The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865

by C. Perry Patterson

PREFACE

This work was undertaken to discover the exact status of the negro in one of the border states. An effort has been made to give definite information as to the legal, social, economic, and religious condition of the negro from his introduction into slavery in Colonial Western North Carolina to the abolition of slavery in Tennessee in 1865.

The study reveals the struggles of the slave from a status of servitude under the common law through the institution of slavery regulated by an extensive slave-code into the final condition of an almost helpless citizen with a responsibility for which he was only partially prepared.

The status of the free negro is also established in his relations to both the slave and the whites. It was rather disappointing to find that the free negro was more disadvantageously situated than the slave. He never attained either civil or political equality, although he exercised the suffrage until 1834. He was subject to a special code different from either the slave code or the regular code.

It is clear, however, that the negro, whether slave or free, was making progress. He was receiving an industrial training without which he could never have sustained himself without help, when freedom came. His training for active participation in the body politic was negligible. He was taught the lesson of being obedient to law.

A constructive part of the study is the disclosure of a large body of loyal friends of the negro in all his stages of development. These consisted of not only the abolitionists, the Friends, and the anti-slavery forces generally, but of more conservative individuals who saw that the negro could be fitted for freedom only by a gradual process. The courts of the state deserve special mention in this connection.

The study has been a difficult one to make because of the scarcity of the sources and the deplorable condition of those that were available. The county records of Tennessee have either been burned, thrown away, or thrown together in heaps in the basement of county court houses. The state archives are in the attic of the Tennessee Capitol, covered with dust, and are practically inaccessible for any thorough study. The statutes of the state, records of courts, reports of anti-slavery societies, church minutes, petitions, slave codes, periodicals, travels, reminiscences, and newspapers are the principal sources consulted. A goodly number of general, state, and church histories and biographies proved useful for general information.

The work was begun under the direction of Professors Jernegan and Dodd of the University of Chicago, and continued under the guidance of Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard, Professor U. B. Phillips of the University of Michigan, and Professor William A. Dunning of Columbia University. Professor B. B. Kendrick of Columbia University was especially helpful in organizing the material. But for the stimulating and sympathetic assistance of these men, the study could not have been completed. The author alone is responsible for any errors of fact and the conclusions.

Caleb Perry Patterson.

The University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

CHAPTER I
Introduction

The introduction of slavery into Tennessee was a part of the westward movement of colonization. It had passed the experimental stage of its development in North Carolina before Tennessee acquired an independent political existence.[1] Its economic, social, and legal aspects had largely been determined before Tennessee was even settled.[2] As a system of labor, it had proved a valuable adjunct to the sturdy pioneers in converting the wilderness of North Carolina into a growing community that began immediately to look forward to statehood.[3] As a social institution, it had been left primarily to the regulation of custom. As a problem of government, an elaborate code had been enacted for its control. Its establishment and regulation in North Carolina prior to 1790 constitute, therefore, the genesis of this study.

Negro slaves were brought into North Carolina in 1663 by Virginia immigrants who planted a settlement on the Albemarle River.[4] A group of more thrifty Virginians, with a large number of slaves, settled in the central part of the state about the middle of the eighteenth century.[5] A number of small farmers came to the western part of the state with their slaves at about the same time.[6] It is impossible to state the exact number of slaves owned by these early settlers.

The opportuneness of these settlements is shown by a number of conditions. The contest between negro slavery and white servitude had been settled in favor of slavery. The Tuscorora Indians, the implacable enemies of negroes, were driven out of the colony in 1772. The moral evils of slavery had not appeared.[7] The English government in 1663, by chartering the Royal African Company to engage in the slave trade, became interested in the development of slavery, and, thereafter, discouraged the importation of indented servants into the colonies in order that this company might have a larger market for slaves.[8] It was early recognized that the industrial life of the colonies offered practically no place to the white servant at the expiration of his indenture. He was not financially able to purchase land and white servants or negro slaves, necessary to farming, nor could he find employment in the villages and small towns, because they were not sufficiently industrialized at this time to offer such opportunities.

These influences produced a rapid increase in the slave population of the colonies. In 1709, Rev. John Adams, a missionary, reported 800 slaves in North Carolina.[9] In 1717, there were 1,100 slaves out of a taxable population of 2,000.[10] Governor Burrington stated that there were 6,000 in 1730.[11] The census of 1754 showed a population of 9,128 slaves. In 1756, there were 10,800 negro taxables and as the ratio of taxable negroes (those of the age of twelve and above) to the total negro population was about ten to eighteen, there must have been, at this time, approximately 20,000 slaves in the colony. There were 39,000 in 1767.[12]

It is probable that the first slave was brought into Tennessee in 1766. There are court records which show that slaves were a part of an estate in Washington County in 1788. When John Sevier moved to Nolachucky in 1788, he owned slaves. James Robertson brought a “negro fellow” to Nashville in 1779. John Donelson was accompanied by negroes on his famous voyage to Nashville in the winter of 1779-80.[13] A court record, dated November, 1788, at Jonesboro, Tennessee, shows that Andrew Jackson owned a slave when he was only twenty-one years of age.[14] On the sixth of September, 1794, a negro belonging to Peter Turner was stolen by the Indians near the Sumner Court House.[15] Miss Jane Thomas, who came with her parents to Nashville in 1804, tells an interesting story of a prominent negro, who was highly regarded by the whites.[16] There was also in Nashville in 1805, a famous “Black Bob” who ran a tavern. So it is seen that slaves accompanied the westward movement into Tennessee, and that some of them became rather prominent free negroes. In 1796, when the census of the Southwest Territory was taken to ascertain if it contained sufficient inhabitants to be admitted into the Union as a state, it had a population of 77,262, of which 10,613 were slaves.[17] The population of East Tennessee was 65,339, of which twelve and one-half per cent were slaves. The population of West Tennessee (now Middle Tennessee) was 11,824, of which twenty per cent were slaves.[18]

The legal basis of slavery developed contemporary with the expansion of settlement toward the western part of the colony. The famous law of 1741 is regarded as the basis of the slave code of North Carolina, although the Act of 1715 marks the beginning of slave legislation in this colony. The laws of North Carolina were, in 1790, made the legal basis of the government of the Southwest Territory,[19] which became the State of Tennessee in 1796. These laws constitute the beginnings of the slave code of Tennessee. The common law status of the negro was, in this introductory period, gradually changed to a statutory basis. This development took, primarily, the form of granting privileges to, and placing restrictions upon, the negro. There were three political organizations that participated in this development: North Carolina, the State of Franklin, and the Southwest Territory.