I resolved to dive deep for historical perspective. Disappointingly, conversation with Microsoft’s Co-Pilot Alien Intelligence ‘companion’ mostly floated on community-generated compilation retrievable at Wikipedia.
Co-Pilot AI rendered that the Old Court-New Court controversy was a significant political struggle in Kentucky during the 1820s. It began when financial Panic of 1819 left many Kentuckians in debt and unable to meet financial obligations. A debt relief movement emerged; pro-relief candidates won majorities in the state’s General Assembly in 1820.
The Kentucky General Assembly passed a replevin law that was extremely favorable to debtors. Disgruntled creditors challenged the constitutionality of that law, appealing their case to the Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of the creditors. In response, the pro-relief legislature passed a measure abolishing the Court of Appeals and replaced it with a new court, to which pro-relief Governor Joseph Desha (1768-1842) appointed pro-relief justices. [1]
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For a time, two separate courts operated as court of last resort for the state, leading to a period of chaos and confusion. [2] (I seek to remedy this understatement at endnote: cartoon (right) only hints at caustic, two-year interval.)
The controversy was eventually resolved when Old Court supporters regained control of both houses of the General Assembly, overrode Desha and abolished the New Court ... restoring authority to the original Court of Appeals.
Squire Turner (1793-1871), attorney with practice based in Madison County, Kentucky, was my underlying research target ... for his relationship to capital and investment. Co-Pilot skimmed across “a figure prominent in Kentucky politics during the early 19th century.” First elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1823, Turner arrived in 1824 as staunch defender of the original court system. “He opposed changes proposed by the New Court Party. This controversy was a significant event in Kentucky’s political history, it highlighted deep divisions within the state at the time.”
Follow-on inquiry of my Co-Pilot impulsively associated monetary inquest into Squire Turner with the Whig Party ... which was [later] one of the two major political parties in the United States during the mid-19th century. The Whig Party was known for its support of the American System, which included protective tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements. Turner, as a member of the Whig Party, would have supported these policies.
The Whig Party [would become] known for its opposition to the policies of General Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. It attracted a diverse coalition of supporters, including industrialists, merchants, and some Southern planters. (Appearing as ‘For Mr. Clay’ in 1830 re-election returns, I first associated Turner outright with Whig faction in final, 1839 re-election to the Kentucky House.)
Co-Pilot grew vague and reluctant, and I here present an actual deep dive for Squire Turner. Some may think it a wallow, but endnotes indicate I waded, up to my neck, into scholarly spaces. Frame for scrutiny admittedly spilled from distinctly fiscal policy. My subject was a performative public figure. He could be gregarious, sought to prevail while rollicking tides washed against civilizing initiative. Particularly in citations, my précis absolutely alerted to impassioned rough and tumble ... narratives which might challenge a machine.
Turner was indeed vested in internal improvement … think of it as physical infrastructure spending. He, reaping wherewithal from law practice and slave cultivation of more than a hundred inland acres, was by 1835 a Director of a Louisville, Kentucky company profiting from steamboats, warehouses and groceries on Ohio River waterfront. Attorney investors were demonstrably associated with Commonwealth of Kentucky legislators who that year created a Board of Internal Improvement … and appropriated $100,000 “toward a grand project of coordinating rivers, highways and canals.” [3]
State indebtedness spiked, a result of interest cost in borrowing. Kentuckians were two years later required to pay higher duties and taxes to satisfy bondholders. [4]
Turner was adherent to Henry Clay (1777-1852), who apparently coined the term ‘American System’. The fellow Kentuckian retained correspondence shared with Turner, who would join him on national stage as a Whig exponent. Clay had for the third time been elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1823: he, then of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party (later devised as ‘Anti-Jacksonian Party’), formed an element in ‘Corrupt Bargain’ of 1824 … the U.S. House elected John Quincy Adams U.S. President, after Jackson had obtained a plurality of popular and electoral votes in four-candidate election. Turner, with affinity for high court and Clay, and later Whig Party bedfellow, shared antipathy for Jackson, who would – after ultimately elected U.S. President for a second term – refuse to abide by U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (1832). Jackson denied his government’s authority … occasioning assimilated Cherokee Peoples to be forced from legally titled property. [5]
Turner, by comparison, was indefatigable practitioner with near veneration for rulings and legal language as lay of the land. He will present property law as guiding principle supervising racial casting.
Author of short but encompassing biography, Jonathan Truman Dorris titled 1949 paper ‘Major Squire Turner: Lawyer, Statesman, and Economist’. Referencing “considerable” business interests, he deduced “Squire Turner was a practical economist, not only in affairs of state but also in his private business life.” I might have worked ‘Wealth Accumulator’ into his trinity, substituted ‘Political Actor’ for Statesman, but concede Dorris aptly trifurcated our subject’s public personae. [7]
Co-Pilot persistently, and I think gratuitously ... given search parameters I fed it .... identified Turner as pro-slavery: in an Internet Age, it is predominant affiliation. Particularly as, nine years out of office, former Representative Turner was ‘master spirit’, marshaling response to Kentucky General Assembly call for third Constitutional Convention – and slavery was a hot topic generally – lifelong pursuits are marooned within well-documented flood of harangue spanning eighty-two days.
Contemporary researchers into the 1849 convocation see it, in the main, as civil prelude to armed insurrection: the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery is condensing focus by which (Turner and) the initiative is preponderantly analyzed. Results of constitutional amendment, and subsequent revision of Kentucky statutes – companion innovation for which Turner was considerably responsible – convey that delegates also insulated the judiciary, democratized mechanisms financing internal improvements, and stabilized school funding. By extracting authority for gubernatorial appointments, gathered citizens diminished power consolidating in steam-powered hands of railroad investors ... and legislators injudicious within dynamic economies beyond the ken of most of their constituents. [8]
Dorris did analyze Turner’s 1849 participation, in terms of slavery. He (footnoted pro-secessionist allegations and) credited him for being solidly for the Union. Turner remained loyal as his privileges were abrogated in Civil War and Reconstruction. A forensic orator, Turner could agitate: deftly wielding property law expertise, he by 1849 had long vociferated extreme umbrage when anticipating seizure of any property without compensation.
Turner was also no doubt convinced of White superiority. 1840 census had recorded ownership of 8 persons (half younger than age twenty); 1850 census would enumerate 29. His 1849 arguments – for and against exploitive labor – were admittedly paternalistic but, at outset, grounded in economics.
Squire did not merely believe in race-based supremacy: “... slavery keeps out the pauper population, the emptying of the jails and poorhouses of Europe ... who come here and compete.” Notably, his disdain for immigrants came in politico-economic packaging. Rolston (2005) discerned Turner in 1849 argued “Kentucky was led by independent farmers, while northern urban centers were filled with poor laborers neither inclined nor equipped to become independent.” [9]
McDougle (1918) was perhaps the first in the 20th century to note “Squire Turner, of Madison County, in the Constitutional Convention of 1849, made a careful summary of the existing economic problems of slavery.” And Turner wielded dense statistical array, asserting “about $61,000,000 worth of slave property in the state … produces less than three per cent profit on the capital invested, or about half as much as the moneyed capital would yield.” [10]
Money-minded Turner, an investor profiting from innovation and (I suppose) rumbustious monetary markets, explained slaving was half as lucrative. McDougle seemed bemused that our subject’s deep economic analysis did nothing to diminish delegates’ ardor for enslaving people. Belaboring these calculations before the body ought to complicate assumption that Turner was unequivocally pro-slavery.
Turner claimed about 75% of 200,000 slaves in Kentucky “are superannuated, sick, women in unfit condition for labor, and infants unable to work, who yield no profit. Show me a man that has forty or fifty slaves on his estate, and if there are ten out of that number who are available and valuable, it is as much as you can expect.” Slave labor resulted in capital investment “barely able to maintain themselves, to pay for their own clothing, fuel, house room and doctor’s bills.” Family lore has Turner complaining slaves toiled to raise corn, to feed slaves to raise corn.
Those opposed to his election as Constitutional Delegate styled Turner pro-slavery. The candidate cast himself as “pro-reform.”
