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1790 | 59,557 | | 697,624 | |
1800 | 108,435 | 82.1 | 893,602 | 28.1 |
1810 | 186,446 | 71.9 |1,191,362 | 33.3 |
1820 | 233,634 | 25.3 |1,538,022 | 29.1 |
1830 | 319,599 | 36.8 |2,009,043 | 30.6 |
1840 | 386,293 | 20.9 |2,487,355 | 23.8 |
1850 | 434,495 | 12.5 |3,204,313 | 28.8 |
1860 | 488,070 | 12.3 |3,953,760 | 23.4 |
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The facts seem more significant, if we compare the slave increase in
Kentucky with that of the Negroes in the country as a whole. Bearing
in mind that Kentucky was a comparatively new region when it became a
State and that at that time slavery was firmly established along the
seaboard, we are not surprised to find that the slave increase in
Kentucky was much more rapid for the first three or four decades than
it was in the nation as a whole. After the year 1830 the increase in
the United States, on a percentage basis, was much greater than in
Kentucky. It seems that the institution started in with a boom and
then eventually died down in Kentucky.

There were several reasons for this fact. A glance at the increase of
whites in Kentucky for the last three decades will show that they were
forging ahead while the slaves were relatively declining. This was due
to a large amount of immigration of that class of white people who
were not slaveholding. A second factor was the non-importation act of
1833. About the same time there came to be a conviction among a large
portion of the population that slavery in Kentucky was economically
unprofitable. There is abundant ground for the position that the law
of 1833 was passed because of a firm conviction that there were enough
slaves in the State. The only ones who could profit by any amount of
importation were the slave dealers and beyond a certain point even
their trade would prove unprofitable. If there was ever a single
slaveholder who defended importation on the ground that more slaves
were needed in Kentucky he never spoke out in public and gave his
reasons for such a position.

Unfortunately there are few statistics concerning the number of
slaveholders in Kentucky. Cassius M. C