CHAPTER VIIAbolition

There was throughout the period of slavery in Tennessee a determined minority that favored its abolition. This minority was not confined to the non-slaveholders, but as late as 1834 slaveholders hoped that some method of abolition would finally be devised. This abolition sentiment expressed itself in various ways.

There were three steps in the process of emancipation by any method. Two of these were taken by the owner and one by the state. The owner renounced his right of property in the slave and then gave bond with good security for his conduct and maintenance. To complete the process of emancipation, the state’s consent was necessary. This was given exclusively by the county courts until 1829,[1]when the Legislature gave the chancery courts jurisdiction of cases involving wills.[2]After 1854, a petition for emancipation could be filed in any court of record.[3]Of course, the legislature by virtue of its plenary power could and did grant petitions for freedom throughout the period of slavery.[4]The county court could not consider a petition for emancipation unless nine or amajority of the court were present and the consent of two-thirds of those present was necessary to grant the petition.[5]The clerk of the court made a record of the emancipation and gave the slave a copy.[6]

One way by which the master could relinquish his property rights in the slave was by deed. A deed of freedom to a slave was valid only between him and the owner or his representatives. It did not operate against the claim of creditors. A deed of emancipation had to be witnessed and recorded before it was binding upon the master.[7]Judge Catron, speaking of a deed of manumission, in the case of Fisher’s Negroes v. Dabbs, said:

It is binding on the representatives of the divisor in the one case, and the grantor in the other, and communicates a right to the slave; but it is an imperfect right, until the state, the community of which such emancipated person is to become a member, assents to the contract between the master and the slave.[8]

A bequest of freedom by will was binding between the master or his representative and the slave, but, until 1829, the slave could not institute suit to complete the process of freedom in case the representative of the master failed to take such action. Administrators of estates took advantage of this weakness of the law. The result was that either such a negro, being helpless, was reduced to slavery again, or was left in a state of semi-freedom. In 1829, the state gave the chancery courts jurisdiction of such cases and gave such a negro the privilege of bringing suit for his freedom through his next friend.[9]Children born of a mother who had been emancipated by will but who did not receive her freedom until the expiration of a term of yearsreceived their freedom at the same time the mother received hers.[10]

The slave could enter into a contract with his master for his freedom and the courts would enforce such a contract.[11]This contract might be by parol.[12]A contract between purchaser and seller to the effect that a slave be emancipated at a certain date was binding between the owner and the slave, and invested the slave with the right to complete the process of freedom after 1829. Such a contract did not weaken the claim of creditors, nor did it compel the state to grant the freedom of the slave. The obtaining of the state’s consent, while conditioned on the initiate step of the master, was entirely a separate procedure.

The owner could sell a slave to an individual or a society, who wanted to emancipate him. Slaves frequently bought themselves. A free negro sometimes bought husband or wife and children, and then petitioned the state to free them. All bills of the sale of slaves had to be in writing and attested by at least one creditable witness. If the bill of sale was contested, two witnesses were required.[13]Philanthropic individuals and societies could have emancipated a great many slaves, if the state had not made its consent a necessary part of such manumission. When one considers how the benevolence of slave owners or the generosity of societies might have flooded a community with stupid, ignorant, and vicious negroes, he can easily see why society asserted the right to regulate the ownership of this kind of property.

If the master by his acts or treatment of a slave, or in conversation with another, indicated that he meant to give a slave his freedom, the courts would recognize this as a basis for a suit for freedom.[14]The institutionof a suit against a slave was an implication of his freedom, otherwise the bequest had no effect.[15]

If a slave owner of Tennessee moved to a free state with his slaves to reside permanently, this would indicate his intention to free them. If on entering such a state with his slaves, he agreed to free them at a certain future date, this would give the slaves a cause for a suit of freedom if he should later decide to return to Tennessee before the expiration of the time set for their emancipation.[16]Of course, Tennessee laws permitted a free negro to adopt a master and convey himself into slavery, but this was voluntary on his part.[17]

