Bluegrass State

Kentucky was the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains to be admitted to the union. At the time of its admission it was bounded on the southwest by the Tennessee River and on the north and northwest by the low-water line on the north shore of the Ohio River.

Virginia approved Kentucky statehood on Dec. 12, 1790, and Congress passed the act of admission on Feb. 4, 1791. The tenth and final convention met in April, 1792, adopted the first Kentucky Constitution and set elections for officers on March 1.

The land of Kentucky was mostly used as hunting grounds for tribes such as the Cherokee, the Delaware, and the Shawnee. Although British settlers were looking for new land to the west, few had ventured into Kentucky because it was so difficult to cross the Appalachian Mountains.

Kentucky’s first human inhabitants were descendants of prehistoric peoples who migrated from Asia over an artic land bridge to North America as long as 30,000 years ago. Even the earliest prehistoric Indians made stone and wooden hunting tools.

James Harrod

Kentucky’s history of slavery is complicated by its position as a neutral state in the Civil War and its history of trading slaves to rougher treatment down the Ohio River. Just one in five Kentucky families owned slaves in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Kentucky barred the importation of slaves in 1833.

Kentucky Plantation Slavery Primarily wealthy white men did – men like Henry Clay, John Rowan, Isaac Shelby, John Speed, and George Rogers Clark. Between 20 and 50 enslaved blacks worked on Kentucky’s largest plantations.

The Gambia River, running from the Atlantic into Africa, was a key waterway for the slave trade; at its height, about one out of every six West African enslaved people came from this area.

The Civil War did much to speed the end of slavery in Kentucky. African American men who served in the Union army received their freedom as did their families. But, slavery only truly ended in Kentucky with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which the state chose not to ratify.

Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865.

1792

The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Kentucky because it did not leave the Union. Instead, federal law forced enslavers in Kentucky to emancipate enslaved people in December of 1865 when the 13th Amendment had the approval of ¾ of the states. Kentucky symbolically ratified the 13th amendment in 1976.

The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware, where slavery was finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

By this definition, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment failed, because though African Americans were granted the legal rights to act as full citizens, they could not do so without fear for their lives and those of their family.

Slavery: Side 1 Thereafter, slavery grew rapidly, particularly in the southern colonies—with the black population increasing from under 50,000 in 1700 to over 1,000,000 in 1800, and eventually to over 4,400,000 in 1860. Slavery crossed the Appalachians with the early setters of Kentucky.

In response to the Unionists’ growing political power, the state’s Southern sympathizers formed a rival Confederate government. On November 18, 200 delegates passed an Ordinance of Secession and established Confederate Kentucky; the following December it was admitted to the Confederacy as a 13th state.

Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, and about half the states abolished slavery by the end of the Revolutionary War or in the first decades of the new country, although this did not usually mean that existing slaves became free….Slave and free state pairs.

Slave states	Texas
Year	1845
Free states	Wisconsin
Year	1848

Nevertheless, the provisional government was recognized by the Confederate States of America, and Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Kentucky, the final state admitted to the Confederacy, was represented by the 13th (central) star on the Confederate battle flag.

The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.

As the Civil War started, states chose sides, North or South. Kentucky was the one true exception, they chose neutrality.

The eleven states that seceded from the Union and formed the main part of the CSA were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina….

Confederate States of America
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	House of Representatives

Secession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States

• SOUTH CAROLINA.
• MISSISSIPPI.
• FLORIDA. ORDINANCE OF SECESSION.
• ALABAMA.
• GEORGIA.
• LOUISIANA.
• TEXAS.
• VIRGINIA.

The Confederate States of America consisted of 11 states—7 original members and 4 states that seceded after the fall of Fort Sumter. Four border states held slaves but remained in the Union. West Virginia became the 24th loyal state in 1863.

As defined by the U.S. federal government, it includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The flag’s stars represented the number of states in the Confederacy. The distance between the stars decreased as the number of states increased, reaching thirteen when the secessionist factions of Kentucky and Missouri joined in late 1861.