The Invisible Line (56 page)

35
1850 U.S. Census, Clay County and Knox County, Ky.

36
1850 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Ky.

37
On overpopulation in Clay County and its effect on agricultural production, see Billings and Blee,
Road to Poverty
, pp. 194-99.

38
Ibid., p. 229.

39
See
Spencer v. Looney
, trial transcript.

1
Douglas W. Rae,
City: Urbanism and Its End
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 44-45, 57; Chauncey Jerome,
History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years
(New Haven, Conn.: F. C. Dayton, 1860), pp. 134-39.

2
Rollin G. Osterweis,
Three Centuries of New Haven
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 243.

3
Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, May 25, 1850, box 1, folder 1, Gibson Papers, Tulane; Hart Gibson to William Preston Gibson, October 10, 1850, box 29, folder 10, Pettit Collection.

4
Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, December 13, 1848, box 1, folder 1, Gibson Papers, Tulane; Tobias Gibson to Randall Lee Gibson, November 15, 1849, box 18, folder 128, Weeks Papers; Samuel L. Cartwright, Treatment Instructions, May 10, 1850, ser. 2, folder 2, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; Sarah Thompson Gibson to Randall Lee Gibson, January 1850, Grigsby Collection.

5
Osterweis,
Three Centuries of New Haven
, pp. 313-16; Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, September 19, 1848, box 1, folder 1, Gibson Papers, Tulane; Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, November 20, 1850, Gibson Papers, LSU.

6
Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg,
Four Years at Yale
(New Haven, Conn.: Charles C. Chatfield & Co., 1871), pp. 298-99; Osterweis,
Three Centuries of New Haven
, p. 255. Randall Gibson's Yale career is detailed in Mary Gorton McBride with Ann Mathison McLaurin,
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), pp. 27-44.

7
“Cattle Show and Fair,”
Connecticut Herald
, August 31, 1850, p. 3; Andrew Dickson White,
Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White
(New York: Century, 1905), pp. 1:27-29.

8
Osterweis,
Three Centuries of New Haven
, p. 268; Charlton Thomas Lewis, “Poem,” in
Poem by Charlton Thomas Lewis; and Valedictory Address, by Randall Lee Gibson, Pronounced Before the Senior Class in Yale College, June 16, 1853,
p. 8, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; Arthur Marvin Shaw,
William Preston Johnston: A Transitional Figure of the Confederacy
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), pp. 35-36, 42; Brooks Mather Kelley,
Yale: A History
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 215; Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, October 7, 1849, Gibson Papers, LSU.

9
Calliopean Society Papers;
Diary, 1843-1852
,
of James Hadley, Tutor and Professor of Greek in Yale College, 1845-1872
, ed. Laura Hadley Moseley (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 266.

10
Josiah Stoddard Johnston, Yale Diary, p. 1:59, Johnston Papers; Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, October 7, 1849, Gibson Papers, LSU; McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, pp. 43-44; George W. Smalley, “Randall Gibson,”
Deke Quarterly
11 (1893), pp. 26, 27.

11
Smalley, “Randall Gibson,” p. 27.

12
White,
Autobiography
, p. 30; Calliopean Society Papers.

13
Smalley, “Randall Gibson,” p. 26; Moncure Daniel Conway,
Autobiography
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), p. 1:71; Henry Hughes,
Treatise on Sociology
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854), pp. 239-40. On Southern proslavery ideology, see Michael O'Brien,
Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 2:93 8-92.

14
Smalley, “Randall Gibson,” pp. 26-27; Bagg,
Four Years at Yale,
pp. 221-23; Calliopean Society Papers; McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 41.

15
Smalley, “Randall Gibson,” p. 28; White,
Autobiography
, p. 68; McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 38; Randall Lee Gibson, “Valedictory Address,” in
Poem,
pp. 33-34.

16
John Albert Granger, “Col. Hart Gibson,” p. 5, Hart Gibson Alumni Records; Tobias Gibson to Randall Lee Gibson, December 26, 1848, box 17, folder 121, Weeks Papers; Tobias Gibson to Randall Lee Gibson, April 16, 1854, box 29, folder 216, Weeks Papers; Tobias Gibson to Randall Lee Gibson, January 5, 185 [4], box 25, folder 179, Weeks Papers. See also McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, pp. 29-30.

17
Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, October 10, 1852, Gibson Papers, LSU; Randall Lee Gibson to Tobias Gibson, July 22, 1850, Gibson Papers, LSU.

18
See McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 9.

19
Ibid., pp. 13-15;
Brabston v. Gibson,
50 U.S. 263 (1850); Tobias Gibson to Alfred Shelby, July 3, 1830, Grigsby Collection; “Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana,”
Commercial Review of the South and West
2 (February 1850), pp. 146, 149; Clay Lancaster,
Antebellum Architecture of Kentucky
(1991), pp. 209-10. See also J. Carlyle Sitterson,
Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1953).

20
McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, pp. 19-21; “Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana,”
Commercial Review of the South and West
2 (February 1850), pp. 146, 150.

21
McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 25. Randall Lee Gibson's Yale valedictory address echoes his father's sensibility; see Gibson, “Valedictory Address,” in
Poem,
p. 26: “Not that educated men are expected to embrace every new-fangled notion, simply because recommended by novelty; and so on the other hand they are expected not to adhere to every old custom and notion on the ground merely that they are venerable with the dust of antiquity, but while subjecting every theory to the closest analysis, they are required to hold to what is true and discard what is false . . . The true and the good are at least as likely to be found in the present, as in the past.”

