ABOLITION
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.
I. PRIVATE ABOLITION.
A. METHODS.
(1) _By Deed._
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 a majority 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]
(2) _By Will._
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 years received
their freedom at the same time the mother received hers.[10]
(3) _By Contract._
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.
(4) _By Bill of Sale._
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.
(5) _By Implication._
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
institution of a suit against a slave was an implication of his freedom,
otherwise the bequest had no effect.[15]
(6) _By the Effect of Foreign Laws._
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]
B. THE EXTENT OF EMANCIPATION IN TENNESSEE.
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.
II. ANTI-SLAVERY LEADERS.
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 moved to 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 famous _Letters 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 virtue from 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 whom twelve 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, gone astray 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]
III. ABOLITION LITERATURE.
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 the _abolition 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.
IV. PETITIONS TO THE LEGISLATURE FOR ABOLITION.
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 and wife, 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 the children 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.
V. ABOLITION IN THE CONVENTION OF 1834.
“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 the
age 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 committee for 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.
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 their transportation 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 report admitted 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 constitutional
prohibition on compensated emancipation, but it failed by a vote of 3 to
20.[62]
VI. ABOLITION SENTIMENT AFTER 1834.
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 on abolition,
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:
The question is being a good deal agitated, and fully
discussed. Many who own slaves oppose the institution, and
non-slaveholders almost to a man. In my neighborhood of some
five miles square, there are about eighty families, and a
number of them own slaves, and there is but one advocate of
slavery. A slaveholder said, “It is of no use to avoid the
question any longer. The sooner it is settled the better, for
God has declared that right shall prevail, and slavery must
end.” Another individual who occupies a high station in society
said, “Agitate the question and anti-slavery will prevail.”
I might produce hundreds, yes, thousands of expressions of
opinion equally strong and decisive. The great difficulty seems
to be as to the means of getting rid of the evil.[68]
While there was this anti-slavery minority expressing itself in an
intermittent way after 1834, the great majority of the state was
thoroughly pro-slavery. In 1835, Rev. Amos Dresser, an active member
of the Abolition Society of Ohio, was arrested in Nashville for
publishing and circulating pamphlets among the slaves to incite them
to insurrection. The Committee of Vigilance and Safety, consisting of
sixty-two citizens, tried him and found him guilty. He was sentenced to
receive twenty stripes on his bare back and to leave the city within
twenty-four hours. He received the flogging, and did not wait for the
expiration of the twenty-four hours.[69]
Public meetings were generally held, denouncing such insurrectionists
and their accomplices. It was reported that Arthur Tappan and others of
New York City had furnished funds to aid the circulation of abolition
literature in the state. At one of these meetings held by the Committee
of Vigilance and Safety, the merchants of Tennessee were requested to
boycott Arthur Tappan and Company and all other abolitionists. These
incidents were largely responsible for the Act of 1836 mentioned above
and the Gag Resolution in Andrew Jackson’s administration. In the debate
in the Senate on the Calhoun Resolution, both of the senators from
Tennessee, Hugh Lawson White and Felix Grundy, defended the flogging
of Rev. Dresser. Senator Grundy advocated a “summary disposal of such
abolitionists.”[70]
Tennessee was never a unit on the slavery question. There were scattered
groups of abolitionists throughout the state as long as slavery existed,
while East Tennessee was almost solidly anti-slavery. The contest over
slavery in the convention of 1834, in the churches, and in politics
created divisions among the people of the state that have had a permanent
influence upon the life of the state.
It is singularly true, however, that Tennessee did finally abolish
slavery by popular vote. She was the only one of the Confederate States
that was excepted from President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of
1863[71] and that abolished slavery by its own act. There was an attempt
to hold a convention of Union men in Nashville in the fall of 1864, but
the Confederate army in the vicinity of Nashville made it unsafe for
the convention to meet. It did meet January 8, 1865, and on the ninth
recommended that Article II, Section 31, of the Constitution of 1834,
to the effect that “the General Assembly shall have no power to pass
laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their owner
or owners,” be abrogated and that slavery be abolished forever, and the
legislature be forbidden to re-establish property in man. These proposed
constitutional changes were submitted to popular vote of the Union men,
February 22, 1865, and Andrew Johnson as military governor of Tennessee
announced that the amendments had been adopted and that “the shackles
have been formally stricken from the limbs of more than 275,000 slaves in
the state.”[72]
“The amended constitution of the State of Tennessee adopted on the 22nd
of February, 1865,” said Judge Shackelford in 1865, “prohibits slavery
or voluntary servitude, in the State of Tennessee, and it has forever
ceased to exist.”[73] It is clear, then, that his amendment was not the
ratification of President Lincoln’s Proclamation, which did not apply to
Tennessee, but was itself the act of emancipation by which the slaves of
Tennessee ceased to be property and became free men.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Acts of 1777, Ch. 6, Sec. 2.
