Slavery Laws in Old Kentucky
Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Slavery Laws in Old Kentucky. Ky.'s 1792 Constitution continued legalized enslavement of blacks in the new state; 1800 tax lists show 40,000 slaves. U.S. banned African slave trade in 1808 but selling of men, women and children in South continued. By 1830, blacks made up 24% of Ky. population. Kentucky Nonimportation Act of 1833 halted the transfer of blacks for resale. Presented by Louisville and Jefferson County African American Heritage Committee, Inc. (Reverse) Site of Arterburn Brothers Slave Pens - After Kentucky's Nonimportation Act repealed in 1849, Louisville slave markets expanded. The Arterburns advertised cash for farm hands and others. Iron-barred coops held people to be shipped south. Chained, they marched up Main Street to board boats in nearby Portland. Some died of shock or disease on the trip south.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Kentucky's 1792 constitution wrote enslavement into the new state's founding, and by 1830 Black Kentuckians made up nearly a quarter of the population. Though the U.S. banned the African slave trade in 1808 and Kentucky's 1833 Nonimportation Act briefly halted the interstate resale of enslaved people, that law's 1849 repeal reopened Louisville's slave markets. On this ground the Arterburn brothers held people in iron-barred pens before marching them, chained, to riverboats bound south.
Why it matters
The marker confronts the legal machinery and human traffic of slavery in a border state, insisting that the domestic slave trade be remembered where it actually happened.
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Related events
- · Kentucky Nonimportation Act of 1833
Themes & tags
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