Mason's Blog

  Week 7 Blog Entry Roy Mason             When you ask someone from Kentucky where they live, instead of the usual response of the name of a town or city, there is a good chance they will respond with the name of their county. I was raised in Mason County, Kentucky, in a small town of two hundred, named May’s Lick. Mason County was formed in 1788 by the Virginia Legislature and named after George Mason, the “Father of the Bill of Rights.” The county was so large, that nineteen counties would subsequently be formed from its original charter. The same year a small group of pioneers from New Jersey founded the town of May’s Lick, named after William May. It got the “Lick” part of the name from a nearby deer saltlick that provided salt to the settlers. I can tell you that the area, when I was a kid in the 1950s, was beautiful, with rolling hills, pristine forests, lots of game, and soil so rich, my dad used to say it could grow...

Christianity and the Institution of Slavery in the Antebellum South             It would be unfair to categorize the clergy in the South as being pro slavery; that most certainly was not the case. However, the South did need moral assurance that their “peculiar institution” was within the laws of God and nature. There were clergy, who through their own personal convictions, provided that moral certainty. I can not help but think those same men who defended slavery would have been opposed to the institution if they had been raised in the North. James Shannon, in his speech before the Pro-slavery Convention of the State of Missouri in 1855, said that slavery is in our midst. It had been forced on the South by the combined efforts of old England and New England, the very same concerns that then condemned the institution. The greed generated by cotton gives weight to this argument. He went on to say that future generations are not respo...