of all his days--a day that has long had its observance embedded in the
structure of his law, is invested with the authority and charm of
old-time usage and reminiscence, and still enables him to commingle
business and pleasure in a way of his own. Hardly more characteristic of
the Athenian was the agora, or the forum of the Roman, than is county
court day characteristic of the Kentuckian. In the open square around
the courthouse of the county-seat he has had the centre of his
public social life, the arena of his passions and amusements, the
rallying-point of his political discussions, the market-place of his
business transactions, the civil unit of his institutional history.
It may be that some stranger has sojourned long enough in Kentucky to
have grown familiar with the wonted aspects of a county town. He has
remarked the easy swing of its daily life: amicable groups of men
sitting around the front entrances of the hotels; the few purchasers and
promenaders on the uneven brick pavements; the few vehicles of draught
and carriage scattered along the level white thoroughfares. All day the
subdued murmur of patient local traffic has scarcely drowned the
twittering of English sparrows in the maples. Then comes a Monday
morning when the whole scene changes. The world has not been dead, but
only sleeping. Whence this sudden surging crowd of rural folk--these
lowing herds in the streets? Is it some animated pastoral come to town?
some joyful public anniversary? some survival in altered guise of the
English country fair of mellower times? or a vision of what the little
place will be a century hence, when American life shall be packed and
agitated and tense all over the land? What a world of homogeneous,
good-looking, substantial, reposeful people with honest front
and amiable meaning! What bargaining and buying and selling by
ever-forming, ever-dissolving groups, with quiet laughter and familiar
talk and endless interchange of domestic interrogatories! You descend
into the street to study the doings and spectacles from a nearer
approach, and stop to ask the meaning of it. Ah! it is county court day
in Kentucky; it is the Kentuckians in the market-place.
[Illustration: WET GOODS FOR SALE--BOWLING-GREEN.]
II
They have been assembling here now for nearly a hundred years. One of
the first demands of the young commonwealth in the woods was that its
vigorous, passionate life should be regulated by the usages of civil
law. Its monthly county courts, with justices of the peace, were derived
from the Virginia system of jurisprudence, where they formed the
aristocratic feature of the government. Virginia itself owed these
models to England; and thus the influence of the courts and of the
decent and orderly yeomanry of both lands passed, as was singularly
fitting, over into the ideals of justice erected by the pure-blooded
colony. As the town meeting of Boston town perpetuated the folkmote of
the Anglo-Saxon free state, and the Dutch village communities on the
shores of the Hudson revived the older ones on the banks of the Rhine,
so in Kentucky, through Virginia, there were transplanted by the people,
themselves of clean stock and with strong conservative ancestral traits,
the influences and elements of English law in relation to the county,
the court, and the justice of the peace.
[Illustration: CONCLUDING A BARGAIN.]
Through all the old time of Kentucky State-life there towers up the
figure of the justice of the peace. Commissioned by the Governor to hold
monthly court, he had not always a court-house wherein to sit, but must
buy land in the midst of a settlement or town whereon to build one, and
build also the contiguous necessity of civilization--a jail. In the rude
court-room he had a long platform erected, usually running its whole
width; on this platform he had a ruder wooden bench placed, likewise
extending all the way across; and on this bench, having ridden into
town, it may be, in dun-colored leggings, broadcloth pantaloons, a
pigeon-tailed coat, a shingle-caped overcoat, and a twelve-dollar high
fur hat, he sat gravely and sturdily down amid his peers; looking out
upon the bar, ranged along a wooden bench beneath, and prepared to
consider the legal needs of his assembled neighbors. Among them all the
very best was he; chosen for age, wisdom, means, weight and probity of
character; as a rule, not profoundly versed in the law, perhaps knowing
nothing of it--being a Revolutionary soldier, a pioneer, or a
farmer--but endowed with a sure, robust common-sense and rectitude of
spirit that enabled him to divine what the law was; shaking himself
fiercely loose from the grip of mere technicalities, and deciding by the
natural justice of the case; giving decisions of equal authority with
the highest court, an appeal being rarely taken; perpetuating his own
authority by appointing his own associates: with all his shortcomings
and weaknesses a notable, historic figure, high-minded, fearless, and
incorruptible, dignified, patient, and strong, and making the county
court days of Kentucky for wellnigh half a century memorable to those
who have lived to see justice less economically and less honorably
administered.