Dorris realized Turner “was neither for nor against extending or increasing the institution of slavery” in this convening. Two days into it, Turner – by then veteran of Resolutions Committee appointments at initiation of numerous proceedings – laid twelve edicts on the table. He testified, perhaps overmodestly, “I am not vain enough to expect that they will all meet the views of a majority of the Convention. They are thrown out merely as suggestions for the consideration of the Convention among other propositions that may be submitted. Indeed there are some of them that I have considerable doubt about myself. I intend to act here upon deliberation and not upon preconceived opinions.” [11]
His fifth commendation attended to freedom ... and indebtedness. The injunction read “The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their owners. They shall pass laws to permit the owners to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors: Provided, The persons emancipated shall be sent out of the United States at the expense of the person who emancipates them, and be sold into bondage for the benefit of the public Treasury in case of their return to Kentucky.” (Italics in the original, formatting style I generally follow.) In Turner’s reasoning, confiscation was illegal, vested property rights predominated over majority rule ... should citizens send representatives with votes sufficient to summarily abolish slavery.
Turner no doubt appreciated ‘bondage’ in capitalist terms. Enslavers, by bond, ‘bound out’ slaves … obtained earnings for labor compelled into investor pursuits. Title to enslaved persons also collateralized loans; guarantors seized property deeds for nonpayment. Banking on Slavery in the Antebellum South (2017) examined intricacies in slave liquidity at Kentucky, 1819: I found Milly’s case particularly poignant.
See (advert, right and) Kentucky and Insurance Policies on Slaves (2020): financial instruments – and Turner litigation over conveyances – abounded.
Sixth, Turner tendered “No persons shall henceforth be slaves within this Commonwealth, except such as are now so, and the descendants of the females of them, and such as may be brought to this State by bona fide emigrants, and the descendants of the females of them, and such as citizens of Kentucky shall derive title to, out of the State, by marriage, devise, or descent [inheritance], and the descendants of the females of them.” I plumb descent from those females at digressive endnote 14.
Indicators of his passion, four Turner resolutions addressed elections, two qualified judicial eligibility. Nearly absent in historical assessment, Turner also resolved “That no religious test or property qualification shall be required to entitle a citizen to vote or hold office.” Jefferson – author of 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom – might have been satisfied. When it came to ballot access, Turner ... abject property rights defender ... was no elitist; in his estimation, political franchise need not be tethered to successful wealth extraction.
Our former state legislator, long familiar with ‘personal bills’ and then married thirty years to Elizabeth (Stone) Turner (1800-1887), also proposed that power to grant divorces be removed from an all-male legislature and placed with less-amenable-to-influence (all-male) courts ... civil spaces where adversarial positions had historically been accommodated.
Turner’s proffer on emancipation merely shaped existing provisions in Kentucky’s two prior constitutions. Eventual amendment also made it a felony for emancipated persons to return, immigrate into … or refuse to leave the state. Post submitted (1985) “Perhaps the most significant aspect” of final amended language was “implicit assumption that the legislature needed constitutional sanction in order to pass laws permitting the owners of slaves to emancipate them.” Had Turner advocated the permissive language be excised – sought to terminate legal authority to emancipate – he could be credited as revolutionary in pro-slavery sentiment. As it was, he, while adhering to cumbersome but consent-of-the-governed amendment process, mirrored Jackson’s forced Cherokee Removal: possession rights accrued to Whites at the expense of People of Color. [12]
Turner had in January remained for fourth, annual term as a Vice President, representing Madison County in the Kentucky State Colonization Society. [13] Though he (and Clay) continued financial support of scheme to consensually transport freeborn Blacks and emancipated slaves from the state to Liberia, Dorris had Turner, ever the political economist, asserting in 1849 convention “"… the expense of freeing all the slaves and their deportation to Africa would be prohibitive. Such action would saddle a debt upon the state that would virtually enslave whites. It would also be an injustice to the Negroes, whose condition would be far less desirable than their present state." In fact, Turner believed slaves in Kentucky were in a better condition than the white laboring population of any part of the world.” This was certainly his perception regarding most enslaved persons toiling in agricultural profit-taking.
Turner did adamantly agitate against importation of the enslaved into the Commonwealth. He is noted for demanding constitutional bulwark conforming to the Kentucky Nonimportation Act of 1833 ... which remained laxly enforced.
Supply and demand no doubt influenced the value of his chattel property, but – per Dorris – Turner publicly “deemed any further investment in slaves as unwise.” Not exactly a pro-slavery stance. Meddlesome, Northern abolitionists facilitated self-liberation from Southern Border States. Absconded property “made slaves in that area less valuable,” Turner contended. (1860 census will record ownership of two fewer persons than Turner subjugated in 1850.) “Shall we then, as a matter of pecuniary interest, go on investing our capital in the purchase of this description of property, which is constantly becoming less secure and less profitable?”
Not every posture Turner took on slavery was grounded in economics. He immediately segued into “I say there is no man living who sees in the hand of Providence what I see, who does not perceive that there is a power at work above us, that is above all human institutions, and one that will yet prevail, even in Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky.” Dorris summonsed a fatalist Turner from Convention record: “I desire that [abolition] be restricted by whatever legislation we adopt on the subject but, when the Deity has sent forth his fiat that this institution is to cease, it will cease, no human effort can arrest it.”
“I do not believe the institution of slavery is going to exist for all time,” Turner opined. “That it is an institution that is not destined to endure, I think is most certain." Dorris picked up, relying on the politico-economist: “"I am convinced from the evidences about me that it will not ... I have not been able to come to any other conclusion, and I have given the subject a careful examination." He believed, therefore, that slave owners should be satisfied with the natural supply of slaves, and that there should be no resort to importation.” [14]
Mathias (1977) represents an informed, modern-day detractor, regarding Turner’s participation in the convening: “The first two and one-half weeks were spent debating – and I doubt if that is the word – the question of slavery.” He introduced Turner in context of “emotional debauchery” ... imputed violent death of son, Kentucky Representative Cyrus Turner (1819-1849), knifed by wealthy and entitled emancipationist publisher Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810-1903), reflected deficiently upon the father then pursuing authentication as Delegate. [15]
Professor Mathias recognized Turner’s commencing guidance. “On October 3, the convention initiated a week of serene debate on several of Turner’s propositions and on convention rules and regulations. As no heated debate arose over the two slavery amendments Turner had included, it seemed that the convention might quickly dispose of the pre-determined slavery question. Turner’s fifth resolution merely asked for a restatement of the slave article of the 1799 [Constitution, then in effect] – that the General Assembly would have no power of emancipation. His sixth resolution – and one likely to generate warm debate – sought to end slave importation into the state. Yet even this reference to the Act of 1833 might peacefully have passed or failed had not Turner seared sensitive slavery emotions by his speech of 10 [October].”
Damning with faint praise, Dr. Mathias deduced “Turner’s speech nullified the gains made by his resolutions. His declaration that Providence would end slavery not only brought the usual number of "Bible-quoters" to the floor, but probably destroyed any chance of placing a nonimportation law in the constitution. His excellent argument on the point, that such a law would benefit Kentuckians financially, was lost in the mass of abstract oratory he had stimulated.”
“Squire Turner first addressed the chair in a speech about as strange any I have listened to for some time,” declared a Louisville Daily Courier correspondent (under pseudonym ‘The Excluded’). “It was a singular medley of abolition declamation, pro-slavery doctrines, laudation of the peculiar institution, and denunciation of slave traders and "dealers in flesh and blood" – in fact, as he spoke it, the speech seemed a bundle of contradictions. How it will read I do not know.”
After a day of haranguing, near closing of 11 October debate, Turner worked himself into belligerence, championing nonimportation amendment. “I am a pro-slavery man, but I think we have got enough of it. It is said we may have too much of a good thing. I admit that the slaves we have now are beneficial to us, and it is desirable to improve them, not to contaminate them by [freedom] mixing them up with rogues and rascals.” He kindled murder of his firstborn: “I came here through fire and brimstone, more perhaps than anyone who has a seat upon this floor, and I will not bow to the emancipationists in any shape or manner.” [16]
Perhaps vivid pro-slavery declamation is sufficient to cast Turner perpetually in such light. Consider in-the-moment disparagement in Virginia’s Richmond Enquirer: “Never was there a poor driveller more thoroughly used up than was Squire Turner in this debate. He occupied, throughout, the broad platform of both sides of the question, and toddled and staggered from one side to the other like a drunken man. Truly the pro-slavery men of Madison have made a miserable bargain in sending such a man to the Convention. They had better a thousand times have sent Cassius M. Clay. He has at least common honesty enough to take one side of the question, and sense enough to know one side from the other; while Turner has neither.”