It is seldom credited to southern slaveholders that they gave up as much property as the records show that they did. The slaveholding states practiced real abolition while New England and the other great abolition sections of the country were agitators of abolition rather than practitioners of it. None of their legislation shook the shackles from a single slave, according to eminent authority,[18]but merely abolished slavery that did not exist; that is, these acts said slaves yet unborn would be free at birth, or at certain age. This was not abolishing slavery by freeing those actually held in slavery. As a matter of fact, those held in slavery at the time of the passing of these acts were retained as slaves until they died, or were sold to Southerners. Of course, all over the country there was abolition by private individuals, but the point is, the Southern slaveholders were the real abolitionists. They actually gave up their property, and turned loose their slaves. There were 7,300 free negroes in Tennessee in 1860. Considering the fact that hundreds of free negroes went to Liberia, Haiti, Canada, and the free states, from Tennessee, and that hundreds of free negroes died in the period from 1796 to 1860, it is safe to say that, at $1000 each, more than ten million dollars’worth of property was surrendered by the abolitionists of Tennessee. It was largely the small farmer slaveholders that made this sacrifice for their convictions.

Tennessee made a substantial contribution to the anti-slavery leadership of the nation. There were two groups of these men. One of them left the state for a larger field of activity, and might be called Separatists, while the members of the other group remained at home and fought in the ranks. These might be called Puritans. Jesse Mills, Elihu Swain, John Underhill, Jesse Lockhart, Rev. John Roy, Peter Cartwright, Charles Osborn, and Rev. John Rankin are examples of those who left the state for abolition centers.[19]

Rev. John Roy was a Methodist preacher who rode Green circuit in Tennessee. He was a man of considerable ability, strong feeling, full of courage, with an iron will. He was strongly anti-slavery in his sentiment, and for this reason moved to Indiana, where he died in 1837 in his 69th year.[20]

Peter Cartwright was one of the greatest preachers of Methodism. He was a native Virginian, but entered the Western Conference in 1804. He gave a great part of his life to the services of the church in Tennessee. He was a man of great humor and wit, and was a fighter against slavery. He finally decided that his labors would be more appreciated in an anti-slavery state, and moved to Illinois in 1824. He became increasingly bitter against slaveholders in his old age, and as a delegate from Illinois to the Methodist Conference in 1844, he voted for the division of the church.

Charles Osborn was one of the greatest of these leaders who left the state. He was born in North Carolina, August 21, 1795. At the age of 19, he moved with his parents to Tennessee, where he became a Quaker minister. In December, 1814 he organized the manumission movement in Tennessee, and was its leader until 1816, when he movedto Ohio, where he did his greatest work.[21]George Washington Julian makes Osborn the undoubted leader in the abolition movement of the Northwest, of which Ohio was the center and one of the two centers of the abolition movement in the nation. Osborn laid the foundation for his work in his new field, for which Tennessee had prepared him by environment and previous service, by establishing at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, in 1817, the Philanthropist, which Julian regards as the first anti-slavery publication in the United States.[22]In 1818, Osborn removed to Indiana, where he lived the remainder of his life.

Rev. John Rankin was possibly the greatest of those leaders who saw fit to leave the State to find an environment more in harmony with his attitude toward slavery. He was a Presbyterian minister, “who was destined, during the three decades preceding the Civil War, to occupy a position of first importance among the anti-slavery workers of the United States. In 1825, he published his famousLetters on Slavery, which went through many editions and exerted a very great influence. Many western men have called him the ‘father of abolition,’ and it was not an uncommon thing in the thirties to hear him spoken of as ‘the Martin Luther of the Cause’.”[23]Rev. Rankin said that in his early boyhood a majority of the people of East Tennessee were abolitionists.[24]The first issue of the Emancipator, referring to the loss of anti-slavery leadership in Tennessee, said,

Thousands of first-rate citizens, men remarkable for their piety and virtue, have within twenty years past, removed from this and other slave states to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, that their eyes may be hid from seeing the cruel oppressor lacerate the back of his slaves, and that their ears may not hear the bitter cries of the oppressed. I have often regretted the loss of so much virtuefrom these slave states, which held too little before. Could all those who have removed from slave states on that account, to even the single state of Ohio, have been induced to remove to, and settle in Tennessee, with their high-toned love for universal liberty and aversion to slavery, I think that Tennessee would ere this have begun to sparkle among the true stars of liberty.[25]

