The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865

by C. Perry Patterson

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]