Telling Testimony: Slavery Advertisements in Kentucky’s Civil War Newspapers

Just a few weeks before Georgia agreed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, becoming the necessary final state to do so, an advertisement ran in the Paris, Kentucky, Western Citizen. The short notice, posted by Mrs. Mary Redmon, warned readers of her intention to “enforce the law against anyone employing or harboring my negro man, Anthony.” Apparently, to identify and ensure compliance, Redmond provided a brief depiction of Anthony. She described him as “of black color,” and that he was “about 40 years old.” During a time when slavery’s continued existence seemed increasingly unlikely, advertisements like this one indicate that slave owners in Kentucky, like Mary Redmond, would not relinquish their right to slave ownership without a struggle. However, such advertisements also document the rising resistance of African Americans to their enslaved condition. During the Civil War, slaves like Anthony left their masters in increasing numbers, forcing their owners to avail themselves of what legal avenues remained. Due to the actions of many enslaved individuals, slaveholders often found themselves reacting to instead of dictating the situation.¹

A comprehensive survey of Civil War–era Kentucky newspaper advertisements sheds light on the financial and social importance of slavery to the state. As African Americans viewed the conflict as a potential means toward their liberty, they used the nation’s internal strife as an avenue of exit from their lives in bondage. To counter black attempts at freedom and maintain racial control, white Kentuckians often turned to the traditional means of advertisements to continue their prewar way of life. These advertisements provide telling testimony of African Americans’ passionate desire for freedom, how that desire altered the institution over the four years of the Civil War, and how white Kentuckians reacted in attempt to maintain control over the state’s enslaved population.²

Captured slave advertisement for eighteen-year-old Lizy, who belonged to William James. Louisville Daily Democrat, July 17, 1862.

Kentucky, like the other border slave states, was exempt from President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Unlike its sister Border States, Maryland and Missouri, which abolished slavery through state measures during the Civil War, slavery only ended in Kentucky with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which the commonwealth itself refused to ratify. Slavery lived a healthy life and died a hard death in Kentucky. Since before its statehood was granted in 1792, until months after the Civil War, human bondage was a vital part of Kentucky’s economic, social, cultural, and political existence. Attempts to legislate a system of gradual emancipation within the commonwealth ended in failure, and ironically, resulted in new laws that strengthened its firm hold on the state. As war approached, Kentucky’s once enviable geographical location, which provided the state with advantageous prewar political, commercial, and economic ties to both the North and South, now ensured that the state bore the burden of a divided population. In addition, its rich resources made it a target of the contending armies who brought conflict and destruction, as well as an immense disruption to the state’s treasured labor system.³

Advertisements are often commercial in character, and thus a close examination of the notices published in Kentucky newspapers during the Civil War not only provides evidence of the determination of slaveholders to retain control over their increasingly resistant slave property but also offers an intriguing look at how interwoven slavery was into the fabric of Kentucky’s large-scale trade, industry, and economy. In the first year of the war, slave advertisements in Kentucky’s newspapers focus on various commercial aspects of slavery; sales and hiring dominate. Common were advertisements that mentioned “Woman for Sale—Good Cook, Washer and Ironer, without encumbrance,” or “For Hire—For the remainder of the year TWO BOYS about ten or twelve years old, accustomed to dining room work.” Slave renting traditionally started at the first of the year, so in anticipation, hiring advertisements noticeably increased in December. F. D. Poindexter of Louisville offered for rent for the following year “a young NEGRO WOMAN, unmarried and unencumbered...