James Jones, Samuel Doak, Mr. R. G. Williams, Rev. Philip Lindsey, and Elihu Embree were the most eminent of the group of leaders in abolition who chose to stand their ground and fight straight from the shoulder. James Jones was another member of the Society of Friends, who were really the leaders in the anti-slavery movement in Tennessee. Jones was thoroughly devoted to the cause of abolition, wrote several addresses for the Tennessee Manumission Society, and was for several years its president. His untimely death in 1830 was a serious loss to the cause of humanity and undoubtedly was the death of the Tennessee Manumission Society. Benjamin Lundy paid the following tribute to him at his death:

A great man has fallen, one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of American philanthropists has set, has set to rise no more, James Jones, President of the Manumission Society of Tennessee—the steady, ardent and persevering friend of universal emancipation, is numbered among the dead.... No language can impress upon the mind an adequate idea of his many virtues. Suffice it to say that few men living can fill the station that he held, with equal honor and usefulness. Long shall the poor oppressed African mourn for his irreparable loss.[26]

Rev. Samuel Doak was the leader of that strong and able Presbyterian contingent that came from North Carolina into Tennessee in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. He was also the leading educator of the State in his day.[27]He was a graduate of Princeton, and founded in Tennessee the first institution of learning in the Mississippi Valley.[28]He was a prominent abolitionist from 1800 to 1830, and from 1818 he taught immediate abolition. Among his pupils was Sam Houston, who opposed secession, John Rankin, and Rev. Jesse Lockhart, who preached and lectured on abolition in Southern Ohio.[29]

Dr. Philip Lindsey, who was President of the University of Nashville from 1825 to 1850, was the leader in organizing the Tennessee Colonization Society. He was its president for a number of years and was connected with it until his death. His educational leadership gave the colonization movement a prestige and influence that could not have come through any other channel. The University of Nashville in this period was the leading educational institution of the State, if not of the South.[30]

Mr. R. G. Williams was one of the anti-slavery leaders who helped to make Maryville, in East Tennessee, the seat of Maryville Seminary, now Maryville College, one of the great anti-slavery centers of the nation, a forerunner of Oberlin in Ohio. “We are rejoiced to know,” said The Emancipator of New York, “that in East Tennessee and directly in the very center of the slaveholding country, among the fastnesses of the American Alps, God has secured a little Spartan band of devoted abolitionists of the best stamp, whom neither death nor danger can turn,”[31]and a later issue of The Emancipator, quoting the letter of a student of Maryville College, said, “We take the liberty to uphold and defend our sentiments, whether it is agreeable or not to the selfishness of the slaveholder. We would thankfully receive any communication on the subject. We have some friends in the country around, among whom we have the privilege of distributing without fear a considerable number of pamphlets. About thirty students in the Theological Seminary at this place are preparing for the ministry, of whomtwelve are abolitionists.” This same issue, quoting a letter of Mr. R. G. Williams, said: “We could form a good Anti-slavery Society in this part of the state, but we choose to work in an unorganized manner a while yet, before we set ourselves up as a target, notwithstanding the strict laws of Tennessee. We meet through the country and discuss the merits of abolition and colonization; the former is ably defended by Rev. T. S. Kendall, pastor of the Seceder Church in this county (Blount), and several others.”[32]

The most eminent anti-slavery leader in the state was Elihu Embree. He was a Quaker, son of Thomas and Esther Embree, of Pennsylvania, born November 11, 1782. He moved to Tennessee at an early age, and became an iron manufacturer in East Tennessee. He early espoused the cause of freedom, and began at Jonesboro, Tennessee, in 1819, the publication of the Manumission Intelligencer as the mouth-piece of the manumission societies of Tennessee. He continued this publication until his untimely death in 1820.

Embree was a radical, outspoken, and uncompromising abolitionist. He was the leader of the Society of Friends in their work for abolition in Tennessee. Embree’s writing and lecturing on abolition did more to advertise the state as an abolition center in the twenties than the work of all the others combined. In Garrison’s Life, by his children, there is an account of the work of Embree, “to whom,” it says, “must be accorded the honor of publishing the first periodical in America of which the one avowed object was opposition to slavery.”[33]Mr. Embree said he “spent several thousand dollars ... in some small degree abolishing, and in endeavoring to facilitate the general abolition of slavery.”[34]

Embree had owned seven or eight slaves, but in discussing his connection with slavery, he said:

