The Portland daily press., 1872-04-24
Sketches i'm Kentucky.

NINETEEN YEARS TO BUILD FoRTY-FIvE
MILES OF RAILROAD.
A correspondent of the Springfield Repub-
Rcan writes from the ''Blue Grass" region in
Kentucky:
building from the heart of the ''Blue Grass
to the Ohio River direct, distance of forty
five miles. 1t was only finished within the
last month, so much opposition did it meet
from those whom it was to benefit. Cincin-
natl offered $10,000,000 to build a railroad
through Kentucky to the South-the South
ern railroad. This road was to give immeas-
urable advantages to Kentucky. 1t was to
give to the country South of her-one of
boundless fertility and resources-a chance to
breathe. 1t was to coax wealth and business
to flow through this proud State, leaving
wealth and business in their track. In New
England all the people in all the towns along
the proposed line would have wed with each
other in offering aid and encouragement to
such road Cities and towns and individu-
ais would have emptied their hundreds of
thousands into the hands of the builders.
Kentucky refused the ten millions and
FORBADE THE ROAD.
This was year ago. The present Legisla-
ture, by the deciding vote of the presiding Of
ficer Of the Senate, condescended to accept
the gift and grant charter, but imposed
tax OF fifty cents for every person carried over
the sacred soil of their heightened State, and
twenty-five cents on each person verturing a
hundred miles into their sanctified territory,
And these insolent and unlawful lawmakers
did not forget to add tax on every pound of
freight carried over road which Northern
capital and Northern enterprise proposed to
present to the stupid commonwealth With
in day or two after this action heard from
hundred emphatic men the words ''d-n
Kentucky
AN UNLUCKY PEDDLER
went up to Frankfort few years ago to dis
pose OF wagou-load of churns. He station
ed himself on the common, took out one of
his churns, one of the crank species, and
commenced to operate it. A constable ''sight-
ed'' him, and straightway went to Judge W
$1,000, swore out warrant for his arrest
the judge issued it, and the vender of churns
was imprisoned, his goods were burned, his
team confiscated. and all for Operating a
gambling apparatus on the public common,
against the peace and dignity of the common
wealth of Kentucky farmer here. worth
quarter of a million, will hardly venture to
buy new plough except "on trial" The
leading man, county squire, in one of the
best towns in the ''Blue Grass told me he
doubted whether the reaper and that class
OF machines had been benefit to the coun-
try" And still, never man eighteen hun
dred years ago said, 81 am Roman citizen
with a greater sense of selfimportance than
you find i'll the average citizen of this State,
when he says, 81 am Kentuckian.'
e"4 THE BLACKS.
was interested to note the status of the
negro freed. Among the 10000 in Lexing-
ton didn't learn of any case of starvation.
They all appeared to have somewhere to lay
their heads. Some of them didn't wear We
ry fine clothes, though a few of
them did. AT all events, I was reminded
that Fred Douglass once said, ''If you should
see negro walking down street, you'd think
he was man." When the mercury went
down right smart some of them did get a
little chilly. 1 sat in the office of coal mer-
chant one day and watched men and women
and children coming to buy coal which was
scarcely blacker than they. "How much do
you want?" says the clerk to the first pur-
chaser saw. Give cents wuff," said the
little black pckaninny. And not one of them
offered to buy less than this quantity, and
many of them bought three times that
amount L questioned not few of them as
to their state of mind. l asked them if they
weren't kept warm, and fed and clothed pref
ty well, In the days when they were Scared
for by their masters, and they said sginral-
~" And l asked them if it wasn't much
,. better to be provided for in that way than to
be shivering around without coal, or buying
somehow they all said: mo, boss, fore God.
a we'd rather go without cents worth of coal
and be our own man, than to have bushels of
1t, and be some other mans man. Il tell you,
boss, freedoms mighty sweet" they would
8 add: On the whole, my early-fomed con-
! vlctlon that the negro has right to himself
was not upset by what saw of him in Ken
o lucky Some ofthem are dishonest, many of
them are lazy, most of them are ignorant, but
didn't discover that these facts are sufficient
to justify white man in being something
worse than either.
THE WHITE MEN AND WOMEN.
While the people of Kentucky are by no
1 means the worst in the world, don't think
they would take a premium for morality.
Very few of their young men, or old either,
Ii but indulge in a little gambling They are
= rather lax in their notions of masculine viz
- tue, though they boast of the purity of their
white women. 1t is a common thing for the
Kentucky gentleman to talk of his licentious
practices with black women, or, as they usu-
ally call them, "saddle-skins." But he is
sure to be Mortified at the thought of mix
ture of races, unless he can do the mixing
he don't mind breaking the seventh COM
mandment with negroes, to which certain
degree OF proximity is necessary, but to sit in
the same car, or dining room, or church, or
to be buried inside the same fence with them
is tremendous outrage upon his refined and
sensitive feelings. And this, in Kentucky.
does duty for consistency. Perhaps the writer
may be pardoned for saying that his personal
preferences would be exactly the reverse of
this. So much as 1 saw of the women of
Kentucky confirmed the statements that had
been made to me concerning the wealth of
their womanly charms. There are women
there like the "vouptuous swep' of music
whose beauty and abundant physique would
excite the envy of the thinner and more an
gular women of New England Your Ken
lucky belle is less literary but more lus-