22
William Winans,
Funeral Sermons of Rev. Randal Gibson and Mrs. Harriet Gibson
(183 8), pp. 13-14, 20, Houghton Library, Harvard.

23
J. M. Gibson,
Memoirs of J. M. Gibson: Terrors of the Civil War and Reconstruction Days
, ed. James Gibson Alverson and James Gibson Alverson Jr. (n.p., 1929, 1966), p. 6; see also Christopher Morris,
Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life, Warren County and Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1770-1860
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 95; McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, pp. 10-12.

24
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, ser. 2, folder 3, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

25
Ibid.

26
Granger, “Col. Hart Gibson.”

27
Calliopean Society Papers; McBride,
Gibson of Louisiana
, p. 41; W. P. Bacon, comp.,
First, or Septennial Meeting of the Class of Fifty Eight, Yale College
(New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1865), p. 89; Randall Lee Gibson to Hart Gibson, April 22, 1854, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; Shaw,
William Preston Johnston
, p. 41; Granger, “Col. Hart Gibson.” On Hart Gibson's fashion sense, see Hart Gibson to William Preston Gibson, October 10, 1850, box 29, folder 10, Pettit Collection: “They have some of the strangest fashions I ever heard of at N.Y. Every little fellow that can walk alone wears a standing collar up to his ears & a gold watch with a chain almost to his knees. I of course have to conform in some degree to the fashion. I should think I would look quite strange in Lex[ington] with a collar about a foot long, nevertheless I wear these here & think nothing about it.”

28
Randall Lee Gibson to Hart Gibson, April 22, 1854, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

29
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in
Self-Reliance and Other Essays
(1841; reprinted Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1993), pp. 19, 26; Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

30
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

31
Ibid.; Randall Lee Gibson to Hart Gibson, October 21, 1853, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

32
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; Edward E. Atwater, ed.,
History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time
(New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., 1887), p. 251; Eric Foner,
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
(1970; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 281; Theodore Parker,
The Nebraska Question
(Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co., 1854), pp. 50, 65; Debby Applegate,
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
(New York: Doubleday, 2006), pp. 226-29; Cassius Marcellus Clay,
The Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay
(Cincinnati: J. Fletcher Brennan & Co., 1886), p. 209.

33
Appendix to
Congressional Globe
, April 20, 1848, 30th Cong., 1st sess., p. 502; Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

34
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; “New Publications,”
Liberator
, March 6, 1857, p. 38; see also Harvey Wish,
George Fitzhugh: Propagandist of the Old South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943), pp. 200-201; C. Vann Woodward, “George Fitzhugh, Sui Generis,” introduction to George Fitzhugh,
Cannibals All! Or, Slaves Without Masters
(1857; Woodward ed., 1960; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); Eugene Genovese,
The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation
(1969; reprint, Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1988).

35
O'Brien,
Conjectures of Order
; George Fitzhugh to George Frederick Holmes, March 27, 1855, Holmes Letterbook, Special Collections, Duke University; George Fitzhugh,
Sociology for the South
(Richmond, Va.: A. Morris Publisher, 1854), pp. vi, 21, 88, 253-54, 257.

36
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; Osterweis,
Three Centuries of New Haven
, pp. 280, 317.

37
Thomas A. Kinney,
The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p. 174; “People's Lectures,”
New Haven Daily Palladium
, March 15, 1855, p. 2; Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

38
New Haven Daily Palladium
, March 22, 1855, p. 2; see also Wish,
George Fitzhugh,
pp. 132-35.

39
New Haven Daily Palladium
, March 22, 1855, p. 2.

40
Ibid.; Conway,
Autobiography
, pp. 224-25; Fitzhugh to Holmes, March 27, 1855, Holmes Letterbook, Special Collections, Duke University.

41
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

42
New Haven Daily Palladium
, March 23, 1855, p. 2.

43
Ibid.; Wish,
George Fitzhugh
, p. 140; Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers; Robert M. Cover,
Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 150-54.

44
New Haven Daily Palladium
, March 23, 1855, p. 2.

45
Hart Gibson to Tobias Gibson, March 26, 1855, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

46
Wish,
George Fitzhugh
, pp. 140-42; Moncure D. Conway,
Addresses and Reprints, 1850- 1907
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), p. 113; George Fitzhugh, “Wealth of the North and the South,”
DeBow's Review
23 (1857), pp. 587, 592, 593.

47
Charles Sumner,
Freedom National; Slavery Sectional: Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, on His Motion to Repeal the Fugitive Slave Bill, in the Senate of the United States, August 26, 1852
(Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1852), p. 15; Randall Lee Gibson to Hart Gibson, April 22, 1854, Gibson and Humphreys Papers.

1
William Elsey Connelley,
Eastern Kentucky Papers: The Founding of Harman's Station
(New York: Torch Press, 1910), pp. 51-52; Fred E. Coy et al.,
Rock Art of Kentucky
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), pp. 143-44.

2
Connelley,
Eastern Kentucky Papers,
pp. 51-52.

3
Ibid., pp. 81-86.

4
Spencer v. Looney
(Va. 1912), No. 2012, Virginia State Law Library, Richmond, trial transcript, pp. 62, 66.

5
Ibid., pp. 65, 116; Tommy Ratliff, interview by author, October 25, 2005, Paintsville, Ky.

6
See 1860 U.S. Census, Johnson County, Ky.; 1870 U.S. Census, Johnson County; 1880 U.S. Census, Johnson County.

7
On cornhusking in eastern Kentucky in the early nineteenth century, see Daniel Drake,
Pioneer Life in Kentucky
(Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1870), p. 54.