“I repent that I ever owned one. And indeed the crime is of such a hue, that the time may yet come, that a man who has, in a single instance, goneastray thus far, may never be able in his life time to regain public confidence; and should this change of public sentiment take place in my day, and render me disqualified to act in the promotion of this glorious cause, I hope to acquiesce in, and be resigned to suffer the just judgment, and be more humble under a sense of my past misconduct; meanwhile I shall doubtless have the pleasure of rejoicing at seeing this stigma on our religious professions, and scar upon our national escutcheon, eradicated by men of clean hands.”[35]

The first issue of the Manumission Intelligencer was published in March, 1819, at Jonesboro, Tennessee. It was a weekly at first, and, in this form, about fifty issues were published, eight or ten copies of which are in the possession of various individuals in Washington County. In 1820, Embree changed the paper to a monthly octavo and called it The Emancipator.[36]Due to Embree’s death, December 12, 1820, The Emancipator was forced to discontinue, after a very prosperous existence of eight months, during which time a subscription list of 2000 had been secured.[37]The numbers issued were bound in one volume of one hundred and twenty pages, a copy of which is in the possession of Esq. Thomas J. Wilson, who married Mr. Embree’s daughter.

Embree said that the purpose of “This paper is especially designed by the editor to advocate theabolition of slavery, and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject. It will contain all the necessary information that the editor can obtain of the progress of the abolition of slavery of the descendants of Africa, together with a concise history of their introduction into slavery, collected from the best authority.”[38]

Mr. Embree, in discussing the progress of abolition in Tennessee and his publication, said:

Twenty years ago, the cause of abolition was so unpopular in Tennessee that it was at the risk of a man’s life that he interfered or assisted in establishing the liberty of a person of color that was held in slavery, though held contrary to law. The lives of some of my intimate acquaintances, I well recollect to have been threatened, who had felt it their duty to aid some out of their unlawful thralldom. And it was sufficient in those times to procure a man the general hatred of his neighbors, although he never even succeeded, and the case made plain that the poor negro was not lawfully a slave. But by little and little, times are much changed here, until societies of respectable citizens have arisen to plead the cause of abolition; and instead of it being a disgrace to a man to be a member of these societies, it is rather a mark of the goodness of his heart, and redounds to his honor. I have no hesitation in believing that less than twenty years ago a man would have been mobbed, and the printing office torn down for printing and publishing anything like the Emancipator; whereas it now meets the approbation of thousands, and is patronized perhaps at least equal to any other paper in the State.[39]

There was a very close connection between Embree’s publication and those of Lundy and Garrison. Lundy was a contributor to Osborn’s Philanthropist, published at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and made two trips to see Osborn about becoming connected with his publication. The contest over the admission of Missouri attracted Lundy’s interest, and before this matter was settled, Osborn had sold his paper. Meanwhile, Embree had established at Jonesboro, Tennessee, The Emancipator. Lundy now abandoned the idea of an anti-slavery journal, but, on learning of Embree’s death in 1820, he decided that the anti-slavery forces must have an organ. In July, 1821, at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, he issued the first number of The Genius of Universal Emancipation.Lindsay Swift, in his life of Garrison, said: “It was the legitimate successor in spirit of Elihu Embree’s Emancipator, started the year previous in Tennessee.”[40]Lundy published only eight numbers of The Genius in Ohio, when he was persuaded by Embree’s friends to remove The Genius to Tennessee and publish it on Embree’s press.[41]He, accordingly, bought Embree’s press and the subscription list to his Emancipator, and published The Genius in Tennessee for nearly three years.[42]Lundy in a letter, dated March 16, 1823, said: “My paper circulates well. If any person had told me when I commenced that I should be as successful under all my disadvantages as I have been, I could not have believed him.”[43]

Tennessee is really the mother of abolition literature in the United States. She was the original home of The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, became the seat of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, and sent out Osborn who established The Philanthropist in Ohio. Of course, Lundy was the inspiration of Garrison, who decided to establish The Liberator after his association with Lundy, and this publication is just as truly a continuation of The Genius as it was the prolonged life of The Emancipator. Instead of assigning first place to the work of Garrison, as Johnson’s Life of Garrison, Greeley’s History of American Conflict, Wilson’s History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, and Von Holst’s Constitutional and Political History of the United States do, it seems that this pioneer work of Embree really made possible the work of Lundy and Garrison.