In following installment, ‘Excluded’ led with Turner predominating among six 12 October speakers: “... all strong men, of course, but whose manner and style of speaking are so peculiar that few are eager to flock to hear them, unless upon very important questions, like the present one.” Turner had pulled the body to again address nonimportation. Dispatch continued: “The substance of Turner’s speeches upon his resolution is – that slavery is a great blessing, but we don’t want any more of the blessing – that the finger of God is upon the blessed institution and its doom is sealed.”
Mathias mischaracterized Turner regarding initiative on “religious test.” This chronicler held unsympathetic views of Whiggery, generally, but disingenuously lumped Turner in with “avowed Nativist” U.S. Representative Garrett Davis (1801-1872) and his “call for a limiting of the franchise of Roman Catholic immigrants to Kentucky.” Mathias described lack of support in historical record as “Nativist sentiments lay dormant throughout most of the convention,” and immediately followed assertion of that absence with “Squire Turner briefly exposed his feelings on this subject during his debate on apportionment.”
At issue was another’s amendment favoring urban areas in constitutional re-allocation of representation. In arguing against cities electing their own state senators – in favoring senatorial representation remain as thirty-eight districts – Turner referenced “people who are continually coming in” to the state, “ready to act in concert with others out of the state, against the institution of slavery, and who will break down our institutions after a while, if not checked by our action.” [17]
Turner, in another long diatribe, tried to focus delegates on merits of proportional representation. Admittedly, he did turn to Nativist argument, and perhaps observations drawn from joint ownership of waterfront property at Louisville: “This [riverine] part of the population is constantly migratory—is unstable, and feels very little community of interest with native Kentuckians. It is here to-day and gone to-morrow.” To his procedural point: “It seems to me that no county in the state ought to have more than one senator.” He I think intended Senate majority remain primarily attendant to constituencies with intergenerational presence in the state ... per Combs, families established in settlement period.
I sense Turner intuited that arguments alluding to slavery and nativism captured pockets of sentiment. He must have deduced forecasting might also resonate. On “those who are not Kentuckians by birth,” settled along the rivers: “Are we disposed, when they become a majority of the population of the state, to let the whole agricultural interests of the state, including the mass of the native population of the country [of Kentucky], to be governed and ruled by these immigrants? I see a state of things which I believe will eventually result in giving the majority and full control to the hands of people not favorable to the institutions of Kentucky; and I am for checking it before it is too powerful to control. Let us begin at once.”
“Squire Turner made a red hot speech and spoke in the most prophetic strain of the inevitable evils which must arise from granting to the urban population privileges equal to those enjoyed by the darling rustics,” reported The Louisville Daily Courier. “He said that the river counties would soon swarm with a foreign immigration, the abolitionists would pour in with them, and the first blow that would be struck would be aimed at slave property. Sufficient it is to say, that Mr. Lindsey’s amendment was rejected.”
Turner fulminated “People who are continually coming in, and who are ready to act in concert with others out of the state, against the institution of slavery, will break down our institutions after a while, if not checked by our action.” I leave it to the reader to assess whether these are pro-slavery sentiments, or whether Turner used hot-button topic to prevent evolution of the Commonwealth’s Senate into a body with undue capitalist influence over state policy. And yeomen’s interests.
Turner again resorted to prophetic voice when countering depiction of his remarks. He prompted delegates to imagine “fifty years to come,” and claimed “I see a state of things which I believe will eventually result …” Perhaps tendency arose from fifty-six-year perspective. I suspect it just as likely that Turner’s ego pontificated as result of being notable in attentions across a spectrum of malleable legal minds. All delegates had demonstrated local popularity sufficient to win election to the body. The six-term state legislator was expounding before an august echelon with proclivities and executive obligation. [18]
To return to economic theme, where – far more broadly than relational to slavery – fiscal assessments peppered almost every position he advanced, Mathias observed, of result: “The convention provided that tax adjustments to service internal improvement debt must be made at the time the indebtedness is incurred. A popular referendum was made mandatory for extensive projects. This would at once relate taxes and improvements for the voters, and would assure that general benefits would be served by the planned project. Squire Turner expressed convention sentiments:"I have no objection to [regularly] consult the people on this subject, and I believe they will not withhold their approval from any work of internal improvement that is calculated to enhance their convenience, their prosperity, or their wealth."”
Actual testimony evoked an old, country lawyer. Both academic Mathias and Microsoft Co-Pilot abstained from humanism. Admitted to Madison County’s Bar of the Circuit when in his early twenties, an itinerant Turner had navigated his allotment of backwoods. “I would rather pay my share of the tax [funding improvements] for one year, than be obliged in going home to be three or four days floundering along on horseback through the mud,” he testified, sixty or more miles from Richmond in 1849. [19]
It was totally within character that Turner wanted creditors paid and to vanquish unserviced debt accrued from internal improvements: “... although I am ready to admit that a great deal of it was imprudently contracted. Ten years ago, when I attempted to point out some of the defects of the system, such was its popularity that the people were almost ready to hiss me from the [capitol] lobby.” After a spate referring to engineer salaries, specific financial consequences of poor contracting decisions, Turner righteously favored voter-approved expenditure: “Why, the very reduction in the price of groceries alone, to say nothing of the reduced price of transportation and the increased facilities of travel, would fully repay to the people the increased taxation these works have imposed on them. These are the advantages we derive, and they are worth double to the people the money it cost to obtain them. I raise my voice against this wholesale denunciation of that system, which now seems to be so popular in this convention … and shall continue to advocate it [even] if every other man in the country opposes it.”
My navigational chart might describe that Turner bestirred himself, to obtain office in 1823 so as to restore Kentucky’s judicial check on executive and legislative authority. And, in chaos and confusion of 1849, do the same to steer “diverse coalition” into forming more citizen-responsive constellation of governance. He, 26 years into ‘re-formation’ trek, worked a matrix of resistant levers to legitimately – with consent of those then eligible to give it – reconfigure a commonwealth’s primal organizing document. And then its statutory structure.
Consider our subject’s canny conception of economy as interlocking parts. And his analytical support for interoperative, physical internal improvements. Particularly when assessed with legislative acumen amidst discordant party politics and dexterity of practice within fractured legal code unevenly applied; we are informed he was adept at essential understanding in assemblages of things and ideas.
By my estimation, history could justly portray Squire Turner as institutional re-structuralist … pragmatic and paternalistic racial oppressor, he was not a pro-slavery architect.
Co-Pilot introduced “disgruntled creditors.” It might be worth noting that, per Dorris biograph, p. 43, “The report of the administrators of his [$350,000] estate gives 570 different items of indebtedness to him, ranging from $5.00 to $10,000. Many exceeded $500.”
For Ardis (Turner) Ligon.
Delete & leave comment here
[1] I commend ‘New Thoughts on an Old Theme’, by Thomas B. Jones, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 69, No. 4 (1971), pp. 293-312, for setting Replevin Acts of 1820 in scholarly, legal context ... while acknowledging “excitement” and that “relief men actively cultivated the popular vote without regard to the "propriety" of their techniques.”
See ‘A Constitutional Crisis: The Kentucky Court of Appeals Schism, 1824-1826’ (2010), p. 42, Duke University thesis by Sarah E. Nudelman; she featured Representatives Squire Turner and Robert Taylor as “Anti-Relief partisans” in 1824 session. She depicted the duo debating the ‘Act to Repeal the Law Organizing the Court of Appeals, and to Reorganize the Court of Appeals’: “The two men importantly noted the divergence from policy to philosophy and sophism … they criticized the philosophical nature of its preamble and resolutions.” And quoted the pair from House record: “We were elected to this body to legislate practically for the community—not to frame a code of political faith for the observance of our constituents.” Neophyte Turner in 1824 advocated courts premised on practicality, not partisanship. Race-coding will certainly undergird economic contentions in 1849 debate ... will direct affinity cliques to moral philosophy.
