Part of a tobacco inspector's duties was to burn leaf 

 refused as worthless. This regulation had been included 

 in warehouse and inspection laws until 1808. It was then 

 enacted that, effective June 1809, an owner had to dis- 

 pose of his unacceptable tobacco by any means he pre- 

 ferred. He was not permitted to repack it in "any cask 

 of crop or transfer tobacco." Quality control of tobacco 

 leaf had been subject to official supervision since an early 

 period in Virginia and other colonies. 



We 



ar economy 



The farmers and merchants of Kentucky and in neigh- 

 boring states and territories had felt that the opening of 

 the Mississippi would usher in an era of prosperity. For 

 a few years it seemed that their expectations had been 

 justified. But the Jeffersonian philosophy of economic 

 sanctions expressed in the Embargo Act of 1807 (and 

 later Acts), and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, had 

 cut deeply into the export trade. Then, though the 

 Mississippi was free, the Atlantic was not because of 

 British interference with American shipping. By 1811 

 Kentuckians were vigorously demanding a war against 

 Great Britain as the only means left to prevent seizures 

 of their export shipments. 



During the War of 1812 many tobacco growers in the 

 Bluegrass region turned to livestock and the production 

 of various farm commodities. But the importance of 

 tobacco as a cash crop was not underestimated by other 

 farmers. In the year the war began, new settlers in Logan 

 County devoted themselves largely to tobacco. Among 

 them was Thomas Morrow, out of North Carolina, whose 

 development of a fine leaf gave it his name. 



Some of the tobacco was laboriously dragged to the 

 Cumberland River and then freighted by boat to New 



38 



