STATES AND TERRITORIES.

KENTUCKY.

THE State of Kentucky, formed from territory of Virginia, is, in point of seniority, the fifteenth State of the American Union, having been admitted to that relationship by Act of Congress on the first of June, 1792. The first Constitution of the State was submitted to Congress November 7, 1792, and a new or revised Constitution was adopted August 17, 1799. Kentucky participated in the second presidential election (1793), when George Washington was re-elected President, and John Adams Vice-President; on which occasion Richard C Anderson and Charles Scott served as Electors for the State at large, and Benjamin Logan and Notley Conn for the District Electors. The State is situate between 36° 30′ and 39° 10′ north latitude, and between 81° 50′ and 89° 26' west longtitude, being about 300 miles in length from east to west, and about 180 in its greatest and 150 in average width, and includes an area of nearly 37,680 square miles, or 24,115,200 acres, most of which is in cultivation. The State is bounded on the north and north-west by the Ohio River, which separates it from the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; on the east by Big Sandy River and Cumberland Mountains, which divide it from Virginia; on the south by the State of Tennessee; and on the west by the Mississippi River, which separates it from the State of Missouri.

CLIMATE.-The climate of Kentucky, as indicated by its local position, is a happy medium between the frigid severity of more northern and the enervating insalubrity of more southern latitudes. No region of our country is better adapted to the production of cereals, grapes, and fruits, or the highest development of the human physique. Though subject to capricious changes in the winter and vernal months, the climate is milder than in the same latitude on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies.

FACE OF THE COUNTRY.-The country presents a varied aspect in its several portions. In the south-east, at the boundary and through several counties, the Cumberland Mountains are a prominent feature. Those in their vicinity are studded by isolated knobs and ridges; but none of them of great elevation, the highest being less than 2,000 feet.

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The central and northern counties are undulated, sometimes hilly; and those west of the Cumberland River mostly level. A range of hills traverses the north-western border of the State, following the general course of the Ohio River, affording intervals of rich bottom land, extending in width, at times, to 10 or 15 miles.

SOIL AND PRODUCTIONS. For fertility of soil, Kentucky may be ranked among the most favored portions of our highly-favored country. Perhaps no district of equal extent in the United States surpasses the region around Lexington, whether for the fertility of soil or picturesque beauty of scenery. The State is generally well timbered, producing abundance of black walnut, oak, chestnut, sugar-tree, elm, locust, mulberry, ash, poplar, cottonwood, and other varieties. Apple, pear, peach, plum, and various other fruit-trees are cultivated with great success, and yield to the cultivators a rich reward for their labor. In some parts the wild cane is indigenous, growing to a height of 10 or 12 feet, forming extensive brakes, so dense as to present a barrier difficult to penetrate. These canebrakes afford rich forage for stock, and are eagerly devoured by mules, horses, and kine. "The Barrens," a term applied to districts in the southern portion of the State, and about the headwaters of Green River, is a sad misnomer, as, with a few exceptional knobs, they are very fertile and productive. Because of the absence of the usual heavy growth of forest timber, they have been subjected to the erroneous and injurious appellation of" Barrens." Like descriptions of land in other portions of the country are designated as "oak openings." The staple productions of Kentucky are corn, tobacco, hemp, horses, mules, and cattle. Besides these, large quantities of wheat, rye, oats, barley, potatoes, pork, beef, hay, grass-seed, and other farm products are raised annually; and buckwheat, rice, cotton, cane sugar, salt, wine, cotton bagging, and silks in more limited quantities.

MANUFACTURES.-In 1860 there were 3,450 manufacturing estab lishments in the State, giving employment to 21,258 inhabitants, and consuming raw materials of the value of $220,295, and producing manufactured goods valued at $37,931,240 annually. More than twenty millions of capital is invested in these manufactories. Large quantities of coarse hempen bagging is annually manufactured and shipped South for packing cotton in bales.

RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS.-Of 2,175 churches in the State in 1860, 788 were Baptist, 304 Christian, 25 Episcopal, 10 Lutheran, 666 Methodist, 164 Presbyterian, 84 Cumberland Presbyterian, 83 Roman Catholic, 47 Unionist, and 8 of minor denominations-affording a church to every 530 persons in the State. The total value of church property is $3,928,620.

PUBLIC CHARITIES.-Kentucky is not slack in her provision of eleemosynary institutions. She has an Asylum for the Insane at Lexington, and another at Hopkinsville; an Asylum for Elinguid Mutes at Danville, and one for the Blind at Louisville. Ample provision for the maintenance of these charities is made by the Legislature from time to time, as occasion requires.

REFORMATORY INSTITUTION.-The State Penitentiary is located a*

Frankfort, and has rising 250 convicts. This is conducted on a plan somewhat peculiar, the convicts being farmed out to contractors, who pay the State two-thirds of the profits of convict labor, guaranteeing that such profits shall not fall short in the aggregate of $5,000 per annum. Each convict, on his discharge, is furnished with a suit of clothes and $5 in money.

HISTORY.-The sobriquet of "the dark and bloody ground," applied to Kentucky, is strikingly suggestive of the annals of her pioneer population, and their fierce and sanguinary conflicts with the aboriginal lords of the soil. While yet in the full occupancy of its primeval inhabitants, it became, by the onward march of civilization, technically part and parcel of the State of Virginia, as territory wrested by conquest from the British crown. On the other hand, the "untutored savage," whose title, derived from "the Great Spirit," and confirmed by immemorial posses. sion, was consecrated to him by the ashes of his forefathers mingled with the soil, did not recognize, nor did his proud spirit care to heed, the adverse title set up by the new-comers to his hearth-stone and hunting-ground. He regarded all such claims with ineffable disdain, and all those who proffered them with implacable hatred. A magnificent empire was the stake, and the conflict long, sanguinary, and fierce. The rude and untaught red man was eventually compelled, by force of numbers and the appliances of superior skill, to yield dominion to his palefaced adversary. But he maintained the conquest with an indomitable courage and persistent obstinacy that challenges the admiration of those who share the advantages of his catastrophe. The contest was maintained throughout by untold individual sacrifices, and deeds of heroic daring; and the fair land of Kentucky was thus plucked from the hands of its savage proprietary, to be made the home of civilization, the seat of hospitality, and the pride of surrounding States. The renowned Daniel Boone was among the very first of white men to explore (about the year 1769) the then wilderness of Kentucky, and by his many daring exploits and "hair-breadth escapes," affixed his name indelibly upon the early annals of Kentucky. Nor was it alone between the Indians and the whites that Kentucky was the chosen battle-ground; but it was the scene of sanguinary conflict between Northern and Southern tribes of Indians, who met here to adjust by wager of battle their fancied grievances or jealous discontents. An affair of mighty importance to the parties at that day transpired on the 19th of August, 1782, near the Blue Lick Springs, being an engagement between the Indians and the Kentuckians. The whites numbered only 182, and the Indians full twice that number, or more. The affair resulted in the complete rou of the Kentuckians, who sustained a loss of nearly one-half their number engaged, in killed and wounded. This was the severest disaster excountered by the white settlers since the fatal defeat of General Braddock, near the Monongahela. Colonel Boone bore a conspicuous part in this engagement, in which one of his sons was slain. The tide of immigration setting strongly to Kentucky, to redeem that goodly land from its primeval forests, Colonel Boone, burdened by the continual diminution of his sphere, removed to newer and larger fields of action

beyond the Mississippi, where he ended his eventful career. But Kentucky, like a doting parent, sent to Missouri for his remains, and those of his wife, and with pious care gave them sepulture at her capital, and by "storied urn" commemorates his deeds.