From 1815 to 1834, the legislature was constantly petitioned by the abolitionists of the state. These petitions prayed for easier conditions of emancipation, better treatment of slaves, prevention of separation of husband andwife, prohibition of the entrance of slaves into the state, and some plan of disestablishment of slavery. The Scriptures, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and the laws of nature were usually made the basis of these petitions.

In 1817, one of the most suggestive of these petitions was presented. This petition proposed that the courts be empowered in granting petitions for freedom to require the master to “give to those he is discharging a lease on lands for years, free of rent, charge and taxes, with provisions adequate for the first year, with a limited portion of stock and articles of husbandry.”[44]“For years,” it states, “we have seen monied aristocracies rising in our land; and wealth attaching reverence, and creating distinction; in proportion as these evils shall increase, will men’s consciences be seared and their minds turned against the rights and liberties of those, who constitute an essential part of their wealth.” It also called attention to the need for additional protection for free negroes, and suggested that it be made a felony to steal and sell a free negro into slavery. It also pointed out that the young free negroes with neither father nor mother alive or free should be attached to suitable persons, preferably their emancipators, to be “reared to habits of industry, and prepared for the duties of life.”[45]This petition was signed by eighty-eight citizens, among whom was Jno. H. Eaton, later Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War.

In 1815, there was a petition presented to the legislature, signed by four hundred and four citizens, of whom twenty-two were slaveholders, asking that a general plan for disestablishing slavery be enacted. There were thirty-six petitions, signed by 2153 persons, presented to the legislature in 1817,[46]and twenty-one petitions signed by 2253 persons in 1819.[47]The Manumission Society of Tennessee presented a petition to the legislature in 1819, asking that thechildren of slaves be emancipated at a certain age, that slaves capable of supporting themselves be manumitted without the assumption of heavy obligations by their masters, and that the “inhuman and barbarous practice of trading in slaves be prohibited.”

These petitions became more numerous in the later twenties. In 1825, there were 497 petitions presented to the legislature; in 1827, there were 2818, and 1328 in 1829. These petitions were signed by hundreds. In addition to these circulated petitions, there were many individual requests for the permission to emancipate entire families without security, or with permission for the negroes to remain in the state.

“It is supposed,” said the Nashville Republican, February 20, 1834, “that efforts will be made to insert a provision for the gradual abolition of slavery, and perhaps the colonization of our colored population. Upon the propriety of this step we shall not at present decide. Much would depend upon the nature of the provision, whether well adapted to our present and future condition. The legislature of Tennessee has already taken up the cause of colonization, and made, perhaps, as liberal provision for it as our finances permitted. The nature of things, the march of public opinion, the voice of religion, all have said that American slavery must have an end. What shall be the legislative measures to that effect, and where they shall begin, are questions for prudence to determine.”[48]

In accordance with this prophecy, as soon as the convention was organized, petitions were presented, proposing the following amendment to the constitution:

All slaves born within the limits of the state of Tennessee from and after the first day of January, 1835, shall be free, together with their issue, upon the said slaves, so born, as aforesaid, arriving at the age of twenty-one years, and upon condition that within one year after their so arriving at theage of twenty-one years, they, together with their issue, remove without the limits of the state of Tennessee, and never return to reside therein—and that any slave or slaves who reside without the limits of the state of Tennessee, on or after the first day of January, 1835, and who may afterwards be brought within the limit of the said state to reside, or who remain within the said limits for a term of more than sixty days under any pretence whatever, such slave or slaves shall be free, and all slaves who shall have attained the said age of twenty-one years, and who shall not have removed without the limits of said state within 12 months thereafter, shall be hired out by some authority, prescribed by the legislature for one, two, or three years, and the proceeds of their labor, appropriated for defraying the expense of removing them to Liberia, in Africa, or to such places without the limits of the United States as may be considered suitable for their reception, and for providing for their substance for twelve months after their arrival at their new home.[49]

The convention, despite the efforts of a determined minority, well backed by its constituency, steadily refused to consider these memorials on slavery. They were at first merely read and laid on the table. On May 30, Mr. Stephenson, of Washington County, moved the appointment of a committee of thirteen, one from each congressional district, to whom the memorials should be referred, and who should report to the convention a plan for the disestablishment of slavery. This motion was lost on June 2.[50]June 6, Mr. Allen, of Sumner County, moved the appointment of a committee of three, one from each division of the state, to draft resolutions, giving reasons why the convention refused to consider the petitions of the memorialists. After vain attempts to amend the motion, it prevailed. The president of the convention appointed a committee of three, consisting of Messrs. Allen, John A. McKinney, and Huntsman.[51]Mr. Fogg of Davidson County, was substituted on the committeefor Mr. Allen, and Mr. McKinney was made chairman. On motion of Mr. McKinney, the memorial on slavery was turned over to the committee.

