hide whip. The trial was held amidst a
turmoil of resentment against the defendants and there was apparently
no one in sympathy with them whatever.[395]

Any discussion of the relationships in slavery times would be
incomplete without adding the characterisation of the Kentucky master
as drawn by a celebrated author who was born in the heart of the
bluegrass and was thoroughly familiar with the type:

"The good in nature is irrepressible. Slavery, evil as it was,
when looked at from the remoteness of human history as it is to
be, will be judged an institution that gave development to a
certain noble type of character.

"Along with other social forces peculiar to the age, it produced
in Kentucky a kind of farmer the like of which will never appear
again. He had the aristocratic virtues: highest notions of
personal liberty and personal honor, a fine especial scorn of
anything that was little, mean, cowardly. As an agriculturist he
was not driving or merciless or grasping; the rapid amassing of
wealth was not among his passions, the contention of splendid
living not among his thorns. To a certain carelessness of riches
he added a certain profuseness of expenditure; and indulgent
towards his own pleasures, towards others, his equals or
dependents, he bore himself with a spirit of kindness and
magnanimity. Intolerant of tyranny, he was no tyrant. To say of
such a man, as Jefferson said of every slave-holder, that he
lived in the perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions
and unremitting despotism, and in the exaction of the most
degrading submission, was to pronounce judgment hasty and unfair.

"Rather did Mrs. Stowe, while not blind to his faults, discern
his virtues when she made him, embarrassed by death, exclaim: "If
anybody had said to me that I should sell Tom down south to one
of those rascally traders, I should have said, 'Is thy servant a
dog that he should do this thing?'"[396]

FOOTNOTES:

[356] _Lexington Gazette_, August 23, 1803.

[357] _Louisville Public Advertiser_, July 10, 1824.

[358] _Louisville Weekly Journal_, October 15, 1845.

[359] _Ibid._, October 22, 1845.

[360] _Ibid._, September 27, 1848.

[361] _Ibid._, May 16, 1849.

[362] _Ibid._, December 10, 1851.

[363] _Ibid._, December 22, 1852.

[364] _Lexington Gazette_, April 12, 1806.

[365] The be