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One hundred sixty-three years ago this month, an event occurred in Lexington – and across the Commonwealth – that would literally change the course of history.
The year was 1849. Just like this year, it was an election year. And, just as this year, the Commonwealth was bitterly divided. The issue was slavery: the pro-slavery Democrats against the relatively anti-slavery Whigs.
The Whigs had been formed in 1833 in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson. By 1856, the Whigs would dissolve, torn apart by slavery, and reform as the Republican Party. But in 1849, the Whigs were still strong in Kentucky (Henry Clay would be re-elected to the U.S. Senate that year), and largely represented the anti-slavery forces.
The Mexican War had been brought to a successful conclusion the year before, and the land ceded by Mexico raised the continuing Constitutional question about designating new territories that would eventually enter the Union: would they be free states or slave states? That question would be (temporarily) settled the following year with the Compromise of 1850, for which Clay fought so hard.
In 1849, however, the question was far from settled. Even the Whigs were divided. Robert S. Todd (Mary’s father), a slave owner, was running for the Kentucky Senate as a Whig. His opponent, also a Whig, was Col. Oliver Anderson, running on the pro-slavery Union Party ticket.
Todd’s record as both a state senator and representative was used against him. He had opposed repeal of the Nonimportation Act of 1833 that prevented sales of slaves brought into the state. After it was repealed in early 1849, he voted against the Immunity Act that protected those who had illegally imported slaves. Anderson, who owned 100 slaves, called himself “a thorough pro-slavery man,” asserting slavery was “recognized and countenanced by both Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.”
So things stood in early summer 1849 when disaster hit.
Cholera had struck Lexington once before. In 1833, some 500 citizens out of a population of 7,000 died. That epidemic produced the legend of William “King” Solomon, a white man owned by a free black woman, Aunt Charlotte, who bought him out of debtor’s prison. Allegedly not affected by the water-borne disease because he never touched the stuff, the town drunk buried the dead alongside Rev. London Ferrell, a free black and the only African American buried in the Old Episcopal Burying Ground at West Third Street and Elm Tree Lane, and U.S. Army Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, who was visiting Lexington on a recruiting trip from his station at Fort Jefferson, Wis. (I’ll bet this is the first time you ever saw the names Jefferson Davis and Wisconsin in the same sentence.)
The 1849 epidemic was part of a great pandemic that swept the Mississippi River system, killing former president James K. Polk and hundreds of “Forty-Niners” in the rush for California gold. In Lexington, the more affluent families escaped to their country homes. On June 26, 1849, Rev. Mr. Pratt wrote in his diary: “Our town has looked deserted, scarcely anyone from the country in, and quite a number afflicted, nearly everyone has symptoms. It is supposed 1,500 white persons have left town from alarm. I have not yet been affected or my family except my wife night before last I think had symptoms.”
Escaping to Buena Vista, his farm on Old Frankfort Pike, was not enough to save Robert Todd. On Tuesday, July 10, Todd was stricken. His physicians from Lexington and Frankfort were helpless. He made out his will, signed it, then died early Monday morning, July 16. The following day, Todd was buried in the new cemetery in Boswell’s Woods, now the Lexington Cemetery.
Todd’s death set three events in motion: the first affecting his family, the second affecting the state and nation, but the third is one of history’s less-told stories.
First, his family: When Todd made out his will, he did not have it witnessed. With six children from his first marriage and eight from his second (half-siblings that did not always get along; Mary Todd went to Springfield, Ill., for a reason), a contentious suit over his estate ensued, bringing Abraham Lincoln to Lexington to help settle the affair.
Second, the state and nation: The impact of the cholera epidemic was almost Biblical. Along with Todd, several anti-slavery candidates died. The Union Party prevailed, and the Constitution of 1849 permitted exportation of slaves into the deep South – a virtual death sentence for these slaves “sold down the river” from Lexington, which became one of the largest slave markets.
Third, that untold story: Mary Todd would arguably inherit about five percent of her father’s estate. Part of that estate included human beings owned as property. Being a woman, Mary could not own property. Property she inherited would revert to her husband (her step-mother would hold a one-third dower’s interest for her lifetime, but even she could not directly inherit her late husband’s estate). In assisting to settle the estate, Lincoln, the future “Great Emancipator,” would have had a hand with owning and selling slaves.