02/21/2024
February is Black History Month, so I felt remiss if I did not share one bio from my State of KY...a southern State conquered by Grant for the Union was definitely pro-slavery
After serving 12 years behind prison walls, Rev. Calvin Fairbank was set free in 1864. Once he reached Ohio soil he shouted, “Out of the mouth of death! Out of the jaws of Hell!” The northern clergyman was but one of nearly 60 men and women, on both sides of the color line, to serve time in the Kentucky Penitentiary for the “crime” of helping the enslaved escape to freedom.
Throughout the antebellum era, the criminal justice system was slavery’s main line of defense in Kentucky. With the rise of the anti-slavery movement, Kentucky lawmakers revised the criminal code in 1830 to provide for a sentence of from two to 20 years confinement for those convicted of “Seducing or Enticing Any Slave to Leave His Lawful Owner.”
An ardent abolitionist, Fairbank actually served two prison terms in Kentucky. In 1845, both he and Delia Webster were convicted in the Fayette County for engineering the escape of a Black family. Both were eventually pardoned but Fairbank resumed his activities and in 1852 was convicted in Jefferson County for aiding the escape of an enslaved woman and sentenced to serve 15 years.
Fairbank later claimed that during one eight-year period he suffered 35,150 lashes from the whip. Thomas Brown, who was convicted in Union County, described similar treatment during his confinement from 1855 to 1857. The 60-year-old Irish immigrant claimed to have been flogged until his blood stained the prison floor because he failed to work fast enough.
Elijah Anderson, a free man of color, was one of the most active Underground Railroad Conductors in the Ohio River Valley throughout the 1840s and 1850s. While on a mission to Kentucky, Anderson was betrayed to Louisville police officers by a Black man for the price on his head. He was convicted in Trimble County in 1857 and sentenced to eight years confinement.