But besides the legal character and intent of the day, which was thus
its first and dominant feature, divers things drew the folk together.
Even the justice himself may have had quite other than magisterial
reasons for coming to town; certainly the people had. They must
interchange opinions about local and national politics, observe the
workings of their own laws, pay and contract debts, acquire and transfer
property, discuss all questions relative to the welfare of the
community--holding, in fact, a county court day much like one in
Virginia in the middle of the seventeenth century.
III
But after business was over, time hung idly on their hands; and being
vigorous men, hardened by work in forest and field, trained in foot and
limb to fleetness and endurance, and fired with admiration of physical
prowess, like riotous school-boys out on a half-holiday, they fell to
playing. All through the first quarter of the century, and for a longer
time, county court day in Kentucky was, at least in many parts of the
State, the occasion for holding athletic games. The men, young or in the
sinewy manhood of more than middle age, assembled once a month at the
county-seats to witness and take part in the feats of muscle and
courage. They wrestled, threw the sledge, heaved the bar, divided and
played at fives, had foot-races for themselves, and quarter-races for
their horses. By-and-by, as these contests became a more prominent
feature of the day, they would pit against each other the champions of
different neighborhoods. It would become widely known beforehand that
next county court day "the bully" in one end of the county would whip
"the bully" in the other end; so when court day came, and the justices
came, and the bullies came, what was the county to do but come also? The
crowd repaired to the common, a ring was formed, the little men on the
outside who couldn't see, Zaccheus-like, took to the convenient trees,
and there was to be seen a fair and square set-to, in which the fist was
the battering-ram and the biceps a catapult. What better, more
time-honored, proof could those backwoods Kentuckians have furnished of
the humors in their English blood and of their English pugnacity? But,
after all, this was only play, and play never is perfectly satisfying to
a man who would rather fight; so from playing they fell to harder work,
and throughout this period county court day was the monthly Monday on
which the Kentuckian regularly did his fighting. He availed himself
liberally of election day, it is true, and of regimental muster in the
spring and battalion muster in the fall--great gala occasions; but
county court day was by all odds the preferred and highly prized season.
It was periodical, and could be relied upon, being written in the
law, noted in the almanac, and registered in the heavens.
[Illustration: COURT-HOUSE SQUARE, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY]
A capital day, a most admirable and serene day for fighting. Fights grew
like a fresh-water polype--by being broken in two: each part produced a
progeny. So conventional did the recreation become that difficulties
occurring out in the country between times regularly had their
settlements postponed until the belligerents could convene with the
justices. The men met and fought openly in the streets, the friends of
each standing by to see fair play and whet their appetites.
Thus the justices sat quietly on the bench inside, and the people fought
quietly in the streets outside, and the day of the month set apart for
the conservation of the peace became the approved day for individual
war. There is no evidence to be had that either the justices or the
constables ever interfered.
These pugilistic encounters had a certain law of beauty: they were
affairs of equal combat and of courage. The fight over, animosity was
gone, the feud ended. The men must shake hands, go and drink together,
become friends. We are touching here upon a grave and curious fact of
local history. The fighting habit must be judged by a wholly unique
standard. It was the direct outcome of racial traits powerfully
developed by social conditions.
IV
Another noticeable recreation of the day was the drinking. Indeed the
two pleasures went marvellously well together. The drinking led up to
the fighting, and the fighting led up to the drinking; and this amiable
co-operation might be prolonged at will. The merchants kept barrels of
whiskey in their cellars for their customers. Bottles of it sat openly
on the counter, half-way between the pocket of the buyer and the shelf
of merchandise. There were no saloons separate from the taverns. At
these whiskey was sold and drunk without screens or scruples. It was not
usually bought by the drink, but by the tickler. The tickler was a
bottle of narrow shape, holding a half-pint--just enough to tickle. On a
county court day wellnigh a whole town would be tickled. In some parts
of the State tables were placed out on the sidewalks, and around these
the men sat drinking mint-juleps and playing draw poker and "old
sledge."
