Abstract

PEREZ-MORALES, Edgardo. Richard Clough Anderson, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the Problem of Slavery in the Spanish American Patriotic Cause. Co-herencia [online]. 2016, vol.13, n.25, pp.167-195. ISSN 1794-5887.  https://doi.org/10.17230/co-herencia.13.25.6.

Richard Clough Anderson, a lawyer from Kentucky,

became the first US minister plenipotentiary to Colombia. Incorporated as a State of the Union in 1792, Kentucky seems to have been the first State to publicly support Spanish America's independence movements. By following the Kentucky lead through the life of Anderson, this paper historically situates the seeming political precociousness of that State in light of the contradictions of the early American republic: the practice of slavery, the ideology of freedom, the settlement of the Western frontier, the economic takeoff, and complex forms of political identification. Kentucky's support for the Spanish American patriotic cause crystalized amid specific calculations on the limitations and economic potential of that commonwealth, a slave society partially truncated by its geographic location and social configuration.

Keywords : Slavery; Abolition; Independence; Diplomacy; United States; Colombia.

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