I suspect above companion was Maysville, Kentucky attorney Robert Taylor, Jr. (1806-1852). Mason County sent him, favoring Henry Clay, to the Kentucky Senate in 1827.
In 1824 bid for re-election to the Kentucky House, well-propertied Turner imparted “I have always heard those who are in favour of relief laws (of which this is one) say they were to secure the labouring part of the community from unfeeling creditors. But a single proposition will shew that the valuation law, like the whole relief system, is calculated to crush the poor and protect the land holder.” He then launched into extended economic analysis: “Suppose A is possessed of personal estate to the value of 500 dollars …”
‘Murder and Inflation in Kentucky’ by Clifford Francis Thies, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 12, Vol. 4 (2009), pp. 64-80 offered sewer water plunge. At times breathless account framed “disastrous consequences” of monetary derangements and banking schemes in span from Panic of 1819 to 1822 relief agenda. In era of well-described destitution, and taunts of insurrection and civil war, General Desha imperiously resolved a son’s prosecution ... for highway robbery and homicide. Interestingly, ex-excellency Desha unconstitutionally continued acting as Governor after being voted from office in 1828.
Both Jones and Thies characterized Amos Kendall, whom I introduce at [5]. Kendall masterfully rebutted ‘rumor’ that Desha in 1828 decreed his successor was “not duly qualified” for “reins of government.” BACK
[2] See ‘The Recall as Practiced in Kentucky Some Ninety Years Ago’ by Allen Gullion, Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. II, No. 5 (1914), p. 9: “A period of judicial duarchy which was the equivalent of anarchy followed” New Court formation. He marked Turner’s opposition to the Act. An even-handed analysis that – in footnote – incorporated later, wholesale removals from Federal office by Andrew Jackson. Gullion presented ‘people rule’ premise advanced by New Court faction: “It is absurd to look to the will of the judge for stability in government. He is a tyrant, when he substitutes [his] own will, for that of the people. It is in their will, and not in his, that the force of his judgments, and decrees, is to be found.”
Above cartoon depicted ‘Judge Breaking’. See Ben Hardin: His Times and Contemporaries by Lucius Powhatan Little (1887) for chapter devoted to justices’ removal from high court by legislative fiat endorsed by the Executive. At safe distance of retrospect, p. 478, Little called judge breaking a “comedy.” He noted Turner’s 1824 arrival in Kentucky House minority faction, p. 109: “The Anti-Relief party had lost in numbers but gained in ability.”
The Kentucky Senate having failed to join the House in vote to repeal act substituting New Court for Old, Representative Turner on 29 January 1825 addressed Madison County constituents: “Our ancestors have struggled and bled for a thousand years to obtain an independent judiciary—a judiciary unswayed by popular whims or prejudices; unawed by power or influence—having nothing but the law and justice in view in all their deliberations.” He examined substitute court jurisdiction: “Will our judges in future fearlessly approach a question between an obscure individual and a man in affluence and in the full tide of his political career? No. Other considerations than the justice of the case will weigh heavily on their minds.” I leave it to the reader to determine what degree Turner can be considered prescient two hundred years later: “Shall we in future have any fixed principles of government? Will there be any stability in public measures? Or will not every feature of our government ... be overturned by whim or caprice? Is not the example for each party in its turn, losing sight of public utility, to revenge itself on its adversary?”
Gullion quoted Nathaniel Southgate Shaler for “Then came a bloodless campaign, which for energy and bitterness has never been equalled in the history of the State, if ever among English speaking people. Not even the elections immediately preceeding the Civil War gave anything like the same fury to men’s minds as did the struggle between the Old and New Court parties …”
Indeed. Francis Preston Blair, Sr. (1791-1876) had been appointed Clerk of Kentucky’s New Court. Had in 1825 broken though a window into Old Court chambers, seized all records he found. Recently-ranked Major Turner in 1826 organized House Gun Committee resolution to order documents return. As Representatives adjourned, Blair and others discharged militia weapons nearby. Editor-in-Chief Amos Kendall mocked the menacing tactics in his Argus of Western America.
See also ‘Old and New Court Controversy’ by Burgess James Bethurum, Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1918), pp. 173-182. “The ordinary amenities among gentlemen were forgotten, and the State was soon lashed into a fury. Politics of the old school were, for the time, brushed aside, and a new alignment formed, composed of the Relief and Anti-Relief parties.” Judicial perspective, unfolded as legal brief. ‘Bedlam in Kentucky’ was followed by “It is doubtful if the State ever [before] witnessed anything that approached it in point of personal hostility and the use of violent utterance.” BACK
[3] Engineering the Kentucky River. The Commonwealth’s Waterway by Leland R. Johnson and Charles E. Parrish (1999), endn. 41, p. 187. I do not believe Turner served in the Kentucky House between 1833 and 1840. He was in 1836 appointed Commissioner for receiving stock subscriptions in Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Rail Road Company ... which may have been a sales job with fiduciary duty. (The incarnation failed soon enough.) BACK
[4] See Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (1830), p. 239: Turner had that year chaired the Kentucky House as a Committee of the Whole for drafting an appropriation bill. It approved the Commonwealth “to borrow $500,000 or take private partners in construction of internal improvements.”
At times described as staunch, Turner’s thrall for governmental infrastructure would be nuanced. Glimpses of Historic Madison County, Kentucky by Jonathan Truman Dorris (1955), pp. 55-56 spotted local reverence for his financial acumen. County government (in 1869 by this account) issued $443,000 in bonds; boosted speculation in anticipated branch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. “Some of the moneyed men of the county, especially Squire Turner and Daniel Breck [1788-1871], opposed the county’s part in the construction of the road, declaring it had been done illegally. This created a feeling of distrust on the part of many citizens and resulted in a very limited sale of bonds within the county. No funds were on hand when the first call came for money by the railroad company.”
Turner had since 1867 been Director of competing corporation, speculators based in Lexington, Kentucky. It was likely ‘our subject as business analyst’ that Louisville Daily Courier that year mocked when contending Madison County’s “best calculators, by accurate figuring, showed the Louisville and Nashville railroad to be a bankrupt concern.” Affectation persisted: “Between fraud on the part of [L&N] directors, bankruptcy on the part of the company, with a promise of a great through route from Lexington … it would seem Louisville had a poor chance” to introduce railroading at the county. Louisville incorporators had prevailed, according to this report. Turner, in Dorris glimpse above, temporarily rattled bond issuers and potential investors. BACK
[5] Though he took no public position in Old Court-New Court controversy, The Papers of Henry Clay, Vol. 4: Secretary of State, 1825 (1959) in particular referred to Squire Turner multiple times. Wikipedia declared Clay left Congress from 1821 to 1823 “... to rebuild his family’s fortune in the aftermath ...” of capitalism’s 1819 collapse. Rift had opened that year when Clay compared General Jackson to military dictators of the past, telling colleagues “Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Cæsar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and, that if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors.” Jackson held lasting umbrage.
A Madison County body in 1827 selected Turner to committee inviting Clay to ‘Domestic Republican’ dinner; he was second-named in pretentious declination. Invitees had “heavy approbation” for “the able and unremitted exertions of the Hon. H. Clay, in the great cause of Domestic Manufactures, Internal Improvements, and the cause of struggling Liberty in every quarter of the world.” (Clay first named ‘W. McClanahan’, whom I suspect to be Richmond merchant Major William McClanahan (1789-1864). His daughter Margaret will marry Turner’s son Cyrus in 1841.)
Representative Turner in 1830 addressed public meeting at Richmond Courthouse “at considerable length.” Resultant resolutions condemned Jackson’s administration: it had “removed numerous subordinate officers for no other reason than opposing his election, and supplied their places with political friends, many of whom are wholly destitute of every requisite qualification.” Jackson had “pensioned the press to an alarming and dangerous extent.” Had vetoed Internal Improvement “… and all this in the abused names of “retrenchment and reform.” Other than Jackson’s attack on tariff system, it haunted me how closely minority party criticism – of the administration in power at time of this writing – parallels these 1830 resolutions.