At one period, subsequent to the close of the war of the Revolution, and before the erection of Kentucky into a separate and independent State, there were manifestations of discontent among her people, arising in part from an apprehension that the Federal Government might surrender or compromise the right, so vital to her interests, to navigate the Mississippi River to its mouth, and part from the inefficiency manifested, by both Virginia and the old Federal Congress, in the matter of protection against the inroads of the Indians. These misgivings, however, were but temporary, and gave place to a generous confidence and patriotic devotion when Kentucky took her place as an equal in the family of American States. At a still later date the public mind was exercised for a brief season by the fact that Kentucky had been selected by Aaron Burr, (after his defeat by Mr. Jefferson in their race for the Presidency,) as a base of operations in the prosecution of his schemes of disappointed ambition and treasonable enterprise. But the national Administration, prompted as well by a high sense of duty as by considerations of personal rivalry, kept a vigilant eye upon the movements of the fallen statesman, and before his plans had matured into overt acts, the hand of authority was upon him, and his vaulting ambition, with all his dreams of conquest and empire, were effectually squelched. Situated as Kentucky has ever been," on the border," between the great rival interests of free and involuntary labor, she has maintained. her distinctive position, ever prompt to mete justice to either section, without servile surrender to any. So strong had this habit of impartiality grown upon the State, that it had well-nigh betrayed her into the fatal error of "neutrality," when the integrity and the very existence of the nation founded by Washington and the fathers was assailed by parricidal arms. Isolated and remote from seats of learning, Kentucky has been self-dependent and prolific in eminent orators, statesmen and divines; and it were bad affectation should we fail to mention in this connection the revered name of HENRY CLAY, "the Great Commoner," whose long and brilliant civic career reflected glory upon his State, and honor upon his whole country. Kentucky was his fond foster-mother, and it is an honor to the people of that State that in all vicissitudes they repaid, by their confidence and generous support, his faithful and patriotic services. And future generations, not of Kentuckians only, but Americans regardless of States, will make haste to recognize him as among the very ablest and purest of American states

men.

The first white settlement in Kentucky was commenced at Boonesboro, about the year 1769. Harrodsburg was founded in 1774, and the first court held in the limits of the State was there, in 1777. Lexington was first settled about the time of the first battle of the revolution, and it is conjectured that it derived its name from the location of that important event.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.-Though Kentucky did not take a leading part in the development of her resources by works of internal improvement, yet she has by no means been an idle spectator in that race of public enterprise. So early as 1825, a company of individuals undertook-what should have been accomplished much earlier by the National Government-the construction of a canal for steamboats around the Falls of Ohio, at Louisville. This work, though quite inadequate to the wants of those "that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters," has, nevertheless, been of great advantage in conveying to the lower markets the vast products of the region drained by the Ohio, and bringing, in return, those articles of indispensable use produced only in a tropical climate. There is still opportunity for the nation to redeem, in some measure, its misspent time in this behalf, and accomplish now what it should have done long ago. In 1850 there were but 78 miles of railway completed in the State, 29 miles of which were of the Lexington and Frankfort, and 49 of the Louisville and Frankfort roads. In 1860 there was an aggregate of 569.93 miles of railway in successful operation, the cost of construction and equipment whereof was $19,068,477. There were, also, 766 miles slackwater navigation in the State.

POPULATION. The early settlers of Kentucky were a stalwart race of yeomen from Virginia and North Carolina; and their descendants are, in the main, well-preserved specimens of their manly quality-frank and generous in their peaceful intercourse, and gallant and daring when duty calls them to arms. In 1790 the population numbered 73,077; in 1800, 220,955; in 1810, 406,511; in 1820, 564,317; in 1830, 687,917; in 1840, 779,828. The progress of population in the last two decades is shown by the following figures:

CIVIL DIVISIONS.-Kentucky is divided into one hundred and ten counties. The following is a list of the counties, together with their respective county seats and population, as per the eighth national census, (1860,) namely: