11.3 From the Viewpoint of a
Kentucky Slaveholder
Pre-Visit
How could a Kentucky slaveholder justify owning human
beings as property? It is probably difficult for us, living
today, to understand a time when human beings were held
as enslaved persons—as the property of citizens in Kentucky.
Because our government today honors persons of all races
and genders as full citizens and protects the rights of all
equally, we must look to primary source documents of the
period before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment,
which ended slavery, in order to understand the perspective
of slaveholders in Kentucky. Slavery was the foundation
of the agriculture-based economy in Kentucky, and many
farmers could not imagine how their farms could operate
without slave labor. Some citizens believed that slavery
should eventually end, as long as the farmer could be
protected from failure as much as possible. Some citizens
felt that they had a good relationship with the enslaved,
one where they provided all that the enslaved needed to
live, in exchange for his/her labor. Still others felt that
slavery should continue and that the actions of the federal
government conflicted with the rights guaranteed to
property owners and individual state governments in
the Constitution.
As a class, students read this 1865 letter by a Kentucky
slaveholder to President Andrew Johnson. Students
discuss the questions below and create footnotes for various
terms and references in the letter, so that future readers
understand the historical background of the writer’s
arguments. Students develop the content of the footnotes
independently, following discussions in class.
Students discuss/answer the following:
• How does Dr. Graham see slavery and his
relationship with his slave(s)?
• Does he make statements that seem to be in conflict
with his description of his slave as his friend?
• How does he try to make his reader (the President)
pity the freed slaves?
• How does Dr. Graham find the federal army’s
actions to be in conflict with the U. S. and Kentucky
Constitutions?
• What examples does he provide of the hardships
created by slaves who have been freed?
• Does the writer’s description of himself as an
emancipationist and a Quaker seem to be in conflict
with the ideas he expresses?
Students define these terms in their footnotes:
• free papers
• Camp Nelson
• passes (“Palmer passes”)
• Dred-Scott case
• state rights
• emancipationist
• abolitionist
• Quaker
• Crab Orchard [Ky],
July 24th 1865
1865 Letter
My Dear Sir; As you are at the head of a Government
that admits of petitions and grievances, you will excuse this
letter, which is intended more for your own good, for the
honor of the nation, and for the harmony of the people
and their good will towards yourself, than from anything
I can expect from it. And now the simple question whether,
(under the constitution of the U. States, the laws of
Congress which authorized us to take our property from
any state in the union, and under the constitution and
the laws of Kentucky), my Tom belongs to me or to some
unknown power under your individual influence; will bring
my grievance and the complaint of Kentucky fairly and
squarely up before your mind. Tom and I have lived together
as mutual friends for fifty years, without a hard thought or
harsh word passing. I gave him a good home, boarded him
free of charge, nursed him when sick, clothed and fed his
family and paid his debts, while Tom, on his part, seeing his
family healthy and happy and protected from the wants of
the world by a kind Master, Guardien, Friend or whatever
you may see proper to call it, did his duty cheerfully. But
now Tom comes to me with what he calls free papers from
Camp Nelson and a pass to go where he pleases and to
do what he pleases; and yet he is unhinged and unhappy,
feeling that he is by his new master turned out upon the
world with all its cares and troubles, without a home and
without a protector He has seen those I myself set free,
call upon me in times of distress, to help them to pay thier
debts and to bury them, and knwing that his acceptance
of those papers divorced him from me, he under no
circumstancs would ever again have a right to call upon me.
Thousands of such cases occur daily and hourly throughout
Kentucky, where whole families, even sucking infants are
taken off and exposed by their mothers, and I only mention
Tom’s case, that like the Dred-Scot case, may represent
all others. Tom was worth nothing to me, and in his case
I have no feeling but pitty for him, but have a deep and
abiding sense of feeling for the insecurity of all property, for
if our constitutional rights can be invaded with impunity
in one case or in one species of property, it may in all.
Had I a pet-bird, worth nothing, taken from me and kept
by force of arms, it would involve a principle alarming
to every man in the community If the signeture of Tom
Dick and Harry can free every man woman and child in Kentucky, as it is now doing, why disturb the nation and
spend the people’s money in a struggle for a Constitutional
Amendment?