June 19, the committee reported through its chairman, Mr. John A. McKinney. The report is very clever in its arguments and significant for its admissions and professions. It was really a polite apology for slavery. It gave the following as the main reasons that the convention refused to consider the memorials on slavery:

1. That if Tennessee were to say that the children of all slaves born after a specified time would become free at a certain age, it would mean either that these slaves would be sold to other slave states before they became free, or that their masters would go there with them.[52]2. That such congregating of slaves would aggravate their situation and tend toward a servile war.[53]3. “That in Tennessee, slaves are treated with as much humanity as in any part of the world, where slavery exists. Here they are well clothed and fed, and the labor they have to perform is not grievous nor burdensome.”[54]4. That the slaves of Tennessee do not want to leave the state and that, if their wishes are respected, the prayers of the memorialists will not be granted.

2. That such congregating of slaves would aggravate their situation and tend toward a servile war.[53]

3. “That in Tennessee, slaves are treated with as much humanity as in any part of the world, where slavery exists. Here they are well clothed and fed, and the labor they have to perform is not grievous nor burdensome.”[54]

4. That the slaves of Tennessee do not want to leave the state and that, if their wishes are respected, the prayers of the memorialists will not be granted.

This report admits that slavery is a great evil and utters the following prophecy of its abolition: “The ministers of our holy religion will knock at the door of the hearts of the owners of slaves, telling every one of them to let his bondsman and his bondswoman go free, and to send them back to the land of their forefathers, and the voice of these holy men will be heard and obeyed, and even those who lend a deaf ear to the admonitions in the hour of death, will, on a bed of sickness and at the approach of death, make provision for the emancipation of their slaves, and for theirtransportation to their home on the coast of Africa.”[55]This report was adopted by the convention by a vote of 44 to 10.

Mathew Stephenson, of Washington County, supported by John McGoughey, Richard Bradshaw, and James Gillespey, prepared a protest to the committee’s report in which they said:

We believe that the importance of the subject, deeply involving the interest and safety of the State, both in a political and moral point of view, together with the number and respectability of the memorialists, merited from this convention a more respectful notice and consideration, than merely to appoint a committee of three, with instructions to give reasons why the convention would not take up and consider the matter.[56]

This protest from members of the Convention was supported by petitions from the anti-slavery forces in the state. A petition from the citizens of Jefferson called attention to some of the weaknesses of the report of the committee of three, such as the admission of the great evil of slavery, its subversiveness of republican institutions, the selling of slaves to the more southern slaveholding states, the pitiable condition of the free negroes, which was equally applicable to white men, and the fallacy of the argument that Tennessee would ever be more favorable to emancipation.

The protest of this committee, re-enforced by these “loud and reiterated calls, for at least some prospective relief from the evils” of slavery, persuaded the convention to make a more detailed analysis of the memorials of slavery in order to make its position clear to the people of the state. On July 9, a motion was adopted to re-commit the memorials on slavery to the committee of three for a second report.

The second report of the Committee of three showed that there were 1804 signatures to the memorials and that only 105 of these were designated as slaveholders.[57]The reportadmitted that there might be some signatures of slaveholders not so designated, but that such a number was likely inconsiderable. The report showed that the slaveholding petitioners did not represent the owners of five hundred slaves, and probably not of half that number, while the owners of one hundred and fifty thousand slaves were unrepresented by the memorialists.