Perhaps result of stern portrait (above), Turner is often portrayed as taciturn. He had wit and could be wry. See ‘Capturing Henry Clay: Through A Year of the Days of His Life’ by Charlie Muntz (2013), pp. 41-42: Kentucky news publisher, political operative and age peer Amos Kendall (1789-1869) in 1825 wrote “Yesterday, in a playful conversation, Squire Turner of Richmond said to me, "We heard up our way, that you was to have a place in the Department of State at Washington for the purpose of writing for Adams and Clay." Not having heard from you [wrote Kendall to Clay], I presume you have made no arrangement to offer me such a place in your Department as would afford me a pecuniary inducement to abandon my present business.” Muntz, Docent at Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate, continued: “Had Clay found a position for Kendall, he may well have prevented him from turning to Andrew Jackson. [Kendall] became a key member of [Jackson’s] ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ and a very effective opponent of Henry Clay.” No doubt embarrassing to Turner, Kendall feuded with Clay ... publicly, vituperatively and through election cycles ... premised on Turner’s teasing revealment of imploded backroom deal.
I recommend ‘Kentucky State Politics in the Early 1850s’ by Wallace Blythe Turner, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1958), pp. 123-126, 129. For instigative, oppositional and inertial forces prior to 1849 call for constitutional convention. Henry Clay was “conspicuous by [his] absence.” BACK
[6] This
is not to say that Kentucky native Squire Turner was not represented, hereditarily, at settlement: he was named for Squire Maugridge Boone, Jr. (1744-1815); Daniel’s younger, co-pioneering brother. Who, per family lore, had performed 1784 marriage of Turner’s parents … when Turners and Boones co-located on banks of the Yadkin River in North Carolina. Squire’s father,
Thomas Turner (1764-1847), had a stake in Madison
County by 1783, a year prior to Madison County formation. Daniel Boone likely surveyed ‘Trading Tom’ Turner’s initial Kentucky land
grant.
[Squire Turner styled his slaveholding father 'Old Marsh' in 1845 letter at To Write on Ends As Was at Hand.]
As to Combs on “paper money,” I can’t help but compare privately held 19th-century banks, issuing their own legal tender, to broadening acceptance of cryptocurrency. BACK
[7] ‘Major Squire Turner: Lawyer, Statesman, and Economist’ by Jonathan Truman Dorris, The Filson Club Historical Quarterly, Vol. 25 (1951), pp. 33-50. Dorris reiterated “practical Southern economist” and I sensed we shared dawning realization that our subject, initially apprehended as prosperous lawyer with six terms in the legislature, was in no small degree a diligent fiscal analyst.
Dr. Dorris (1883-1972), Professor of History and Government 1926-1953, Eastern Kentucky University at Richmond, Kentucky, repeatedly cited ‘Turner Papers’. EKU Head of Special Collections & Archives assumed they were on loan to Dorris at time of his death ... and never returned. BACK[8] Note that Turner would be one of seven to organize an 1856 Whig State Convention in Kentucky. He there represented Madison County. Seventh, philosophical plank from that body read “Revenue to be raised chiefly by duties on imports, and not by direct taxation ... distributing the benefits and burdens of the policy fairly among all classes and sections, to encourage and protect home industry ...” Mathias, yet to be introduced, might portray protectionist sentiments as springing from Turner’s ‘Nativism’.
I have given some thought to cohesion between Turner’s support for tariffs and nonimportation of slaves. As policymaker, Turner certainly believed (in independence and) that his home country Kentucky harnessed self-sufficiency.
See ‘The Issues in the Kentucky Constitutional Convention 1849-1850’ (1949), University of Louisville thesis by Gertrude Pettus; pp. 45-46. Turner has been associated with agitating for direct election to displace cronyism and nepotism; removing gubernatorial authority for appointments to office. The 1850 Constitution provided for election of a President to the state Board of Internal Improvements. Perhaps not surprising from a former legislator, enabling language was followed by “nothing in this Constitution shall prevent the General Assembly from abolishing the Board of Internal Improvements or the office of president thereof.” Constitutional amendment required heavy lifting, Turner no doubt visioned that legislators – not the Executive – required this kind of flexibility ... as conditions and sentiments changed. I will observe that the Board was not equivalent to the state’s Court of Appeals ... a constitutionally formed, independent branch of government.
Turner can be seen as forensic accountant. He had been first-named House Member when Kentucky General Assembly Joint Committee on Banks reported fraud upon Bank of Kentucky in 1840. Opprobrium was otherwise directed toward the Board of Internal Approvements, who, five years in, did more than simply finance infrastructure spending. Banks loaned to the Board, expecting quick repayment from proceeds derived from out-of-state sale of state-backed Kentucky scrip. Crisis of 1839 followed Panic of 1837, paper notes had negligible value in collapsed Eastern markets; the Board could not sell them and did not relieve creditors. Domino effects hobbled all Kentucky banking ... and any commerce therein which required currency backed by precious metal.
The committee of six identified knock-on effect: “We are inclined to think that, had the [state] Banks been managed … with an eye to giving the country a sound, stable and convertible circulation, instead of a desire to make large dividends for the stockholders,” discretionary suspension of charter-mandated return of 12% to the Treasury in gold or silver-backed securities “might have been avoided.” Poignantly, the report fused indebtedness with principled behavior: the Commonwealth’s state-banking system “has been, and will, in all probability, continue to be subject to frequent suspensions, and its circulation reduced below par value, setting examples of violating contracts, which constrains private individuals to do the same, and thus sapping and undermining the morals of society.”
I can easily imagine Turner, emerged from Old Court defense and constitutional reforms – a jurisprudent who repeatedly turned down proffered judgeships – as architect of eighth and final 1856 Whig resolve … promoting state policy to favor “intellectual, moral and physical improvement of people and country, guarding the judiciary in its purity and independence against the temptations and contaminations of political party influence and control …”
Father to daughters age 3 and 6, in banner year of 1835, the legislature named Turner a founding Trustee for the Richmond Female Academy. He personally financed bond enabling initial occupancy. I have not adequately documented Turner’s role in constitutional stabilization of school funding – his fingerprints are on it – but, as many who learned law under his tutelage memorialized, he long sustained personal initiative for introducing intellectual “improvement.” BACK
[Turner appeared at A Basket Filled with Tears and Flowers: he evidenced paternal concern for distressed half-nieces ... my great-grandmother in the duo. He responded – perhaps generously – in lawsuit over unpaid boarding bill, and I feel personally indebted to half-third great uncle Squire, paving the way for Amelia Turner (1852-1915) to later excel at Madison Female Institute.]
[9] ‘A Tale of Two States: Producerism and Constitutional Reform in Antebellum Kentucky and Ohio’ by Arthur Rolston; Ohio Valley History, Vol. 5 (2005), p. 46. Rolston went on to observe “Reforming the judiciary – specifically, opposition to appointed judges with tenure for life – garnered strong public support because it was linked to earlier controversies over debt relief and the ‘Old Court /New Court’ turmoil. Both proponents and opponents of judicial change cast their respective arguments in terms of serving "the people’s" interests, with "the people" identified as the vast majority of independent producers as against the political machinations of elites and their political allies.”
Newly immigrated laborers arrived, in the main, from autocracy with dogma of origin. I find it inspirational to set “neither inclined nor equipped to become independent” in context of novel ideology flourished by Declaration of Independence. Inconspicuous in notion of unpreparedness to adopt new Weltanschauung would be liberty in system where debt is intrinsically structured to concentrate wealth in investor class. BACK
[10] ‘Slavery in Kentucky’ by Ivan Eugene McDougle, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. III, No. 3 (1918), pp. 236-237. Turner is about to ask delegates to “Show me a man ...” He will follow with “Is there any gentleman who has a large number of slaves, who will say that they are any more profitable than that?” Dr. McDougle, in eugenics movement by 1923, recognized “No one in the convention answered the last question put by Squire Turner. But regardless of such an economic condition, not a single piece of remedial legislation was passed and the members of the Constitutional Convention added a provision to the Bill of Rights [Article XIII, Sect. 3: The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase, is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.] which rooted the slavery system firmer than ever. That most admirable of all southern characters, and at the same time the most difficult to understand, the Kentucky master, took little heed of a question of dollars and cents when it interfered with his moral and humanitarian sentiments.”