[2] Acts of 1829, Ch. 29, Sec. 1. A special legislative grant was
requisite for a valid emancipation in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama,
and Mississippi. See James’ Dig., 398, Act of 1820; Prince’s Dig., 456,
Act of 1801; Toulman’s Dig., 632; Mississippi Rev. Code, 386. In North
Carolina and Tennessee, the courts granted emancipation—Haywood’s Manual,
525; Act of 1801, Ch. 27. In Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Maryland,
the master exercised this power under rules and regulations established
by the statutes of these states. 2 Litt. and Swi., 1155; 2 Missouri Laws,
744; 1 Rev. Code of Virginia, 433; Maryland Laws, Act of 1809, Ch. 171.
[3] Acts of 1854, Ch. 50, Sec. 1.
[4] Petitions in State Archives.
[5] Acts of 1801, Ch. 27, Sec. 3.
[6] Ibid., Sec. 4.
[7] Acts of 1784, Ch. 10, Sec. 7.
[8] Fisher’s Negroes v. Dabbs, 6 Yerger, 119 (1834).
[9] Acts of 1829, Ch. 29, Sec. 1.
[10] Harris v. Clarissa, 6 Yerger, 227 (1834).
[11] Acts of 1833, Ch. 81, Sec. 2.
[12] Lewis v. Simonton, 8 Humphrey, 189 (1847).
[13] Acts of 1784, Ch. 10, Sec. 7.
[14] Lewis v. Simonton, 8 Humphrey, 189 (1847).
[15] Wheeler, p. 385.
[16] Ibid., p. 335.
[17] Supra, p. 160.
[18] Phillips, Ulrich Bonnel, American Negro Slavery, p. 120.
[19] Nile’s Weekly Register, Vol. 14, pp. 321ff.
[20] McFerrin, I, 150.
[21] Southern History Association Publications, II, 108.
[22] Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. 2, pp. 233ff.
[23] Tennessee History Magazine, Vol. 1, p. 264.
[24] Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. 2, p. 246.
[25] Hoss, E. E., P. of V. S. H. S., No. 2, p. 11.
[26] The Genius, II, 2.
[27] Southern History Association Publications, II, 103.
[28] Phelan, p. 233.
[29] Southern History Association Publications, II, 104.
[30] The Emancipator, March 8, 1838, p. 175.
[31] Ibid., March 16, 1838, p. 178.
[32] The Emancipator, March 16, 1838, p. 178.
[33] Garrison’s Garrison, I, 88.
[34] P. of V. S. H. S., No. 2, p. 8.
[35] P. of V. S. H. S., No. 2, p. 22.
[36] Temple, O. P., p. 91.
[37] Weeks, S. R., Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 239; see also Martin,
A. E., Tennessee History Magazine, Vol. I, p. 267.
[38] Hoss, E. E., P. of V. S. H. S., No. 2, p. 7.
[39] S. H. A. P., II, p. 104.
[40] Swift, Lindsay, Life of Garrison, p. 60.
[41] Earl, Thomas, Life of Benjamin Lundy, pp. 16-20.
[42] Temple, p. 91.
[43] Earl, p. 21.
[44] Petitions of 1817, State Archives.
[45] Petitions of 1815, State Archives.
[46] Petitions of 1817, State Archives.
[47] Petitions of 1819, State Archives.
[48] The Nashville Republican, February 20, 1834.
[49] Petitions of 1834, State Archives.
[50] Journal of the Convention, p. 72.
[51] Ibid., p. 89.
[52] Journal of the Convention, p. 89.
[53] Ibid., p. 90.
[54] Ibid., p. 91.
[55] Journal of the Convention, p. 93.
[56] Ibid., p. 102.
[57] Ibid., p. 125.
[58] Journal of the Convention, p. 126.
[59] Ibid., p. 127.
[60] Journal of the Convention, p. 89.
[61] Ibid., p. 225.
[62] Ibid., p. 201; Constitution of 1834, Art. II, Sec. 31.
[63] The Liberator, July 25, 1835; American Anti-Slavery Almanac,
December, 1836, p. 47.
[64] Petitions of 1836, State Archives.
[65] Quarterly Anti-slavery Magazine, II, 364.
[66] Hale and Merritt, II, 300.
[67] Ninth Annual Report of American and Foreign Anti-slavery Society,
1849, p. 52.
[68] Hale and Merritt, II, 299.
[69] Ibid., p. 300.
[70] Fifth Annual Report of American Anti-slavery Society, 1838, pp.
72-73.
[71] Andrews v. Page, 3 Heiskell, 658 (1870).
[72] Acts of 1865, pp. IX-XIII.
[73] Nelson v. Smithfeter, 2 Caldwell, 14 (1865). See also Graves v.
Keaton, 3 Caldwell, 14 (1866); Wharton v. The State, 5 Caldwell, 3
(1867); Bedford v. Williams, 3 Caldwell, 210 (1867).