The law of Kentucky plainly provided that no slave was to be emancipated unless bond were given that he would immediately leave the State. Hence it was but natural that a master who intended setting his slaves free should take them as slaves to a free State and there give them their freedom, thus satisfying his own conscience and at the same time removing any future legal trouble that might ensue on account of his former slaves being found in the State of Kentucky. For this reason it would seem that a large number of the kind-hearted slaveholders who freed their slaves did so outside the bounds of Kentucky and thus that State was deprived of the credit for many emancipations which took place voluntarily at the hands of her own slaveholders.
FOOTNOTES:
[285] Littell's Laws, 1: 32.
[286] Brown, John Mason, The Political Beginnings of Kentucky, p. 229.
[287] Littell's Laws, 1: 44.
[288] Ibid., 1: 161.
[289] Littell's Laws, 2: 113.
[290] Littell's Laws, 2: 114.
[291] Littell's Laws, 2: 116-117.
[292] Littell's Laws, 2: 117-118.