Turner’s “pecuniary point of view” was more copious than McDougle graciously synopsized. As for “pauper population” emptied from European confinement, I sank beneath his detailed analysis of economic problems to discover “… leaving out of the question what he steals from [the gentleman Master] and sells at the nearest town” Turner assessed $20 average annual expense per enslaved person. (Report of the Debates, p. 73.) BACK
[11] Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Kentucky (1849), p. 25. The report ran 1107 pages. Turner, often otherwise styled as “the gentleman from Madison,” was extensive in it: his surname itself (indicating he was recognized to speak) appeared over 400 times. See History and Texts of the Three Constitutions of Kentucky by Bennett Henderson Young (1890), p. 53: Squire Turner was credited with 129 propositions in ordeal spanning two and a half months … in third place behind high-status Charles Anderson Wickliffe (1788-1869), former Kentucky Governor and U.S. Postmaster General, clandestine emissary for U.S. President James Polk in 1845. Young distilled from proceedings that “While one hundred men did the thinking, less than a dozen did the talking in the convention. After the expiration of thirty days, this prominence in debate of certain gentlemen came to be a source of much irritation and some criticism, and the growth of this feeling did much to shorten the session.” Wickliffe’s name preceded Turner’s for authorship of resultant Revised Statutes of Kentucky ... Approved and Adopted by the General Assembly, 1851 and 1852. Without compensation beyond nominal revenue from this text, the duo recodified the entirety of state law to (standardize it; and, some contend, shape it to their preferences; and) assimilate constitutional amendments. Credibly, Wickliffe and Turner invested substantial, studious and comparatively quiet and reflective time following hot convention spotlight. (Family lore holds “In this code Mr. Turner prepared nearly all the chapters on landed property, conveyances, landlords and tenants, and real estate.”)
Young placed Turner also behind Kentucky Secretary of State Benjamin Hardin (1784-1852) in “prominent positions.” Little, p. 532 in Hardin biography, estimated delegational influence: “Squire Turner, from Madison … was very potential, on account of locality [his electorate], as well as of his marked talents and consummate lawyership.”
Plunge into fellow Whig Archibald Dixon (1802-1876) for exemplar of pro-slavery advocate. Turner was excoriated for not following party line, to vote him Chair of the 1849 Convention. A War of 1812 veteran, Turner was not by any account a civilian brawler: insiders suspected Turner retained animosity for Dixon ... after the then-serving Kentucky Lieutenant Governor knocked Turner down in Weisiger House parlor at the capitol in February 1848. Turner was contentious: in courtroom and debate, he flaired capacity to skirmish with honed words. BACK
[12] ‘Kentucky Law Concerning Emancipation or Freedom of Slaves’ by Edward M. Post, The Filson Club History Quarterly, Vol. 59. No. 3 (1985), p. 345. Emancipation was always going to have legislative guardrails, if only to prevent incapacitated persons held captive from becoming community burden when liberated. 1849 Convention certainly did not hold the political capital to terminate emancipation rights.
Turner, stumping for Clay – and Whigs – at New York 10 May 1844, chastised “a party raised up to oppose, and absolutely opposing, a decision of the Supreme Court, as in the case of the Cherokee Nation vs. The State of Georgia.” “Who till now ever heard of a Congress trampling on its own laws?”
I highly recommend ‘Kentucky and Slavery: The Constitutional Convention of 1792’ (2010), Dalhousie University thesis by Michael J. Herrick. Many of Turner’s rationales, even economic arguments, derived from contentions made by George Nicholas (c1754-1799). Herrick alluded to pro-slavery merit for constitutional amendment: frustrating potential legislative capacity to wholesale emancipate persons held slave. Fn. 154, p. 52, offered Jefferson in c1782 cautionary, prophetic musing “The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by [our] extirpation.” Compare with Turner prognostication, sixty-seven years later: “... when the Deity has sent forth his fiat that this institution is to cease ...” BACK
[13] The African Repository and Colonial Journal, Vol. 24 (1849), p. 133. Turner will in 1854 remain Society Vice President ... when assembly called for $5k annual state funding. Supporting-argument language replenished Turner’s 1849 testimony. Per ex-Circuit Court Judge William Bury Kinkead (1809-1894): “Under the constitution of 1799 the owner could set his slave free unconditionally. That of 1850 imposed certain restrictions, vide article 10th [above]. But that very clause provides for the removal of blacks after their owner has been compensated. And when he voluntarily frees his negro, the State, from the nature of the constitutional prerogative, should find it her incumbent duty to make provisions for removal and colonization.” BACK
[I glance at Jeremiah with Let Us Reason Together Just a Little.]
Turner admonished 1849 Convention Delegates “I have never entertained a doubt that it is the interest of the great slave holding community of this state, to sell their slaves. If they were not attached to them, and if they did not dislike seeing those who have grown up with them and their children, driven into a bondage more galling, more oppressive, where their raiment and food would not be equal to what they now enjoy … it would be of decided advantage to the owners of slaves here to dispose of those slaves and invest their capital in some other way.” (Report of the Debates, p. 73.)
1840 census recorded 47-year-old Squire Turner possessed of 4 enslaved males. Likely in their own quarters, I suspect they were all within his Richmond household. One was older than age 40; two were between ages of 10 and 15 and the other between 15 & 20. Three sons remained at home, ages 11, 15 and 19. Squire’s daughters were aged 9 & 12. Census enumerated 2 enslaved female children in his family circle; one between ages of 5 and 10, another between 10 and 15. (Two enslaved women were between age 30 and 40.) It seems apparent Squire Turner intended his children grow up ‘enjoying’ attachment to age peers in servitude. (Cyrus Turner had established himself on ancestral, Silver Creek parcel; of his 9 slaves apparently 5 adult males were engaged in agriculture, as was Cyrus and – I assume – a White overseer. Having just obtained majority age, I think it likely his father had recently set Cyrus up, with farm and slaves previously accorded to him.)
Turner was not an incidental enslaver; he knew full well that he derived wealth from uncompensated labor. Capable of astute economic analysis, his chattel property holdings accrued dramatically in the 1840s. His father Thomas’ remaining seven slaves passed to a half-sister c1848. It seems apparent that increase in Squire Turner’s enslaved property did not issue entirely from “natural supply.”
Admittedly of minor interest, Squire became responsible for grandson Charlie’s interests. Orphaned by death of his father Cyrus, 8-year-old Charles was enumerated in grandparents’ 1850 Richmond household. His declared net worth there ($30k) exceeded Squire’s second-born son. 1850 Slave Schedule seems incomplete: Charles S. Turner held 7-14 slaves ... 2 (ages 20 & 35), are known to be ascribed Mulatto. (2 of Squire’s 29 enslaved persons, ages 12 & 34, were so recorded. All of these births were within Thomas Turner’s lifespan. None represent 10-year-old Jerry.) Charles S. apparently owned two plantations, a 300-acre farm valued at more than $20k, and more than 2,000-acre parcel valued greater than $50k.
Turner in 1849 paternally professed “For myself, what few slaves I have [~29] … why sir, they are endeared to me, and it ought to be so with every man. I feel that they are human beings, and that their morals should be attended to, and that they should not be made [free] to associate with rogues and rascals. It appears to me to be in the nature of a punishment to the slaves to sell them. I do not want my slaves who have grown up with my children, and that have become attached to my family, to be associated with these scape-gallowses and to be corrupted by them any more than I want the laboring white population to be mingled with the offscourings of Europe that are brought in here.” (Report of the Debates, p. 75.)
I relied on Dorris for distillation. 10 October oratory occupied nearly seven full pages (71-77) in Report of the Debates. Turner’s observations cascaded. Slaves “ought not to be free until they do leave the state” drew directly from Nicholas in 1792. Attorney Squire Turner stirred murky waters, portrayed persons lacking legal protections: “… shut out from office and all the privileges of political life, [free Negroes] necessarily become a degraded race. They are made use of by vicious, wicked white men, for purposes where the negro cannot be a witness against them.” And then capsized into systemic oppression: “You cannot show me one free negro out of fifty that is in equal condition, morally or physically, with him who has a master that treats him well.” (Report of the Debates, p. 73.)
