For several years the Anti-Federalists or Republicans had con tended that the administration at Washington had been exercising powers not warranted by the Constitution, and when Congress had passed the Alien and Sedition laws the leaders of that party seized upon the event as a proper occasion for a spirited public protest, which took shape principally in resolutions passed by the legisla tures of Kentucky and Virginia. The original draft of the Ken tucky Resolutions of 1798 was prepared by Vice-president Thomas Jefferson, although the fact that he was the author of them was kept from the public until he acknowledged it in 1821. They were introduced in the Kentucky house of representatives by John Breckinridge on Nov. 8, were passed by that body with some amendments but with only one dissenting vote on the 1 oth, were unanimously concurred in by the senate on the 13th, and were approved by Governor James Garrard on the i6th. The first reso lution was a statement of the ultra State-rights view of the (State) relation of the States to the Federal Government, and subsequent resolutions declared the Alien and Sedition laws unconstitutional and therefore "void and of no force," principally on the ground that they provided for an exercise of powers that were reserved to the State.
The resolutions went on to declare that "this Common wealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, tamely to submit to undelegated and therefore unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth," and that "these and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into revolution and blood." Copies of the resolutions were sent to the governors of the various States, to be laid before the different State legislatures, and replies were received from Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hamp shire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia, but all except that from Virginia were unfavourable. Nevertheless the Kentucky legislature on November 22, 1799, re-affirmed in a new resolution the principles it had laid down in the first series, asserting in this new resolution that the State "does now unequivo cally declare its attachment to the Union, and to that compact (the Constitution), agreeably to its obvious and real intention, and will be among the last to seek its dissolution," but that "the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the State legislatures, that the General Government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing (short) of despotism— since the discretion of those who administer the Government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers," "that the several States who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of the infrac tion," and "that a nullification by those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument is the rightful remedy." These meas
ures show that the State was Democratic-Republican in its politics and pro-French in its sympathies, and that it was in clined to follow the leadership of that State from which most of its people had come.
The Constitution of 1799 adopted the system of choosing the governor and senators by popular vote and deprived the Su preme Court of its original jurisdiction in land cases. The Burr conspiracy (18o4–o6) aroused some excitement in the State. Many would have followed Burr in a filibustering attack upon the Span ish in the south-west, but scarcely any would have approved of a separation of Kentucky from the Federal Union. No battles were fought in Kentucky during the war of 1812, but her troops consti tuted the greater part of the forces under Gen. William Henry Harrison. They took part in the operations at Ft. Wayne, Ft. Meigs, the river Raisin, the Thomas, and the naval battle of Lake Erie.
The Democratic-Republicans controlled the politics of the State without serious opposition until the conflict in 1820-26, arising from the demands for a more adequate system of currency and for other measures to relieve delinquent debtors, divided the State into what were known as the "Relief" and "Anti-Relief" parties. After nearly all the 46 banks chartered by the legislature in 1818 had been wrecked in the financial panic of 1819, the leg islature in 1820 passed a series of laws designed for the benefit of the debtor class, among them one making State bank notes a legal tender for all debts. A decision of the Clark county district court declaring this measure unconstitutional was affirmed by the court of appeals. The legislature in 1824 repealed all of the laws creating the existing court of appeals and then established a new one. This precipitated a bitter campaign between the Anti-Relief or "Old Court" party and the "Relief" or "New Court" party, in which the former was successful. The Old Court party followed the lead of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams in national poli tics, and became National Republicans and later Whigs. The New Court party followed Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren and became Democrats. The electoral vote of the State was cast for Jackson in 1828 and for Clay in 1832. Clay's conservative influence dominated the politics of the State even after his death in 1852. Kentucky voted the Whig ticket in every presidential election from 1832 until the party made its last campaign in 1852. When the Whigs were destroyed by the slavery issue, some of them immediately became Democrats, but the majority became Americans, or Know-Nothings. They elected the governor in 2855 and almost succeeded in carrying the State for their presidential ticket in 1856.