We profess before foreign nations to be living under a
written Constitution, a Divine and sacred instrument which
protects life liberty and property, and it cannot then be
by your approbation that the best of its citizens are, by
arbitrary arrests and consequent death, with other acts, as
above named, deprived of life liberty and property, and that
in the face of Heaven and in open day! I then though an
humble citizen, hold it as my privilege and feel it my duty
to appeal to you, as our Legitimate (and I say) Good
President, to save our count[r]y from the charge of infamy
and the reccords of eternal disgrace…
…Though the Constitution of Kentucky forbids free
blacks remaining in the state, they are bid, by Camp Nelson
papers, to remain in it: and again, the laws of the State
orders that no public conveyance shall take a slave off,
without the consent of the Master, yet those papers order
all conveyances to take them off. And now, if this is not a
violation of the laws of Kentucky, a grievous wrong to her
people and a gross insult to her National dignity; we may
next strip our backs for the lash and sink in contempt
with all mankind, who like yourself, have a high sense of
personal honor and of state rights You would not—you
could not respect craven and degraded Kentucky, were she
too recreant to make her wrongs known to you.
I, this moment, hear that this high-handed and sudden
breaking up of all our domestic relations and leaving our
crops to perish for want of help, has been checked by your
kind and just order, and were it sure, I would throw my
pen down and cry long live Andrew Johnson, and long live
the Government which he has cemented by just and kindly
acts, but I fear you have not yet known our condition.
Not having had time to supply the place of the blacks, we
are forced to suffer On yesterday morning, there was hardly
a servant to be found in our town. The man with a sickly
wife had his cow to milk and the breakfast to get, while
many an old and infirm widow, whose only son has fallen
in the federal service, has now had the servant she reared
with tenderness and care to be a support in her old days, taken from her, by that government she has given her all
to support, and she left sadly and alone a begger upon the
world. A fanatic and radical brute might say this is all right,
for people should do their own work; but if by the order
of any man or set of men, Washington should be suddenly
deprived of all help, and Mr S. or any other member of
your Cabinet had to get up and milk the cow and get their
breakfast; circumstances would as quickly alter the case as
they did with the farmer and the lawyer in the Fable of the
ox and the cow. We feel that we as certainly own our slave
property as any other, and any power which may rench it
from us without consent or compensation is unjust; and
be assured that he who submits to it, submits as does the
traviller his purse to the highway robber, because the knife
in across his throat—as has been beautifully expressed by
my Friend Joseph Holt, your able Judge advocate, when
speaking upon this very subject of state rights and domestic
institutions. I am, myself, an emancipationist, and have
written a work upon that subject, but my moral sense and
my judgement of right have led all my efforts to do justice
to the Master and to better the condition of the Slave.
