the local type and problems of slavery is valuable in this
connection.

The general position of Clay on the subject of Negro servitude has
never been very widely understood. Among the radical abolitionists of
the North he was looked upon as a friend of slavery for the sake of
political advancement and among the slaveholders in some parts of the
South he was regarded as almost a member of the Garrisonian group of
the enemies of slavery. To understand Clay's real position we need
only to consider his relation to the institution as it existed in his
native State.

Coming from Virginia to Lexington in 1797, Clay soon found ample
opportunities for a public career. He first came into prominence as a
writer on slavery in the columns of the _Lexington Gazette_ and the
_Kentucky Reporter_. When the constitutional convention of 1799 was
called for a revision of the fundamental law of the State Clay bent
all his efforts towards the adoption of a system of gradual
emancipation for the slaves of Kentucky. It was pointed out that there
were relatively few slaves in the State and that a progressive plan of
liberation would be much easier than at any future time.

The consensus of opinion at the time was that the emancipationists led
by this young man from Virginia would have been successful, had it not
been for the intervening excitement produced by the Alien and Sedition
Laws and the resulting famous Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of
1798. Clay threw himself heart and soul into the newer campaign
against the mistakes of the Federalists and the former enthusiasm for
the gradual freedom of the slaves seems to have died down in his
thought as well as among the Kentucky people in general. Thus the
constitutional convention of 1799 left the conditions of slavery as
they were.

In a speech delivered three decades later before the Kentucky
Colonization Society, Clay said in commenting on his position in 1798:
"More than thirty years ago, an attempt was made, in this
commonwealth, to adopt a system of gradual emancipation, similar to
that which the illustrious Franklin had mainly contributed to
introduce in 1780, in the state founded by the benevolent Penn. And
among the facts of my life which I look back to with most satisfaction
is that of my having cooperated, with other zealous and intelligent
friends, to procure the establishment of that system in this state. We
were overpowered by numbers, but submitted to the decision of the