Meantime the day was not wholly given over to playing and fighting and
drinking. More and more it was becoming the great public day of the
month, and mirroring the life and spirit of the times--on occasion a day
of fearful, momentous gravity, as in the midst of war, financial
distress, high party feeling; more and more the people gathered together
for discussion and the origination of measures determining the events of
their history. Gradually new features incrusted it. The politician,
observing the crowd, availed himself of it to announce his own candidacy
or to wage a friendly campaign, sure, whether popular or unpopular, of a
courteous hearing; for this is a virtue of the Kentuckian, to be polite
to a public speaker, however little liked his cause. In the spring,
there being no fairs, it was the occasion for exhibiting the fine stock
of the country, which was led out to some suburban pasture, where the
owners made speeches over it. In the winter, at the close of the old or
the beginning of the new year, negro slaves were regularly hired out on
this day for the ensuing twelvemonth, and sometimes put upon the block
before the Courthouse door and sold for life.
[Illustration: THE "TICKLER."]
But it was not until near the half of the second quarter of the century
that an auctioneer originated stock sales on the open square, and thus
gave to the day the characteristic it has since retained of being the
great market-day of the month. Thenceforth its influence was to be more
widely felt, to be extended into other counties and even States;
thenceforth it was to become more distinctively a local institution
without counterpart.
To describe minutely the scenes of a county court day in Kentucky, say
at the end of the half-century, would be to write a curious page in the
history of the times; for they were possible only through the unique
social conditions they portrayed. It was near the most prosperous period
of State life under the old regime. The institution of slavery was about
to culminate and decline. Agriculture had about as nearly perfected
itself as it was ever destined to do under the system of bondage. The
war cloud in the sky of the future could be covered with the hand, or
at most with the country gentleman's broad-brimmed straw-hat. The whole
atmosphere of the times was heavy with ease, and the people, living in
perpetual contemplation of their superabundant natural wealth, bore the
quality of the land in their manners and dispositions.
When the well-to-do Kentucky farmer got up in the morning, walked out
into the porch, stretched himself, and looked at the sun, he knew that
he could summon a sleek kindly negro to execute every wish and whim--one
to search for his misplaced hat, a second to bring him a dipper of
ice-water, a third to black his shoes, a fourth to saddle his horse and
hitch it at the stiles, a fifth to cook his breakfast, a sixth to wait
on him at the table, a seventh to stand on one side and keep off the
flies. Breakfast over, he mounted his horse and rode out where "the
hands" were at work. The chance was his overseer or negro foreman was
there before him: his presence was unnecessary. What a gentleman he was!
This was called earning one's bread by the sweat of his brow. _Whose_
brow? He yawned. What should he do? One thing he knew he _would_
do--take a good nap before dinner. Perhaps he had better ride over to
the blacksmith-shop. However, there was nobody there. It was county
court day. The sky was blue, the sun golden, the air delightful, the
road broad and smooth, the gait of his horse the very poetry of motion.
He would go to county court himself. There was really nothing else
before him. His wife would want to go, too, and the children.
So away they go, he on horseback or in the family carriage, with black
Pompey driving in front and yellow Cæsar riding behind. The turnpike
reached, the progress of the family carriage is interrupted or quite
stopped, for there are many other carriages on the road, all going in
the same direction. Then pa, growing impatient, orders black Pompey to
drive out on one side, whip up the horses, pass the others, and get
ahead, so as to escape from the clouds of white limestone dust, which
settles thick on the velvet collar of pa's blue cloth coat and in the
delicate pink marabou feathers of ma's bonnet: which Pompey can't do,
for the faster he goes, the faster the others go, making all the more
dust; so that pa gets red in the face, and jumps up in the seat, and
looks ready to fight, and thrusts his head out of the window and knocks
off his hat; and ma looks nervous, and black Pompey and yellow Cæsar
both look white with dust and fear.
