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1 Introduction Parents in Kentucky and throughout the United States in the 1850s recommended Henry Clay as a role model for their young sons; they said that the great Kentucky statesman was an example of self-reliance, meaningful and unselfish public service, and success without formal schooling or powerful connections. He was Kentucky’s brightest star, a world-famous hero and champion of liberty who, when he died on June 29, 1852, was the most popular man in America. Pastors recommended him as an ideal, self-sacrificing Christian husband and father who joined the Episcopal Church and began taking communion at the age of seventy. Clay’s career and the national legend surrounding him symbolize one of the themes running through this study—Kentucky had a relatively elevated status compared with the other states in the first half of the nineteenth century. We found evidence that Kentucky ranked near the top in respect among the states after the War of 1812 and that this prominence continued through 1860. Kentucky was an important center of higher education, and college students came into the state to study from fourteen states, including Virginia and others on the Atlantic coast; by 1840, Kentucky had ten colleges, more than Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, or Missouri.1 Two medical schools were thriving by then— Transylvania University’s Medical Department and the Louisville Medical Institute, forerunner of the Medical Department of the University of Louisville —and the combined enrollment was 460 students, second only to Pennsylvania.2 Another theme running throughout these years is that state governors and journalists in the eastern United States encouraged their citizens to emulate Kentuckians as the ideal models of patriotism and nationalistic military spirit. Beginning on the Indian frontier, Kentucky militiamen came to be known as the greatest warriors on the continent; when their reputation was transformed into legend, they were portrayed as great monsters, half alligator and half horse. When Kentuckians contributed to the victory 2 KENTUCKY RISING against the larger, better-trained, and better-equipped Mexican army in the mountain pass at Buena Vista, in Kentucky they were compared to the three hundred Spartans who gave their lives for Greece in the narrow pass at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. The challenging side of these myths was that nearly every young man realized that, at the earliest opportunity, he was expected to reconfirm Kentucky tradition and charge into battle to gain honor for himself, his family, and the commonwealth. When Kentucky selected two heroes for the national hall of honor in the U.S. Capitol, the two men chosen were both from the antebellum period— Henry Clay and Dr. Ephraim McDowell, recognized around the world as the father of surgery for performing the first ovariotomy in history. McDowell represents the accomplishments of Kentucky in medicine, science, and education. The doctors of the state, most of them educated in Lexington or Louisville, were well trained in the most up-to-date treatments, and some of the more outstanding were as successful with surgery as any physicians anywhere in the world. Science classes at Transylvania University included hands-on laboratory instruction and other teaching methods used in science classrooms today; Transylvania students had the latest journals, books, and laboratory equipment from Paris and London. Professor Constantine S. Rafinesque was a great science teacher who discovered healing drugs in Kentucky plants and was so far ahead of his time that today, even though many of his discoveries are used, others are yet to be fully explored. It was unusual for women to attend college classes, but Transylvania welcomed women as nonenrolled students in several science classes. By 1850, the people of Kentucky were taxing themselves to support one of the best public school systems in the South, and, in 1855, voters approved increasing the school tax from two to five cents per one hundred dollars of taxable property by a three-to-one vote, dramatic evidence of the people’s belief in education. Another theme that continues throughout the history of Kentucky from 1800 to 1865 is that Kentuckians were uniquely engaged in public affairs. It was phenomenal how the people used the power of democracy to express their will in mass public meetings of support or protest. When the century began, many Americans admired Kentuckians for their mass-protest meetings in 1798 against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson respected their effort so much that he selected the Kentucky legislature to enact his resolutions against the laws...

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