Not content with their previous efforts the general assembly of 1838 went still further and prohibited slaves from going as passengers on mail stages or coaches anywhere within the State, except upon the written request of their owners, or in the master's company. The liability for the enforcement of the law rested upon the stage proprietors, who were to be fined $100 for each slave illegally transported.[325]
No stringent laws were made against the enticement of slaves to run away until 1830 when the abolitionists first began to appear. Until that time there seems to have been no need for any legal enactment regarding the question. The only trouble previously had been with the whites and free Negroes who aided a slave already on his way to the North. It was in response to the popular demand that on January 28, 1830, the State legislature provided severe penalties for any person found guilty of (1) enticing a slave to leave his owner, (2) furnishing a forged paper of freedom, (3) assisting a slave to escape out of the State, (4) enticing a slave to run away, or (5) concealing a runaway slave. Should a person be suspected of any one of these offenses and not be found guilty, he was to give security for his good behavior to avoid all accusation in the future.[326]
The most interesting legal case based on this law was that of Delia Webster, a young lady from Vermont, who was tried in the Fayette Circuit Court in December, 1844, for the enticement of a Negro slave boy from Lexington. The details of the trial show that the court was just and fair in spite of the fact that both Miss Webster and her copartner, Calvin Fairbank, were not citizens of the State and had furthermore used all kinds of deceit to accomplish their purpose. For the sake of aiding one Negro slave boy to reach freedom they went to the expense and trouble to feign an elopement to Ohio via Maysville, but the Lexington authorities caught them as they were coming back on the Lexington Pike near Paris. At the trial it was shown that Fairbank was in Kentucky for no other reason than to induce slaves to escape to the North and that Miss Webster had come to Lexington as a school teacher merely as a cloak for her abolitionist work. The evidence offered by the prosecution was damaging in the extreme. The defense put forth no data for her side at all, evidently preferring to be hailed as a martyr to the cause for which she stood. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty and she was sentenced to serve two years in the State penitentiary.[327]