A rural cavalcade indeed! Besides the carriages, buggies, horsemen, and
pedestrians, there are long droves of stock being hurried on towards the
town--hundreds of them. By the time they come together in the town they
will be many thousands. For is not this the great stock-market of the
West, and does not the whole South look from its rich plantations and
cities up to Kentucky for bacon and mules? By-and-by our family carriage
does at last get to town, and is left out in the streets along with many
others to block up the passway according to the custom.
[Illustration: THE QUACK-DOCTOR.]
The town is packed. It looks as though by some vast suction system it
had with one exercise of force drawn all the country life into itself.
The poor dumb creatures gathered in from the peaceful fields, and
crowded around the Court-house, send forth, each after its kind, a
general outcry of horror and despair at the tumult of the scene and the
unimaginable mystery of their own fate. They overflow into the
by-streets, where they take possession of the sidewalks, and debar
entrance at private residences. No stock-pens wanted then; none wanted
now. If a town legislates against these stock sales on the streets and
puts up pens on its outskirts, straightway the stock is taken to some
other market, and the town is punished for its airs by a decline in its
trade.
As the day draws near noon, the tide of life is at the flood. Mixed in
with the tossing horns and nimble heels of the terrified, distressed,
half-maddened beasts, are the people. Above the level of these is the
discordant choir of shrill-voiced auctioneers on horseback. At the
corners of the streets long-haired--and long-eared--doctors in curious
hats lecture to eager groups on maladies and philanthropic cures. Every
itinerant vender of notion and nostrum in the country-side is there;
every wandering Italian harper or musician of any kind, be he but a
sightless fiddler, who brings forth with poor unison of voice and string
the brief and too fickle ballads of the time, "Gentle Annie," and "Sweet
Alice, Ben Bolt." Strangely contrasted with everything else in physical
type and marks of civilization are the mountaineers, who have come down
to "the settlemints" driving herds of their lean, stunted cattle, or
bringing, in slow-moving, ox-drawn "steamboat" wagons, maple-sugar, and
baskets, and poles, and wild mountain fruit--faded wagons, faded beasts,
faded clothes, faded faces, faded everything. A general day for buying
and selling all over the State. What purchases at the dry-goods stores
and groceries to keep all those negroes at home fat and comfortable and
comely--cottons, and gay cottonades, and gorgeous turbans, and linseys
of prismatic dyes, bags of Rio coffee and barrels of sugar, with many
another pleasant thing! All which will not be taken home in the family
carriage, but in the wagon which Scipio Africanus is driving in; Scipio,
remember; for while the New Englander has been naming his own flesh and
blood Peleg and Hezekiah and Abednego, the Kentuckian has been giving
even his negro slaves mighty and classic names, after his taste and
fashion. But very mockingly and satirically do those victorious titles
contrast with the condition of those that wear them. A surging populace,
an in-town holiday for all rural folk, wholly unlike what may be seen
elsewhere in this country. The politician will be sure of his audience
to-day in the Court-house yard: the seller will be sure of the
purchaser; the idle man of meeting one still idler; friend of seeing
distant friend; blushing Phyllis, come in to buy fresh ribbons, of being
followed through the throng by anxious Corydon.
And what, amid this tumult of life and affairs--what of the justice of
the peace, whose figure once towered up so finely? Alas! quite outgrown,
pushed aside, and wellnigh forgotten. The very name of the day which
once so sternly commemorated the exercise of his authority has wandered
into another meaning. "County court day" no longer brings up in the mind
the image of the central Court-house and the judge on the bench. It is
to be greatly feared his noble type is dying. The stain of venality has
soiled his homespun ermine, and the trail of the office-seeker passed
over his rough-hewn bench. So about this time the new constitution of
the commonwealth comes in, to make the autocratic ancient justice over
into the modern elective magistrate, and with the end of the
half-century to close a great chapter of wonderful county court days.
But what changes in Kentucky since 1850! How has it fared with the day
meantime? What development has it undergone? What contrasts will it
show?
Undoubtedly, as seen now, the day is not more interesting by reason of
the features it wears than for the sake of comparison with the others it
has lost. A singular testimony to the conservative habits of the
Kentuckian, and to the stability of his local institutions, is to be
found in the fact that it should have come through all this period of
upheaval and downfall, of shifting and drifting, and yet remained so
much the same. Indeed, it seems in no wise liable to lose its meaning of
being the great market and general business day as well as the great
social and general laziness day of the month and the State. Perhaps one
feature has taken larger prominence--the eager canvassing of voters by
local politicians and office-seekers for weeks, sometimes for months,
beforehand. Is it not known that even circuit court will adjourn on this
day so as to give the clerk and the judge, the bar, the witnesses, an
opportunity to hear rival candidates address the assembled crowd? And
yet we shall discover differences. These people--these groups of twos
and threes and hundreds, lounging, sitting, squatting, taking every
imaginable posture that can secure bodily comfort--are they in any vital
sense new Kentuckians in the new South? If you care to understand
whether this be true, and what it may mean if it is true, you shall not
find a better occasion for doing so than a contemporary county court
day.
[Illustration: AUCTIONING A JACK.]
The Kentuckian nowadays does not come to county court to pick a quarrel
or to settle one. He _has_ no quarrel. His fist has reverted to its
natural use and become a hand. Nor does he go armed. Positively it is
true that gentlemen in this State do not now get satisfaction out of
each other in the market-place, and that on a modern county court day a
three-cornered hat is hardly to be seen. And yet you will go on defining
a Kentuckian in terms of his grandfather, unaware that he has changed
faster than the family reputation. The fighting habit and the shooting
habit were both more than satisfied during the Civil War.
Another old-time feature of the day has disappeared--the open use of the
pioneer beverage. Merchants do not now set it out for their customers;
in the country no longer is it the law of hospitality to offer it to a
guest. To do so would commonly be regarded in the light of as great a
liberty as to have omitted it once would have been considered an
offence. The decanter is no longer found on the sideboard in the home;
the barrel is not stored in the cellar.
Some features of the old Kentucky market-place have disappeared. The war
and the prostration of the South destroyed that as a market for certain
kinds of stock, the raising and sales of which have in consequence
declined. Railways have touched the eastern parts of the State, and
broken up the distant toilsome traffic with the steamboat wagons of the
mountaineers. No longer is the day the general buying day for the
circumjacent country as formerly, when the farmers, having great
households of slaves, sent in their wagons and bought on twelve months'
credit, knowing it would be twenty-four months' if they desired. The
doctors, too, have nearly vanished from the street corners, though on
the highway one may still happen upon the peddler with his pack, and
in the midst of an eager throng still may meet the swaying, sightless
old fiddler, singing to ears that never tire gay ditties in a cracked
and melancholy tone.
[Illustration: LORDS OF THE SOIL.]
Through all changes one feature has remained. It goes back to the most
ancient days of local history. The Kentuckian _will_ come to county
court "to swap horses;" it is in the blood. In one small town may be
seen fifty or a hundred countrymen assembled during the afternoon in a
back street to engage in this delightful recreation. Each rides or leads
his worst, most objectionable beast; of these, however fair-seeming,
none is above suspicion. It is the potter's field, the lazar-house, the
beggardom, of horse-flesh. The stiff and aged bondsman of the glebe and
plough looks out of one filmy eye upon the hopeless wreck of the fleet
roadster, and the poor macerated carcass that in days gone by bore its
thankless burden over the glistening turnpikes with the speed and
softness of the wind has not the strength to return the contemptuous
kick which is given him by a lungless, tailless rival. Prices range from
nothing upward. Exchanges are made for a piece of tobacco or a
watermelon to boot.