The Paris, Kentucky slave coffle of summer 1822 is notable among thousands of such coffles of chained slaves forced to travel overland as part of the interstate slave trade in the United States because it was observed and carefully described by Ohio Presbyterian minister Rev. James H. Dickey,[1] who reported that the slaves were marching south under the flag of the United States.[2] According to The Liberator by way of John Rankin this group of slaves was the legal property of Kentucky slave traders named Stone and Kinningham.[3]
Abolitionists in the United States would repeatedly return to the image created in the mind by Dickey's description, using it to pair American patriotism and abolitionism in the minds of their readers and affiliates. Scholar Teresa A. Goddu describes the woodcut image created for Ben Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation in 1823 in this light: "Anti-slavery visual culture may portray the power of slavery's visual regime, but its ultimate goal is to assert anti-slavery's dominance over the visual field. Within the picture, anti-slavery's visual supremacy is symbolized by the flag. Placed near the center of the image, the flag serves as a counter to the slaveholder's whip and provides the viewer another high-flying vantage point with which to identify."[4] In 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society also created an etching depicting the scene, for publication in their journal The Anti-Slavery Record.[5]