sal of them he could no longer be at liberty to consult
merely his own interest ... their present quasi-marriages are
continually voided (at the master's pleasure).... They are in
this way brought to consider their matrimonial alliances as
things not binding, and act accordingly. We are then assured by
the most unquestionable testimony that licentiousness is the
necessary result of our system."

One would infer from this observation of apparently fair-minded men
that slave unions were not very sacred affairs and that any disruption
of them would amount to little, but in the same document these
Presbyterian preachers give a back-handed compliment to the stability,
at least in temperament, of the average slave marriage.

"Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives,
are torn asunder and permitted to see each other no more. These
acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and
agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim with a trumpet
tongue, the iniquity of our system. There is not a neighborhood
where these heartrending scenes are not displayed; there is not a
village or road that does not behold the sad procession of
manacled outcasts, whose mournful countenances tell that they are
exiled by force, from all that their hearts hold dear."

It is strange that these two opposing views should appear in the same
pamphlet, but nevertheless they are both undoubtedly true pictures of
slavery in Kentucky. It is merely a question as to which of the two
represented the majority of cases. Licentiousness there was, but it
was certainly very much less among the slaves of Kentucky than in the
far South. Slave unions were treated with more respect by the masters
of Kentucky than in most slave States. As has been pointed out in a
previous chapter, the very fact that the few instances of inhuman
separation of slave families produced such a storm of public
disapproval shows that it was not a very general practice in the
State.

From the legal standpoint the slave had no rights or privileges in the
attainment of even a meager education. On the other hand Kentucky was
the only slave State, with the exception of Maryland and Tennessee,
which never passed any laws forbidding the instruction of slaves. Thus
no penalty was attached to Negro education, neither was any
encouragement given. Those slaves who learned to read were the
s