through the church. He tells us
in his diary, in fact, that he "hoped to employ the churches as a
means of opposition to the institution of slavery."[21] He was reared
in the Presbyterian faith, his stepfather being a minister of that
persuasion; but at twenty years of age he embraced Baptist principles,
apparently under the influence of a Baptist minister in Virginia,
whose practice it was to bar from membership all who upheld the
institution of slavery. He thus identified himself with the struggles
for civil, religious, and industrial liberty, all of which were then
actively going on in his own state.

The name of "New Design," which became attached to the settlement
which he established on the upland prairies beyond the bluffs of the
"American Bottom," is said to have originated from a quaint remark of
his that he "had a 'new design' to locate a settlement south of
Bellefontaine" near the present town of Waterloo.[22] The name "New
Design," however, became significant of his anti-slavery mission; and
when, after ten years of pioneer struggles, he organized The Baptist
Church of Christ at New Design, in 1796, he soon afterwards induced
that body--the first Protestant church in the bounds of the present
State--to adopt what were known as "Tarrant's Rules Against Slavery."
The author of these rules, the Rev. James Tarrant, of Virginia, later
of Kentucky, one of the "emancipating preachers," eventually organized
the fraternity of anti-slavery Baptist churches in Kentucky, who
called themselves "Friends to Humanity."

From 1796 to 1809 Judge Lemen was active in the promotion of Baptist
churches and a Baptist Association. He labored to induce all these
organizations to adopt his anti-slavery principles, and in this he was
largely successful; but, with the increase of immigrant Baptists from
the slave states, it became increasingly difficult to maintain these
principles in their integrity. And when, in the course of the campaign
for the division of the Territory in 1808, it became apparent that the
lines between the free-state and the slave-state forces were being
decisively drawn, Lemen prepared to take a more radical stand in the
struggle. With this design in view he asked and obtained the formal
sanction of {p.18} his church as a licensed preacher. In the course
of the same year, 1808, he is said to have received a confidential
message from Jefferson "suggesting a division of the churches on the
question of slavery, a