The memorialists represented the counties of Washington, Greene, Jefferson, Cocke, Sevier, Blount, McMinn, Monroe, Knox, Rhea, Roane, Overton, Bedford, Lincoln, Maury, and Robertson, distributed as follows: two hundred and seventy-three in Washington; three hundred and seventy-eight in Greene; thirty-three in Maury; sixty-seven in Overton; twenty-four in Robertson; one hundred and five in Lincoln; one hundred and thirty-nine in Bedford; and smaller numbers in the other nine counties from which the petitions were presented.[58]The number of memorialists was rather small as compared with the five hundred and fifty thousand population of the state, and was almost entirely unrepresentative of the slaveocracy of the state.

The committee further showed that almost all the petitions presented a plan of emancipation. About one-half of the memorialists asked that all slave children born after 1835 be made free, and that all slaves in the state be made free by 1855. They asked that all negroes be sent out of the state. The other memorials asked that all the slaves be emancipated by 1866 and colonized.

The committee thought, “to assert that the hundred and fifty thousand slaves now in this state, together with their increase, could be emancipated and colonized in the short term of twenty-one or even thirty-two years, with the aid of means at the command of the State, is a proposition so full of absurdity, that no person in his sober senses, who had taken any time to reflect on the subject, would possibly maintain.”[59]

This report was followed by another protest, July 21, made by a committee consisting of Mathew Stephenson, Richard Bradshaw, and John McGoughey, to the effect that the memorialists were not fairly treated by the convention, and that the committee of three rather labored in its report to ridicule their petitions instead of answering them by proposing some constructive plan of abolition.

Mr. Joseph Kincaid protested against the reference made in the second report of the committee to the free negro. The report stated that, “Unenviable as is the condition of the slave, unlovely as is slavery in all its aspects, bitter as the draught may be that the slave is doomed to drink, nevertheless, his condition is better than the condition of the free man of color, in the midst of a community of white men with whom he has no common interest, no fellow-feeling, no equality.”[60]“From the above conclusions, which the committee arrived at in their report, it would seem,” said Mr. Kincaid, “that they hold slavery to be a more enviable situation, than that of freedom under the above circumstances: Therefore, it would seem to follow, that those colored people, who are now free, should be subjected to slavery, in order to better their condition—and that slavery should be rendered perpetual.”[61]

Despite the persistent efforts of a small though respectable minority in behalf of abolition, it cannot be said that the convention at any stage of its proceedings evinced any pronounced anti-slavery attitude. It was more anti-negro than anti-slavery. It deplored the existence of slavery, and indicated that in the course of time colonization might eliminate slavery. In anticipation of a possible compensated emancipation, the convention inserted a clause in the constitution by a vote of 30 to 27, forbidding the legislature to abolish slavery without the consent of the owners and without paying them a money equivalent for the slaves emancipated. It was later attempted to place a constitutionalprohibition on compensated emancipation, but it failed by a vote of 3 to 20.[62]

There continued to be anti-slavery forces in the state as long as slavery existed. In 1835, there was organized at Rock Creek, in East Tennessee, an abolition society that advocated immediate abolition. It was one of three abolition societies at this time in the entire South, the other two being in Virginia and Kentucky. This society lasted only two years.[63]In 1836, fifty-five citizens of Rhea County sent a petition to the legislature, protesting against a law that the legislature had passed making it a penitentiary offence to receive abolition literature. This protest states, “that said law is too bloody, too tyrannical and too despotic to govern a free people which we profess to be in practice and should be in theory.” The petitioners further state that they are “opposed to the manner in which such law has curtailed our most sacred privileges, the free communication of thought upon any subject provided we tell the truth.”[64]The Maryville Intelligencer, issued at the seat of Maryville College, published reports of the synods of the Presbyterian Church, yet the editor remarked that “this publication, we must remember, is after a law making it penal in Tennessee to receive any anti-slavery paper or pamphlet, yes, making it a penitentiary offense to receive this very report of the Kentucky Synod.”[65]Hon. John M. Lea made one of the last anti-slavery addresses in Tennessee before the Apprentices’ Union at Nashville in 1841.[66]In 1849, the Jonesboro Whig said: “In Tennessee, the residence of James K. Polk, especially in East Tennessee, anti-slavery sentiments are strong and decided.” The Knoxville Tribune at this same time was publishing a series of papers onabolition, advocating the calling of a constitutional convention to amend the constitution to “open the way for the full and final redemption of the state.”[67]

A correspondent from Tennessee in the New York Observer, writing on abolition in the state, said in 1849:

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