? Furthermore, it was a serious matter to give
bond and security for the support of so many slaves of different ages
and character. He could not send them out of the State, for they were
intermarried with the slaves of others; and as to giving them wages,
he could not, for they were eating him up as it was. With a feeling of
intense interest in the slave and anxiety on his own behalf to do the
right, he asked his brethren of the Synod, what he ought to do.[409]
The position of this kind-hearted Kentucky slaveholder shows more
clearly than any other picture we could draw the difficulties of
emancipation in Kentucky even when one was convinced of the evils of
the slavery system.

The final word of the Presbyterian Church on the whole subject of
slavery was sounded at its General Assembly in Cincinnati in 1845,
when a resolution was adopted, as submitted by Nathan L. Rice, of
Kentucky, stating that it was not competent for the church to
legislate where Christ and his apostles had not legislated. This, at
least for the time being, proved acceptable to the churches south of
the Ohio and avoided a breach in the Presbyterians such as had just
taken place among the Methodists and Baptists.

The Baptists as a State organization did not pursue a policy
similar to that of the Presbyterians. After the failure of the
emancipationist campaign in 1792 and again at the constitutional
convention in 1799 a few members of the Baptist Church began a
movement for immediate abolition under the lead of several
ministers--Tarrent, Barrow, Sutton, Holmes and others. The policy
which they advocated was not only one of immediate abolition but of
non-fellowship with the slaveholders within their own denomination.
There was no general governing body for the State, as the Baptists had
several so-called associations which covered only a few counties each.
The trend of opinion throughout the various commonwealth organizations
was apparently against the position held by the emancipationist group,
for the latter in 1807 withdrew from the regular organizations and
established an association of their own which they called the Licking
Locust Association. They were only able to muster the assent of twelve
churches to their newer group and soon died out in importance.[410]
The real sentiment of the Baptists was no doubt much like that of the
Presbyterians, but these early advocates of Negro freedom in their own
organization were entirely too radical even f