ngaged in handling race horses. Soon after
coming from Virginia to Kentucky he fell in love with a young mulatto
girl, who was the property of a Mr. Robertson, who gave his consent to
their marriage, promising never to part them by his own free will. In
his own dialect Stewart dictated his story. "So I married her, an' tuk
her to a little house I had fixed up near de stables, an' she
clear-starched an' sewed an' broidered an' wukked wid de hand-loom,
an' made more pretty things dan I could count. She paid her marster,
en course, reg'lar, so much a month fur her hire, but, lor', she neber
touched her airnin's fur dat. I had plenty of money to hire as many
wives as I wanted, but dis one was de onliest one I eber did want, an'
so it was easy enough." After two years his wife became very sick and
died and the grief of the Negro man was touching in the extreme. "She
was jes' as fond o' me as I was of her, an' it did 'pear hard luck to
lose her jes' as I was makin' up my mind to buy her out and out, only
en course, it was a fortunate thing I hadn't bought her, as long as
she had to die, kase den I would ha' lost her an' de money too. Arter
she was in de ground it jes' 'peared to me like eberything was
different; I tuk a dislikement to Paris, an' I didn't feel like goin'
home to Virginny." His master agreed to let him go wherever he liked
if he could find an owner to suit him and finally Stewart went to
Louisiana after an interview with Senator Porter of that State. He was
to stay six months to see how he liked it and then if agreeable he was
to stay there. He must have been a rather unusual Negro, for his
selling price was finally fixed at $3,500.[371]

But life among the slaves of Kentucky was not by any means a path of
roses. Many anti-slavery leaders attested to this fact. The most
trustworthy statement that was ever made on this general subject was
that embodied in the pamphlet of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky in
1835 advocating gradual emancipation. The following brief extracts are
most significant:

"The system produces general licentiousness among the slaves.
Marriage, as a civil ordinance, they cannot enjoy. Until slavery
waxeth old, and tendeth to decay, there cannot be any legal
recognition of the marriage rite, or the enforcement of its
consequent duties. For, all the regulations on this subject would
limit the master's absolute right of property in the slaves. In
his dispo