kentucky

The date the first human walked on the land that now comprises Kentucky remains unknown to history. Archaeologists indicate it took place over twelve thousand years ago. But leaving no written record, no history, those lives can only be re-created by archaeological investigations, which describe the Native American presence in four stages. Paleo-indians, living from 12,000 years before the present (B.P.) to around 10,000, saw the end of the Ice Age. They were hunter-gathers who moved often, and their lives centered on simple survival. During the Archaic Period (1000 B.P.–3000 B.P.) the people in Kentucky continued to hunt and developed some limited trade routes. In the third culture, that of the Woodland Indians, which included the Hopewell and Adena subcultures, a more settled lifestyle resulted from agricultural cultivation. The final period, dating from the years A.D. 1000 to around A.D. 1700, has been called the Late Prehistoric or in the east the Fort Ancient and in the west the Mississippian. The latter featured sizable fortified villages with mounds organized around the water courses that supported farms.

Having been the lone occupiers of the land for century after century, Native Americans finally found that the place called Kentucky no longer would be theirs without conflict. The region quickly became a middle ground, a place of contact. Unfortunately one of the critical contacts came in the form of microbes. Disease probably had a greater impact than any other forms of contact with the European colonies. Death swept the land, tribal patterns changed, Indian numbers fell, and Native life never returned to past ways. When the first explorers from the colonies arrived, they found a different place than what had existed only a few years before. Once heavily peopled, Kentucky seemed vacant of inhabitants. The last recorded interior Indian village, Eskippakithiki, was abandoned by the 1750s. The region seemed to be more of a fought-over buffer between tribes to the north and south, and while various groups hunted the land, early English hunters and explorers left no record of seeing semipermanent villages. To their land-hungry eyes the area seemed to be a prize waiting to be taken.

Word soon spread across the colonial backcountry that beyond the mountains lay a land of much promise with fine forests, abundant game, and rich soil. Driven by this image of plenty and promise, imbued with "Kentucky fever," more and more ventured across the mountains to this First West. A series of long hunters, of whom Daniel Boone, James Harrod, and Simon Kenton are the best known, started the process, and land companies soon sent their own surveyors to map out the unexplored territory. Conflict with the Native peoples intensified. Mostly occurring while the Revolutionary War raged, the settlement of Kentucky represented simply another front in that conflict and a bloody one.

Coming down the Ohio River, Harrod established the first permanent settlement at Harrodsburg in 1774. Boone, working for the Transylvania Land Company, followed buffalo trails in part and blazed the Wilderness Road from Cumberland Gap to the central Bluegrass. These two paths were followed by thousands of men and women over the next two decades, and by the first census in 1790 some seventy-three thousand people (16 percent of them slaves) had moved to what was then part of Virginia. Others, about one in seventy who migrated, had been killed in the attempt. In those decades from settlement in the 1770s until the peace that followed the War of 1812, Kentucky started as the first step in the new nation's move westward, represented a testing ground for new ideas and plans, and matured into a new state, the first state west of the mountain barriers. Yet none of that came easily.

The land of milk and honey was also, as one Indian called it, "a dark and bloody ground." Yet the hopes and dreams of those in less-promising situations to the east brought many to risk all to try to find a better future. Some in fact did just that, and their descendants lived better lives as a result. However, for some the myth of plenty proved elusive. By 1800 half of Kentuckians owned land, but as many did not. That contradictory nature of early Kentucky has been a theme throughout the state's history.

Statehood and Slavery

As the region filled with people, questions arose on what future course should be followed, separation from Virginia and statehood, or something else? The so-called Spanish conspiracy, which left many Kentucky leaders under the pay of Spain, failed in its efforts to encourage Kentucky to become a separate nation. In 1792 Kentucky entered the Union as the fifteenth state with Isaac Shelby as its governor, and within a few months Frankfort became its capital. But issues of separation and of a state's role in the Union continued. Distrust of federal support for Kentucky's needs caused several prominent leaders, including the war hero George Rogers Clark, to aid the so-called French conspiracy in 1794 and later the Burr conspiracy. Reaction to Federalist actions in 1798 and 1799 brought forth the Kentucky Resolutions defending states' rights and even nullification. Yet these sentiments were partly muted over succeeding decades as Kentuckians fought in the nation's wars and as the rise of Henry Clay and his American System stressed the idea of a powerful, united country. Still Kentucky remained that middle ground of frontier times, only now a meeting place for South, North, and West.