Turner immediately followed prophecy, that “the hand of Providence” would end slavery, with “I do not say that I desire this; but that it is coming – that it is as steadily marching upon us as we are marching forward to the grave …” I find his funereal pronouncement incongruous with at times folksy, but generally anchored arguments I've culled from preserved courtroom pronouncements. I do find suavity in “The shadow upon the sundial is advancing sufficiently to show that [capital invested in slaves] is not growing or increasing in that state.” (Report of the Debates, pp. 74-75.) Turner referenced Virginia … to the east and place of sun’s earlier appearance. And shadow spilling in from entity that had spawned Kentucky … had engendered the state’s Virginia-facing, 1792 Constitution. Turner no doubt knew (most delegates bore hereditary pride and) many he sought to persuade descended from Virginians. He appeared in my deep dive as oratorically floating on cultural cross-currents.
1988 nomination for his home’s inclusion in National Registry (Sect. 8, p. 4) gratuitously identified Turner as “pro-slavery candidate” in 1849 election. That “Turner subsequently introduced legislation at the state assembly which made it unconstitutional for the legislature to emancipate slaves without the consent of the slave owners,” is not a precise reading of Kentucky constitutional history. Truer is “He also advocated protectionist legislation which made it illegal to introduce slaves into Kentucky from other states.” He advocated constitutional implant of 1833 law then in effect, was permissive on bona fide individual rights, severed them from for-profit importation.
Let us grant Turner was sincere in moment postulating court interpretation: “While I am as much against the increase of free negroes amongst us as any man in Kentucky, and believe it to be a curse to both races, yet I understand, that under the proposition which I advocate, any negro brought here in opposition to the laws, will be no slave. What will be the effect? No man [no merchant] in his senses will ever run the risk of bringing a [contraband] slave here. If he does, the negro can sue for his freedom. There would never be a slave imported into the state [SIC] under that provision.” (Report of the Debates, p. 72.) Fluctuant Turner coyly conjectured “It may be said that this is occupying emancipation ground.”
Implied, 1988 association immediately following, “Kentucky produced more slaves than were necessary for farm labor and profited by shipping the excess slaves south to be sold to the coastal plantations,” was unwarranted. Also at p. 72, Turner told convention delegates “I am against the traffic in human blood in every shape and manner in which it can be brought here.” At length and with pathos in 10 October monolog, p. 74, he espoused his nonimportation resolution: “What is there in the African slave trade, that is worse than to go into another state and to bring slaves from thence, tearing mothers from their children, separating husbands from their wives, without any offence charged against them; driving them along in chains as if they were beasts of prey? Is it not a scene that human nature revolts at the sight of? Is it not a scene that no man, unless he is determined to engage in this traffic, can look upon without feelings, deep and powerful?” He questioned what, in importing slaves into Kentucky, was more excusable than African slave trade. I did not find the Colonization Society Vice President specifically addressing export, but contend Turner opposed (family breaking and) trafficking slaves out of Kentucky as well ... and that these scruples must shape blanket ‘pro-slavery’ contentions. BACK
[15] See ‘Kentucky’s Third Constitution: A Restriction of Majority Rule’ by Frank Furlong Mathias, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society Vol. 75, No. 1 (1977), pp. 7-8. Cyrus was disemboweled as his father campaigned midsummer for election as Delegate to the Constitutional Convention ... by a repeat offender. Whom Mathias claimed acted in self-defense. Credibly, Mathias, in footnote, admitted “All of the facts surrounding this episode may never be revealed.” Another, curious, footnote – also not particularly germane to 1849 debate – connoted the authors’ fascination. On Turner’s “very confused eulogy and attack on slavery” he sub-commented “A poet might hold that Turner’s apparent confusion issued from memories of his recently slain son, a noble lad to his father, yet a victim of the passions of a slave society.” Cyrus, comparatively nonchalant protégé to his father, had been successful, thirty-year-old stockman and widower father.
See The Liberator (Boston, MA), 13 July 1849: William Lloyd Garrison’s premiere abolitionist newspaper prefaced reprint of Cash Clay’s initial version of Rencontre at Foxtown with admonition: “... a large share of the blame must rest upon the head of Mr. Clay ...” haughty, contemptuous and first to draw a weapon in mêlée that left Cyrus mortally wounded. Henry Clay had broken from second cousin Cassius. After defending him against criminal charge of mayhem following 1843 knife mutilation of another political actor he’d taunted (with bullwhip).
Cyrus fell victim to an unstable political aspirant; an emancipation agitator sufficiently resourced to control messaging via printing press dislocated to Cincinnati in 1845 … which courted primary revenue from sympathetic, Northern subscribers. Antagonist Cassius Clay trumpeted Squire Turner as one-dimensional and rabid pro-slavery monster for national attention ... and follow-on historical survey.
Clay’s widely distributed accounts became more condemnatory. Brokenhearted Turner, who had long quashed court testimony, finally contradicted accusations of provocation and conspiracy. “What can be expected of a native son of Kentucky, who ... will assert that the bowie knife is to be preferred in Kentucky to the majesty of the law[?]” It may be of slightest interest that Major Squire Turner, Old Court resurrector, bested New Court defender General Green Clay (1757-1826) in 1823, and 1825, six-way race for election to the Kentucky House. (As premier vote-getter, 1268-469.) Green, wealthiest Madison County planter, fathered Cassius. I submit Turner’s decisive 1849 majority was vitalized by neighbors’ revulsion for non-candidate Cassius Clay’s barbarity.
Culmination of 1957 defense of Turner family honor artfully scorned Clay hagiology then typical in “modern appraisal.” I found end-of-life comparisons by Howard Barnes Turner (1889-1974) handsomely expressive.
Almost inconceivable, emancipation was not the precipitate issue: first-hand account of Rencontre described “Some misunderstanding in reference to the disposition made of the School Fund.” See reprint in The Milan Tribune (Milan, OH), 4 July 1849. Most narratives, even Clay’s initial depiction, have an unarmed Cyrus pronouncing a “damned lie” Clay’s utterance that Richmond attorney (and perhaps a Clay nemesis) Richard Runyon (1816-1862) was “... a mere tool of Turner, and was obeying his master” when raising this issue. Defending his father’s honor at slavery-imbued accosting, Turner struck Clay in the face, “giving him the lie.” (The October 1849 assembly did debate dueling ... which is not what transpired at Foxtown militia muster.)
Though I have been insufficient in presenting my subject in constitutional mandate to protect state funds dedicated to “intellectual improvement,” I will here refrain from descending into misappropriation of revenue in Kentucky’s educational ‘Sinking Fund’ ... and a Governor burning bonds in 1845. Pettus, pp. 64-65, gave account. Of course Turner would be impassioned: as with New Court replevin, “The state’s creditors were powerless to collect on their investments.” Ruptured indebtedness repeatedly riled him to outrage. BACK
[16] Report of Debates, p. 90. Turner fretted over “open clause principle” considered for new constitution … provision reserving authority for legislators to call convention subsequent to ratification. Whereby momentarily bipartisan, convergent thinkers intended to “perfect a system of emancipation.” (See ‘Robert J. Breckinridge and the Slavery Controversy in Kentucky in 1849’ by Victor Ball Howard, The Filson History Quarterly, Vol. 58 (1984), fn. 32, p. 336.) Turner undemocratically advocated affirmatively prohibiting Kentucky General Assembly “from acting upon the subject of slavery.”
“With my ultra views on this subject, [that] we had better not import any more slaves [SIC], gentlemen seem to think that I have some kindred feelings with the emancipationists,” Turner testified. (Report of Debates, p. 89.) Cross-party ‘Friends of Emancipation in Kentucky’ convened at Louisville 25 April 1849 ... at outset of Turner’s canvass for votes as Madison County Delegate to the Convention. Those gathered to better accommodate manumission, as initial, Louisville point for consideration, called for “absolute prohibition of the importation of any more slaves to Kentucky.” Which closely aligned with Turner’s contention that commercial profiteering from imported, enslaved property be made constitutionally unlawful. Turner the candidate felt required to differentiate himself from emancipationists … and cautioned over-confident enslavers anxious to again argue in post-ratification venue, “warning pro-slavery men that they should be upon their guard against electing any man who was in favor of the open clause.” It is likely insignificant that he did not employ collective term “we.”