By the destinies of Providence and the original action of the
Northern states, the blacks have been placed amongst us,
and we cannot help it, nor can they help it; but all who
know human nature know this—that an unprepared for
and violent breaking up of all domestic control and turning
loose four millions of beings upon the world, who never
thought or acted for themselves any more than children
have done under the guidance of their parents, is not a
remedy, but a grievous evil to both black and white. Were
you to witness the scenes I have, you would shudder at
the sight— Old and young, blind and lame, with heavy
packs, crowd the highways and the by ways, rushing on
through heat and dust for free papers and as certainly to
ultimate distruction, as presses the Pilgrim Hindoo on his
path to perish by the hand of the god he worships. The
unrestrained Abolitionist, whose only feeling is envy and
malice to the whites and whose selfish heart would not give
a dime for the purchase or freedom of a slave, is to be the
death of the African race in America But as I set out to you some idea of the state of things
in Kentucky I will on with the work. The servants being
seduced from their happy homes by the pledge of free
papers at Camp Nelson, assemble in such numbers as to
render their condition uncomfortable and unhealthy;
so much so that the fatality amongst those deluded creaturs
has been sadly and notoriously great. Mothers becoming
wearied with the toil of their children and scarce of food
often neglect them till they perish, while others throw them
into the ponds around camp Nelson, from which many
have been taken Disease of every kind, Private and public,
seems to be rife in their ranks, and the time is fast coming
when, if not checked, the loafing vagrants and filthy lepers
will die off like sheep with the rot. The worst feature about
this Camp Nelson business is, that the blacks have taken
up the idea that their free papers is to enable them to live
the remainder of their lives without work, and that the
Government will support them, at the expense and labor
of the white man: in short, they feel that by the aid of the
military, they can defy the decrees of Heaven itself which
bid them get their living in the sweat of their face—Yes
and there is another unfortunate sequel of this pass
manufactory; those servants who return home, do not do
it with the view of living in harmony with their old Master,
but to taunt him with their free papers and threaten him
with military power; a thing illy calculated to reconcile
people with the Administration or gain friends to the
Constitutional amendment, as you will find, by the result
of the Kentucky election…
…I am a Quaker and had intended to address you Brother
Andrew, for we are all Brothers and should not be offended
at any familiarity intended for the good of all so I have
made free to advise with you upon some subjects, I will
farther say to you, that I am one who would be unwilling
to see our poor black Breathen driven from their native
land; but think they should remain amongst us, where the
climate suits them, where their labor is wanted and where
they can get good wages and feel at home. There is, at
present, much bad feeling between the races in Kentucky,
owing mainly to the premature and daring interference,as before related, with our domestic institutions. The blacks
are not to blame, but the whites who seduce them from
home in more ways than one, and make them insolent
and refractory. Your authority however will soon settle all
things down satisfactorily. A captain in your servic stationed
at Camp Nelson, told us here, a few days ago, that the
authorities there were giving seventy-five dollars a head
for cows to give milk to the idle blacks who would not
work—This he did not approbate, nor will the people of
the U.States, who pay the tax, approbate it.
Just proclaim to the blacks and to your Agents, that they
must go to work and support themselves, and all will soon
go like clock work, for the blacks will then want a home
and the whites want their services. This would be humanity
to the tender infants many of whom are daily dieing for
want of care, and it would give to the infirm a home,
where they might again be taken into favor and receive the
blessings of friendship and kindness in their dieing
moments. I do not wish to bore you, but while on this
subject will say, that I recogniz the white man, the black
man and the red man, and all human beings on earth, as of
the one great family, and for the brute force of one over
the other, I have a deeply abiding and religious abhorrence;
consequently feel more rational kindness for our coloured
breathern than any abolitionist in the north, for their
envious and levelling spirit seems to be against their white
breathen and spending nothing and careing nothing of
what becomes of the blacks. Thousands of dollars may be
taken out of the pocket of a white brother in Kentucky,
and they will chuckle over it—ah, and take but one dollar
out of theirs by the same authority, and they would cry
robbery. robbery!
Thus you will see that I am not promted by any designing
or party spirit, but that my efforts are for peace peace and
prosperity to all; and now knowing God to be my judge,
who will approbate what I have said, I have a hope that
you will forgive any seeming impropriety in this my appeal
to you. Most respectfully and sincerely, your adviser well
wisher and Friend
C. Graham, M.D.
In the Museum
Students experience an interpretation of slavery in the
Middle Passage “A River So Wide and So Deep” Exhibit
and stand in a space resembling an auction block. In this
space, students ask, “How does it feel to stand here?
What do you think the people standing here to be sold
may have been feeling?” Students learn more about the
day-to-day lives of enslaved persons in Kentucky.
While touring the “Life, Liberty, and Property” Gallery,
students can compare various perspectives on slavery
and can assemble their own thoughts, using magnetic word
and picture tiles.
Post-Visit
After analyzing this letter and exploring the multiple
perspectives about slavery in the Center, each student
becomes the president of the United States in order to draft
a letter of response to Dr. Graham. Replies should address
the issues of 1865 but also should include the student’s
own personal feelings regarding these issues. Students may,
therefore, suggest a solution to the problems of 1865 based
on their beliefs and the beliefs of our society today.
Workers in Tobacco Field