The contrasting aspects present in early Kentucky emerged in the first constitution in 1792. While containing many elements that restricted the role of the people, indirect selection of state senators and the governor, for instance, it also included universal manhood suffrage except for slaves, the first to do so in the United States. In more debatable terms it opened the floodgates toward what became 120 counties, the third highest number in the nation. For a considerable time these almost self-perpetuating, feudal-like entities, those "little kingdoms," dominated the political face of Kentucky.

That contrast between an almost aristocratic heritage and a democratic one, as shown early in the settling of the land and in the formation of the first constitution, represented only one of the divisions that brought the historian Thomas D. Clark to call Kentucky a "land of contrast." Those divisions were clearly demonstrated when citizens turned to the subject of slavery. From the earliest English explorations, such as that of Christopher Gist in 1750–1751, black slaves had been a part of discovering the "new Eden." Harrodsburg's 1777 census showed that one in ten in that frontier post were enslaved peoples, and blacks fought side by side with whites against the common Indian foe, sometimes at the cost of their lives. But when the Indian wars ended and decision time came, ruling whites placed more emphasis on establishing slavery as a way to regulate race relations and as an economic system than on the idea of equality. By 1830 slaves made up 24 percent of the commonwealth's population, and on the eve of the Civil War, Kentucky had the third highest number of slaveholders among the slave states.

At the same time Kentucky had the third lowest average number of slaves held, 5.5 per family, and many places, such as the eastern mountains, held few slaves at all. Moreover a vocal antislavery movement existed throughout the antebellum period, ranging from the conservative colonization-oriented plans of Henry Clay and Robert J. Breckinridge to the vocal opposition of Cassius M. Clay to the true egalitarianism of John G. Fee. Yet as the eloquent voices of escaped Kentucky slaves, such as Henry Bibb, Josiah Henson, and the novelist William Wells Brown, showed, freedom came to most bondspeople through their own actions.

Slavery represented another paradox in a state that before the Civil War had become one of the most important and prosperous in the nation. In 1840 it stood first in the United States in the production of hemp and wheat, second in tobacco and corn, third in flax, and fourth in rye. Its reputation for producing fine thoroughbreds had already been established and later was enhanced with the Kentucky Derby, which began in 1875. Moreover for a time Kentucky's Transylvania University, with its medical and law schools, was the place of choice for the education of southern gentlemen as it was one of the best schools in the nation. In religion the Great Revival of 1801 spread from Kentucky across the nation as well, and a more diversified worship emerged. By 1850 Kentucky stood eighth in the United States in population and had a reputation as a modern, forward-looking commonwealth, a place for the ambitious and eager.

The state's antebellum importance came through clearly in the area of politics. Between 1824 and 1860 a Kentuckian ran for either president or vice president in seven of the ten presidential races. Three times the Whig leader Henry Clay won electoral votes. Twice Kentuckians served as vice president, the Democrats Richard M. Johnson and John C. Breckinridge, the latter also a presidential candidate who lost in 1860 to the native Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln. Ten Kentuckians filled presidents' cabinets, and three served as Speaker of the House.

When the threat of civil war emerged in the late 1850s, Henry Clay and his Whig Party had both died, the Know-Nothings had won a governorship in 1855 after a bloody riot in the state's economic center Louisville, and a divided commonwealth faced an uncertain future. With the failure of the Kentuckian John J. Crittenden's attempt at a compromise to keep the Union together, the state officially chose a pattern of neutrality from May to September 1861, and the nation divided into the United States, the Confederate States, and Kentucky. But, indicative of the state's past, Kentucky wanted both the Union and slavery and did not see the war as one against the "peculiar institution" at the conflict's beginning. Elections and enlistments showed a pro-union emphasis, and the commonwealth abandoned neutrality and remained officially a loyal state. Those friendly to the southern cause called a rump convention and declared the state a part of the Confederacy, and Kentucky became a star in both flags. Before it all ended perhaps as many as 100,000 fought for the North (23,000 of them former slaves, the second largest number of all the states), while some 40,000 entered the ranks of the Confederacy. It truly was a brothers' war for Kentucky.

The initial southern defense line from Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi splintered after defeats at Mill Springs and Fort Donelson in early 1862. That fall a major Confederate invasion tasted early success at the Battle of Richmond in Kentucky but then ended in retreat after the bloody Battle of Perryville on 8 October 1862. Thereafter raids by General John Hunt Morgan and brutal guerrilla warfare marked the rest of the conflict.

