Kentucky Constitution - The 1850 Constitution

The 1850 Constitution

It was not long before some of the weaknesses in the 1799 Constitution were exposed. As early as 1828, some in the General Assembly began calling for a new constitutional convention. However, because the 1799 Constitution made the calling of a convention such an arduous task, it took more than twenty years to call the convention, which finally convened in Frankfort on October 1, 1849.

One major item of dissatisfaction with the 1799 Constitution was the appointment of so many officials by the governor. This was addressed in the 1850 Constitution by making all state officials, even judges, popularly elected and imposing term limits on these offices.

While the Kentucky Constitution had always provided for protection of slave property, pro-slavery forces sought and received even greater protections in the 1850 Constitution. Among the new provisions were a requirement that slaves and their offspring remain in the state, and that ministers of religion – thought to be largely anti-slavery – were prohibited from holding the office of governor or seats in the General Assembly.

The bulk of the reforms in the 1850 Constitution, however, were reserved for the General Assembly, whose spending had spiraled out of control. Membership in the Senate was fixed at 38; in the House the number was fixed at 100. Sessions of the General Assembly were limited to sixty days biennially, requiring a two-thirds majority to extend them.

The 1850 Constitution also created a sinking fund for the liquidation of the state's debt, which had climbed to $4.5 million. To prevent the debt from climbing too high in the future, the 1850 Constitution mandated a maximum of $500,000 of indebtedness for the state. At the time, this represented about a year's worth of revenue for the state, but this provision remains in the current Kentucky Constitution, even though receipts in the 2001-02 fiscal year were approximately $6.5 billion.

Another dated provision of the 1850 Constitution that survives in the present Constitution is the ineligibility for public office of anyone who had participated in a duel since the ratification of the 1850 Constitution. While the relevance of this prohibition may be disputed now, it could potentially have derailed Governor William Goebel's eligibility for public office in the 1890s.