the establishment of the new system, he
appeared at the land office in Richmond, Virginia, and was given three
treasury warrants, each for four hundred acres of land in Kentucky.
The first and third of these warrants were not returned for the final
recording until May 16, 1787, at which time Beverly Randolph, Governor
of Virginia, issued a final deed of 800 acres of land in Lincoln
County, Kentucky, to Abraham Lincoln.[238] The second treasury warrant
was not returned until July 2, 1798, more than a decade after the
death of Abraham Lincoln and six years after Kentucky had become a
State. At that time the warrant was presented with a record of the
survey by Mordecai Lincoln, the eldest son of Abraham. After some
period of investigation the deed for the four hundred acres in
Jefferson County was turned over to Mordecai Lincoln on April 26,
1799.[239]

The result of this method of granting land was that Kentucky was
settled by a comparatively few men who rented their property to
tenants. A large number of the military bounties were never settled by
the original owners but were farmed by the later incoming tenant
class. George Washington had been given five thousand acres and this
land was actually settled by the poorer white element. In the case of
the land warrant property it was true that it was usually granted to
the poorer class of early settlers but as in the instance of the
Lincoln family the land soon passed into the hands of the wealthier
settlers either by purchase or through law suits. It is commonly
stated that Daniel Boone thus became landless and was forced to
migrate to Missouri.[240]

Thus we see that Kentucky was distinctly different from all the other
settlements to the west of the Alleghenies in the original system of
land tenure and she further inherited from her mother State of
Virginia the ancient theory of a landed aristocracy which was based
upon tenantry. The early inhabitants of Kentucky can be easily divided
into three classes, the landed proprietors, their slaves, and the
tenant class of whites. The second and third classes tended to keep
alive the status of the former and led to the perpetuation of the
landed aristocracy. In Kentucky, however, the laws of descent were
always against primogeniture and this resulted in the division of the
lands of the wealthier class with each new generation.

The institution of slavery in Kentucky, as in every other State,
depended for the most part upon the