Perhaps the greatest effect of the war came from developments away from the battlefield. As the issue of slavery became a war aim, that, together with the unpopular Union military rule, turned Kentuckians more and more against the cause they had initially supported. By the war's end the commonwealth had become as sympathetic to the South as any of the seceding states. As a loyal state it never went through Reconstruction officially, but the "lost cause" attitudes displayed toward former slaves and toward the federal government brought martial law and the Freed-men's Bureau to Kentucky. The state became almost a spokesperson for the South, especially through the columns of the powerful Louisville Courier-Journal, edited by

Henry Watterson. For the next three decades the once-minority Democrats ruled with few challenges, and ex-Confederates, not the once-dominant Unionists, guided it.

Postwar Kentucky

Few reform elements emerged in those years. A fledgling women's rights group did organize in 1881, the first in the South. Advocates such as Laura Clay and Madeline McDowell Breckinridge eventually earned national leadership roles and made the state a strong force for suffrage, ratifying the federal amendment in 1920. During the same time the commonwealth once more showed its varied faces in its ability to reconcile racing, red-eye WHISKEY, and religion all at the same time. Kentucky voted in statewide prohibition despite its role as the nation's leading producer of bourbon, and in the 1920s it even seriously debated ending pari-mutuel betting despite its dependence on the horse industry.

But more reflective of the half century following the Civil War was the role violence played in Kentucky. In lynchings and in personal, honor-based actions, the commonwealth varied little from southern patterns. However, in the Appalachian Mountains feud violence broke out in a dozen or more major conflicts, the best-known (but not the bloodiest) of which was the Hatfield-McCoy dispute. Kentucky's increasing image as a place of violence intensified in January 1900 with the assassination of Governor William Goebel, the only governor to die in office as a result of assassination, and with the Black Patch War in the first decade of the twentieth century. That war united farmers against tobacco companies in what has been called the largest mass agricultural protest movement in the nation. Night riders used violence to enforce the growers' will and to intimidate the buyers, and the state's reputation suffered. With the boom and bust cycles in the eastern coal fields, labor and management divisions in the 1930s gave "Bloody Harlan" its name. But by the end of the twentieth century Kentucky ranked low on the crime scale in a drastic reversal.

The violent acts one after the other, the effect of prohibition on the economy, the lack of leadership, and a decline in education from its once-strong place in the South hurt Kentucky in the twentieth century. Despite the presence of military bases, such as Fort Knox with its gold depository, World War II also affected that growth, for of all the southern states Kentucky grew tenth slowest. Outmigrations to jobs in the North intensified in wartime and continued in the 1950s as the coal mines mechanized and Appalachians left for urban areas beyond the Ohio. But almost quietly Kentucky's economy changed. The 1960s War on Poverty did help those of lower income levels. Jobs also resulted when businesses expanded or new ones started, chiefly in Louisville and Lexington, including GE, Ford, Corvette, Brown-Foreman, Humana, Toyota, UPS, IBM (later Lexmark), Ashland Oil, and Kentucky Fried Chicken (Yum!Brands). While tardy in constructing highways, the state built interstates and toll roads that soon provided an excellent system that, coupled with river routes and rails as well as the state's central location, made it increasingly attractive to businesses. By the start of the twenty-first century the state's working profile largely resembled the nation's regarding manufacturing jobs. Kentucky was the third leading producer of motor vehicles and carried on extensive world trade, for example. Yet the one-time mainstays of the state, thoroughbreds, coal, and tobacco, still heavily influenced an economy that had moved beyond them in some ways.

Education remained a key to the so-called "new economy," and Kentucky for many decades of the 1900s stood near the bottom of the states in that regard. State-funded institutions of higher education began with the present-day University of Kentucky in 1865, Kentucky State University (as a segregated school) in 1886, various teacher colleges in 1908 and again in 1922, and the University of Louisville and Northern Kentucky University at the end of the 1960s. Combining those with an extensive community college system and strong private colleges, such as Transylvania, Centre, and Georgetown, the state offered the instruction needed, but too few attended. By 1980 the commonwealth stood near the bottom in high school and college graduates. In a 1989 decision the state supreme court ruled the existing elementary and secondary system unconstitutional, and the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) crafted an entirely new approach in 1990. Other states began to look on the commonwealth as a model for reform, and statistical improvements did follow. However, long decades of neglect and a poorly educated population meant that the issue remained.

