Posted on Mon, Feb. 11, 2008

Slavery touched Lincoln at Farmington

Slaves chained together like 'fish upon a trot line'

By Andy Mead

AMEAD@HERALD-LEADER.COM

In 1841, when he was a young lawyer still rough around the edges, Abraham Lincoln visited Farmington, a hemp plantation that has since been engulfed by Louisville.

His friend Joshua Speed had brought Lincoln home for a three-week visit with his family. After several meals in the formal dining room, Joshua's mother, Lucy, noted that Abe exhibited terrible table manners.

But some historians believe that Lincoln's exposure to slavery at what now is called Farmington Historic Plantation had a profound effect on the rest of his life.

Later that year, in what is thought to be his first written comment about slavery, he wrote to Joshua's half-sister, Mary, about seeing slaves loaded on boats at the Louisville waterfront.

They were chained together "like so many fish upon a trot line," he wrote. He also noted that "they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other. ... "

On Monday, as part of the two-year celebration of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, an exhibit will open at Farmington called Lincoln and Farmington: An Enduring Friendship.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Lincoln historian, will speak. The event, which begins at 10 a.m., is open to the public.