Studies in American History 
63 
federal branch banks and federal land offices was not all that 
Kentuckians owed. It was estimated that $5,000,000 was due 
the Bank of Kentucky, $2,000,000 due the independent banks 
of the state, and $4,000,000 due from the merchants 
of the state to eastern business firms. The whole 
state grew restless, and county meetings to consider relief 
were held everywhere. Summed up, these assemblages recom- 
mended a suspension of specie payments, more paper money, 
and an extra session of the legislature to pass laws dealing 
with the emergency.^^ The paper quoted above took notice of 
the universal financial distress of Europe and America and 
declared, “We feel the effects of this pressure, but we should 
feel at a loss how to search out and combine the different 
causes.’'^® 
There may have been and were different ideas about causes, 
but there could be no difference in opinion about the serious 
financial and social happenings which occurred in the state 
during 1819 and 1820. Prices on staple crops dropped almost 
to nothing. Land was sold around Lexington and Frankfort 
for one-sixth of the price of a few years earlier. Town lots 
which had brought fabulous prices in villages like Shepherds- 
ville and Carrollton became unsalable.^® Slaves sold for almost 
nothing, laborers were out of employment, and forced sales 
were noted everywhere. Manufacturing interests suffered so 
severely that many industries were ruined, especially in the 
newer parts of the state, where they were never replaced. 
The hard times, coupled with cheap slave labor, drove thou- 
sands of white laborers into Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri. 
John Bradford, the able editor of the Gazette, in illuminating 
and reliable comment on conditions in the state early in 1819 
said : 
It is well known that the people of Kentucky are writhing under 
agonies of the severest pressure — that their produce is commanding but 
a mere nominal price abroad — that their property will not command 
one-third of its value — that sacrifices of this species of property are daily 
making to a few monied speculators, whilst others, who would give a 
fair, honorable price, owing to the peculiar situation of the country, 
cannot raise the necessary funds to purchase — that a valuable estate 
now dreads the appearance of an execution for the trifling sum of two 
Niles’ Register, XVI, 261. 
Kentucky Gazette, May 7, 1819. 
Brown, op. dt., 22. 
Kerr (ed,). History of Kentueky, II, 597-602. 
