"As his rooms were near the negro quarter he would make ready for his
siesta by sending forth the servantman who waited on him, bidding him
tell the people that they were to keep quiet during the performance. I
can see him now with his pig-tail hanging down behind the back of the
easy chair and a handkerchief over his face as he courted slumber. For
a minute or two it would be still, then the hidden varlets would be as
noisy as before. Then the pig-tail would begin to twitch, and he would
mutter: 'Jim, tell those people they _must_ be still.' Again a minute
of quiet, and once more the jabbering and shouting. Now with a leap he
would clutch his long walking-stick and charge the crowd in the
quarter, laying about him with amazing nimbleness, until all the
offenders were run to their holes. Back he would come from his
excursion and settle himself to sleep. I could see that his rage was
merely on the surface and that he had used it for a corrective, for he
evidently took care not to hurt anyone." Shaler's _Autobiography_, p.
37.

[388] Little, L. P., _Ben Hardin, his Times and Contemporaries_, p.
543.

[389] Shaler's _Autobiography_, pp. 36-37.

[390] _Littell's Laws_, Vol. 5: 578-579.

[391] Fearon, _Sketches in America_, p. 241.

[392] Session Laws, 1830, p. 174.

[393] Blanchard and Rice, _Debate on Slavery_, p. 135.

[394] _American Slavery As It Is_, p. 87.

[395] _Lexington Reporter_, January 15, 1809.

[396] Allen, James Lane, _Blue Grass Region of Kentucky_, pp. 67-68.

CHAPTER V

PUBLIC OPINION REGARDING EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION

Although the facts herein set forth indicate that slavery in Kentucky
was a comparatively mild form of servitude it is not the aim here to
leave the impression that the anti-slavery element found no grounds
for attacking the institution. On the contrary, there were various
elements that devised schemes for exterminating the institution. This
was especially true of the churches, which represented more than any
other one force the sentiment of the State on the subject of
emancipation. The three prominent Protestant denominations of the
State were the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists. The
only one of the three which maintained a general continuous policy
throughout the early nineteenth century on the question of slavery was
the Presbyterian.

It was on the eve of the first Constitutional Convention of 1792 that
David Rice, at that time the leader