Ironically, given the state's poverty and low educational attainments, Kentucky has had an exceptionally strong literary tradition and rich folklife element. Robert Penn Warren provided the most visible example of that, winning Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry, the only American so honored. But many others have made significant impacts as well, including James Lane Allen, John Fox Jr., Annie Fellows Johnston (The Little Colonel), Alice Hegan Rice (Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch), Irvin S. Cobb, Elizabeth Maddox Roberts, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Cleanth Brooks, Jesse Stuart, James Still, Harriette Arnow (The Dollmaker), A. B. Guthrie, Janice Holt Giles, Thomas Merton, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Wendell Berry. Some strengths appeared in art over the years, such as Matthew Jouett, Paul Sawyier, and Frank Duveneck, and a few in film, such as the director D. W. Griffith, but another real area of contribution has been music. The bluegrass style of Bill Monroe represented part of a rich tradition in folk and country, with Kentuckians standing second in the number of representatives in the Country Music Hall of Fame. A strong arts community in Louisville, with its festival of new plays the centerpiece, showed the range of interests in the commonwealth.

But in some ways politics, even more than basketball, where the commonwealth's university and college teams have won many national titles, long dominated conversation. From 1895, when the first Republican governor was elected, until 1931 a fairly strong two-party system operated. The New Deal, with its actions that helped bring blacks and labor into the Democratic fold, gave that party almost unbroken control of the legislature and governor's office over the next decades. In the last three-quarters of the twentieth century Republicans held the executive office only eight years. At the same time the state's conservative voting nature emerged in elections for national office, with citizens selecting Republicans more often than Democrats in the late twentieth century. A 1992 amendment to the outdated 1891 state constitution finally allowed governors to serve two terms, which countered somewhat a growing legislative independence. Serious political corruption in the BOPTROT scandal that erupted in the early 1990s ended in the convictions of over a dozen legislators and one of the strongest ethics laws in the nation. Throughout all that the state produced several strong leaders at both the national and state levels, including Senator Alben Barkley, majority leader under Franklin Roosevelt; A. B. "Happy" Chandler, senator, two-term governor, and baseball commissioner; Chief Justice Fred Vinson; Senators John Sherman Cooper and Wendell Ford, the latter a majority whip; and Governors Earle Clements and Bert Combs.

Only slowly have two groups shared in that success. African Americans, for example, found their life after the Civil War segregated and restricted, varying little from southern patterns. The last integrated college in the South, Berea, was forced by state action to segregate in 1904. Yet unlike in the South, Kentucky blacks continued to vote, giving them an important power that translated into some support. Still, what the historian George C. Wright called a facade of polite racism dominated efforts at real equality. Work by Kentucky leaders, such as Charles W. Anderson Jr., the first black state legislator in the South after decades of exclusion; Whitney M. Young Jr., the head of the Urban League; and state senator Georgia Powers, helped break down the legal barriers. Nevertheless racism and lack of economic opportunity convinced many to migrate, and the state's African American population fell to some 7 percent. The commonwealth's Civil Rights Act of 1966 and Fair Housing Act two years later were the first in the South, and studies placed state schools as the most integrated in the nation by the 1990s.

After getting the vote, women reflected the state's dual character as well. The commonwealth elected one of the first eight women to Congress, Katherine Langley, and one of the first half-dozen women governors, Martha Layne Collins. It supported women's rights in the early struggle and ratified the failed Equal Rights Amendment decades later. Yet in the early twenty-first century Kentucky ranked near the bottom in the percentage of women legislators in its 138-member body and low in females in managerial positions and as business owners.

By the first decade of the twenty-first century the commonwealth stood exactly in the middle of the states in population, and its 4,041,769 residents ranked high in the nation in the percentage of people who still lived in the state of their birth. More urban than rural for the first time in 1970, a half century after the nation as a whole, Kentucky remained tied to the ideals of the family farm, small town life, and a sense of place. But another side of Kentucky reflected all the elements of modern America. In short, the contrasts that marked the state over the years continued.

Bibliography

Aron, Stephen. How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Clark, Thomas D. Kentucky: Land of Contrast. New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Harrison, Lowell H. The Civil War in Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1975.

Harrison, Lowell H., ed. Kentucky's Governors, 1792–1985. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Harrison, Lowell H., and James C. Klotter. A New History of Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

Kleber, John E., ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992.

Klotter, James C. Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox, 1900–1950. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1996.

Klotter, James C., ed. Our Kentucky: A Study of the Bluegrass State. Rev. ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Lewis, R. Barry, ed. Kentucky Archaeology. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Lucas, Marion B., and George C. Wright. A History of Blacks in Kentucky. 2 vols. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1992.

Tapp, Hambleton, and James C. Klotter. Kentucky: Decades of Discord, 1865–1900. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1977.

Ulack, Richard, ed. Atlas of Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

Ward, William S. A Literary History of Kentucky. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988.

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