. There are about 200,000
slaves in Kentucky. Of these about seventy-five per cent are
superannuated, sick, women in unfit condition for labor, and infants
unable to work, who yield no profit. Show me a man that has forty or
fifty slaves on his estate, and if there are ten out of that number
who are available and valuable, it is as much as you can expect. But
my calculation allows you to have seventy-five per cent who are barely
able to maintain themselves, to pay for their own clothing, fuel,
house room and doctor's bills. Is there any gentleman who has a large
number of slaves, who will say that they are any more profitable than
that?"[281]

No one in the convention answered the last question put by Squire
Turner. But regardless of such an economic condition, not a single
piece of remedial legislation was passed and the members of the
Constitutional Convention added a provision to the Bill of Rights
which rooted the slavery system firmer than ever. That most admirable
of all southern characters, and at the same time the most difficult to
understand, the Kentucky master, took little heed of a question of
dollars and cents when it interfered with his moral and humanitarian
sentiments. He had inherited, in most cases, the slaves that were his.
He knew well enough that the system did not pay but supposing that he
should turn his slaves loose, what would become of them? What could
they do for a living? The experience of later years proved that his
apparently obstinate temperament was mixed with a good deal of wisdom,
for once the slaves were set free their status was not to any great
extent ameliorated if they went abroad from the plantation where they
had lived from childhood.

There was a certain amount of profit in the labor of able-bodied
slaves but they only represented a fraction of the Negroes whom the
master was called upon to support. The law compelled the owner to
maintain his old and helpless slaves and this represented the spirit
of the large majority of the slaveholders. Those were rare cases
indeed when an owner was hailed into court for failing to provide for
an infirm member of his slave household. The true Kentuckian never
begrudged the expense that s