The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865

by C. Perry Patterson

IV. The Friends.

The Quakers led decidedly in the movement of abolition. As early as 1770 in their annual meeting attention was called to the treatment of the slave and to “the iniquitous practice of importing negroes.”[128] In 1772 it was decided in their annual meeting that no Friend should buy a slave of any other person than a Friend in unity. This regulation might be violated if it was to unite husband and wife or mother and children, or for other reasons if approved by monthly meeting.[129] Advance was made again in 1774 and in 1775 when the yearly meeting decided “That Friends in unity shall neither buy nor sell a negro without the consent of the monthly meeting to which they belong.”[130] In 1776 the Friends reached complete abolition.[131] The yearly meeting advised with unanimity that the members of the Friends’ Society “clear their hands” of the slaves as rapidly as possible. By the close of the Revolution the Friends were practically rid of slaves. In the year 1787 there was not a slave in the possession of an acknowledged Quaker.[132] They never recanted on this proposition.

The attitude of the Southern Quakers was at first amelioration of the condition of the slave. They were interested in the physical condition of the negro, possibly as much for economic reasons as for altruistic motives.[133] In North Carolina, where the immediate background of Tennessee Quakerism is found, the question of slavery was slow in rising, but soon thereafter became a very stubborn question.[134] The yearly meetings of 1758 and 1770 took decidedly hostile attitude toward the buying and selling of slaves, and demanded that those that were inherited be treated well.[135]

The Quakers in North Carolina worked personally among the Friends for abolition and as an organization they petitioned the Legislature of the State to modify its laws in the direction of justice and mercy. They protested bitterly against free negroes, who had been given their freedom by conscientious masters, being taken to other states and sold into slavery.[136]

The harshness of North Carolina law created a modified Quakerism not to be found elsewhere. The yearly meeting created agents to take charge of slaves that masters wanted to manumit, and look after them. By this method they proposed to give virtual freedom to the slaves when legal freedom was not recognized by the state.[137] This practice continued to the Civil War.

The Friends in Tennessee not only refrained from owning slaves themselves, but by manumission societies, by petitions to legislatures, and by abolition literature, sought to abolish slavery. Reference is made in a previous chapter to the work of such men as Embree, Osborn, and Lundy, who, if they had remained in Tennessee with all the Friends, instead of going to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, might have helped to bring about a different result. Charles Osborn, who was the leader in organizing the Tennessee Manumission Society, and who moved to Ohio and began publishing the Philanthropist, an anti-slavery paper, later moved to Indiana, whither he was followed by Jesse Wills and John Underhill, Friends who had helped to organize manumission societies in Tennessee. The Emancipator, Embree’s publication, referring to these emigrations to the North, 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.[138]

From about 1809 to 1834, the Friends in Tennessee were regularly petitioning the Legislature of the State. Their petitions usually asked for the abolition of slavery, if possible; if not, to mitigate the evil “of separating husbands, wives, and children.”[139] They believed that the elimination of this practice would make the slaves more virtuous and increase their respect for the marriage relation. They petitioned against the domestic slave trade as they saw this was increasing the grip of slavery on the state.

The Friends were the most vigilant anti-slavery workers in the State. If all the Protestant churches had been as devoted to the cause of freedom in the early days of the State before there were many slaves in the state and before West Tennessee was settled, the story of the Convention of 1834 would likely be different. The Friends like the other religionists had to succumb to the superior pro-slavery forces that always controlled the state government.