II
MILITIA MUSTER.
It is against the background of such a strenuous past that we find the Kentucky fair first projected by the practical and progressive spirit that ruled [135] among the Kentuckians in the year 1816. Nothing could have been conceived with soberer purpose, or worn less the aspect of a great popular pleasure. Picture the scene! A distinguished soldier and honored gentleman, with a taste for agriculture and fine cattle, has announced that on a certain day in July he will hold on his farm a "Grand Cattle Show and Fair, free for everybody." The place is near Lexington, which was then the centre of commerce and seat of learning in the [136] West. The meagre newspapers of the time have carried the tidings to every tavern and country cross-roads. It is a novel undertaking; the like has never been known this side of the Alleghanies. The summer morning come, you may see a very remarkable company of gentlemen: old pioneers, Revolutionary soldiers, volunteers of the War of 1812, walking in picturesque twos and threes out of the little town to the green woods where the fair is to be held; others jogging thitherward along the bypaths and newly-opened roads through the forest, clad in homespun from heel to head, and mindful of the cold lunches and whiskey-bottles in their coat-pockets or saddle-bags; some, perhaps, drawn thither in wagons and aristocratic gigs. Once arrived, all stepping around loftily on the velvet grass, peering curiously into each other's eyes, and offering their snuffboxes for a sneeze of convivial astonishment that they could venture to meet under the clear sky for such an undertaking. The five judges of the fair, coming from as many different counties, the greatest personages of their day—one, a brilliant judge of the Federal Court; the second, one of the earliest settlers, with a sword hanging up at home to show how Virginia appreciated his services in the Revolution; the third, a soldier and blameless gentleman of the old school; the fourth, one of the few early Kentuckians who brought into the new society the noble style of country-place, with park and deer, [137] that would have done credit to an English lord; and the fifth, in no respect inferior to the others. These "perform the duties assigned them with assiduity," and hand over to their neighbors as many as fifteen or twenty premium silver cups, costing twelve dollars apiece. After which, the assemblage variously disperses—part through the woods again, while part return to town.
Such, then, was the first Kentucky fair. It was a transplantation to Kentucky, not of the English or European fair, but of the English cattle-show. It resembled the fair only in being a place for buying and selling. And it was not thought of in the light of a merry-making or great popular amusement. It seems not even to have taken account of manufactures—then so important an industry—or of agriculture.
Like the first was the second fair held in the same place the year following. Of this, little is and little need be known, save that then was formed the first State Agricultural Society of Kentucky, which also was the first in the West, and the second in the United States. This society held two or three annual meetings, and then went to pieces, but not before laying down the broad lines on which the fair continued to be held for the next quarter of a century. That is, the fair began as a cattle-show, though stock of other kinds was exhibited. Then it was extended to embrace agriculture; and with [138] branches of good husbandry it embraced as well those of good housewifery. Thus at the early fairs one finds the farmers contesting for premiums with their wheats and their whiskeys, while their skilful helpmates displayed the products—the never-surpassed products—of their looms: linens, cassinettes, jeans, and carpetings.
With this brief outline we may pass over the next twenty years. The current of State life during this interval ran turbulent and stormy. Now politics, now finance, imbittered and distressed the people. Time and again, here and there, small societies revived the fair, but all efforts to expand it were unavailing. And yet this period must be distinguished as the one during which the necessity of the fair became widely recognized; for it taught the Kentuckians that their chief interest lay in the soil, and that physical nature imposed upon them the agricultural type of life. Grass was to be their portion and their destiny. It taught them the insulation of their habitat, and the need of looking within their own society for the germs and laws of their development. As soon as the people came to see that they were to be a race of farmers, it is important to note their concern that, as such, they should be hedged with respectability. They took high ground about it; they would not cease to be gentlemen; they would have their class well reputed for fat pastures and comfortable homes, but honored as [139] well for manners and liberal intelligence. And to this end they had recourse to an agricultural literature. Thus, when the fair began to revive, with happier auspices, near the close of the period under consideration, they signalized it for nearly the quarter [140] of a century afterwards by instituting literary contests. Prizes and medals were offered for discoveries and inventions which should be of interest to the Kentucky agriculturist; and hundreds of dollars were appropriated for the victors and the second victors in the writing of essays which should help the farmer to become a scientist and not to forget to remain a gentleman. In addition, they sometimes sat for hours in the open air while some eminent citizen—the Governor, if possible—delivered an address to commemorate the opening of the fair, and to review the progress of agricultural life in the commonwealth. But there were many anti-literarians among them, who conceived a sort of organized hostility to what they aspersed as book-farming, and on that account withheld their cordial support.
PRODUCTS Of THE SOIL.