“I told them that I was in favor of shutting [policy-making] up for ... longer than any man in my county was in favor of, and should endeavor to put [enslaving people] beyond the reach of any legislation for twenty or twenty-five years; that it should not even be brought up again for discussion before the people for that time.” He declaimed, of candidate set, “I was considered the ultra pro-slavery man of the county which I represent.” I suppose we could consider him an obstructionist from a waning political majority. BACK
[17] Report of Debates, p. 450. To Mathias’ projection of Nativism upon Turner, I turn to ‘A Nativist Upsurge: Kentucky’s Know Nothing Party of the 1850s’ (2016), Kentucky Wesleyan College thesis by Eric B. Brumfield, p. 1: “In the electoral contests of the 1840s, Kentucky’s leading Whigs repudiated all connections with nativist movements …” Anti-immigrant Turner certainly esteemed ‘native Kentuckians’. I suspect Mathias let those preferences bleed inaccurately into capital-‘N’ Nativist’s populist, Catholic-suppressing sentiments.
‘Simon’ weighed in at the The New York Herald: “Squire Turner gave us a singular speech yesterday, on the proposition to allow to Louisville and such other cities as should attain the requisite population, Senators, independent of the counties in which they are included. His doctrines were so novel and original for this age, that I cannot forbear giving to your readers a summary of them.” With even-handed account and sober, critical analysis, the correspondent reported “a spirit of opposition to and dread of the abolition movement lies at the foundation of, and pervades, his arguments.” “I should not be surprised to see some amendment adopted, carrying out the views of Mr. Turner. Of one thing, however, you may be certain ... that the convention will leave no means unresorted to, that will have the slightest tendency to repress and render futile the emancipation agitation.”
Turner may appear as alarmist. He was not simply mortified by migratory people “coming in.” Expanding political clout awaited state incomers. Kentucky County formation had mushroomed since state organization. See ‘The Kentucky Constitutional Conventions and the Federalism of the Founding Fathers’ (2017) Morehead State University thesis by Ashley Kay Taulbee (unp.): “Counties became the most significant agencies of the government, responsible for taxation, regulation of business, and patronage.” Young, p. 59, recognized “... great alarm at the numerical growth of the counties along the Ohio river” preceding convention. Balance of power tipped away from agrarianism in Kentucky’s lower house.
Young, p. 57, identified concomitant problems in county-level administration: legal decisions “lacked uniformity and evenness; and as each [appointed, Circuit Court] judge determined these questions of life and liberty absolutely for himself, and as his tenure "during good behavior" raised him above and beyond the reach of popular clamor or judgment, it was a natural outcome that rulings frequently became both arbitrary and unjust.” Attorney Turner, persistently resolving points of law in Appeals Court, was likely also frustrated by conditions Taulbee (whom I found refreshing on buying votes and broader bribery) relied on Clinger and Hail for: “[T]here were so many exceptions to the general statutes that even lawyers were uncertain about what the law of Kentucky was on many subjects.” These flux conditions no doubt roused Turner to wade in, laboriously assist to structurally codify Kentucky law in 1850. BACK
[18] Convocation was an achievement. Clamor for constitutional amendment had history. “Calls [for convention] had come in almost annual chorus following the troubled 1820’s,” Mathias surmised, p. 2. “The most notable were in 1828, 1830, 1832, 1833, 1835, 1836, 1837 ...” Mathias deduced Whig obstruction had foiled earlier appeals for convention. I erred when initially thinking Squire Turner was guiding light calling for 1849 convention: he (having legislated 1830-1832 in that span and), out of office nine years, invested his political capital in getting Kentucky Whigs to back General Zachary Taylor in 1848 run for U.S. President. (Private Turner had been among troops to relieve Captain Taylor at Fort Harrison in 1812.) Turner had by 7 February 1848 weaned himself from Henry Clay, when he presided over Madison County meeting “irrespective of party” cultivating a delegation to support state electors committed to Taylor ... and then moved on to organize at the capitol and further afield. At Whigs of Kentucky convention in April “Squire Turner and a few others managed to secure all the electors — Taylor men save one or two,” grumbled the Yankee press. “These men will go to Philadelphia convention, talk against Clay, denounce him as unavailable, vote for him on the first ballot, and then desert to Taylor.”
Turner, a profound party partisan, cast himself as “pro-reform” in 1849 canvas for election. It may be that he had become so. Young, describing the period, p. 57, estimated “a contingent of more than two thousand office-holders in the State who held their positions by sanction of the appointing power.” Some of them organized county courts Turner found deficient. Whigs, in solid majorities during Henry Clay’s prominence, benefitted from that patronage. A split from Clay within Whigs of Kentucky unleashed pent-up popular demand for a constitutional convention. As for Major Turner’s identity, recall Combs and “political offices were increasingly held by lawyers.” Young at p. 52, illuminated period “preferment of the military element.” Coupled rank with political advancement at Kentucky.
Rolston, p. 45 noted “Moderate Whigs came to see that it was dangerous to disregard the people’s will on the issue and began to "ride the convention hobby."” Debate on proposed constitutional convention is nearly nonextant in Journal of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, December 30, 1848 - February 28, 1849. Cyrus Turner was then in the body: by 17 February 1848 he publicly identified himself among ‘Friends of a Convention’. It is possible he acted at his father's behest ... but Rencontre at Foxtown demonstrated they would have been fighting words to have called Cyrus his father’s “tool.”
Persistently self-aggrandizing Cassius Clay, at Memoirs, Vol. I (1886), p. 176 claimed to have been – in the background – impelling cause for third constitutional convention. “I had exposed ... a vulnerable part in the [1799] State Constitution, by showing that the prohibition of the emancipation of slaves, without compensation, admitted the power to liberate with compensation.” In consequence, “The slave-power intended in time to change the Constitution and make slavery perpetual, so far as a Constitution could effect that object.”
I suspect Turner, if in nonpartisan presumption to resolve emancipation as a positive, could have found common ground with Clay’s interpretation. Imagining an ethereal funder that did no fiscal damage to a Commonwealth, Turner – assured of receipt at fair-market valuation – would have yielded to outlawing property rights in persons held captive. It would be thought experiment to speculate whether Turner would hold that Blacks freed en masse, agrarian Kentucky natives in the majority, should be forced from the state ... ejected from long-term family relationships.
[19] Report of Debates, pp. 755-756. I have perhaps not done sufficient, to portray Turner as able, tenacious Attorney ... in ardency with Kentucky's court of last resort. See ‘Some Great Lawyers of Kentucky’ by Thomas Zantzinger Morrow (1835-1913), Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Kentucky State Bar Association, Vol. 12 (1913), pg. 176: “Two belligerent lawyers lived in Madison County and for more than half a century were on opposite sides of every case at that bar and that of several surrounding counties – Squire Turner and [Colonel William Harris Caperton (1798-1862)]. They were game fighters, as the decisions of the Court of Appeals make manifest. They considered nothing settled until that court has passed on it, and that, too, after a petition for rehearing. Turning over the reports, leaf by leaf during their time, I find reversed, Caperton for appellant, Turner for appellee; then reversed, Turner for appellant, Caperton for appellee, and so on. In book after book. I did not make an exact count as to how the test stood, but left the gladiators still fighting.”
See also ‘Money, Politics, and Impartial Justice’ by Joanna M. Shepherd, Duke Law Journal, Vol. 58 (2009), p. 634. Chapter ‘Historical Tension between Judicial Accountability and Independence’ relied on record of Kentucky’s 1849 Convention: “A judge who was appointed for life would be forever beholden to the official who had appointed him ... in effect, in the same position as a dictator.” Never having raised schism aroused by Old Court-New Court controversy, Shepherd sagely cited Delegate Squire Turner for “Supporters of an elected judiciary recognized that elected judges might occasionally feel excessive pressure from excited voter majorities. The supporters felt, however, that this danger was less than the dangers of an appointive system.”
