FOOTNOTES:
[I] Thomas Jefferson Wilson, an aged, intelligent and respected citizen, now nearly blind, living at Chesterton, in Washington county, Tenn., writing to me, April 1, 1897, among other things, says: “In the spring of 1833 I went to live with Elijah Embree [brother of Elihu], and continued to reside with him until his death, in 1846. During this time I had access to all his books and papers, and I found a copy of ‘The Emancipator.’ I hunted up all of the numbers that had been issued, and had James Dilworth of Jonesboro to bind them in book form. Elihu Embree claimed [in ‘The Emancipator’] that his paper was the first paper ever published in the United States wholly in the interest of emancipation. It was a monthly paper, and the first number was published in 1820, during which year Embree died, and the paper ceased. The first movement that I know of in Tennessee in the interest of emancipation was among the Quakers. They organized a society on Lost Creek, in Jefferson county, from which sprang many similar societies all over East Tennessee. Charles Owens, Benjamin Lundy and a great many others who were emancipationists moved [from Eastern Tennessee] to Ohio between 1815 and 1820.”
With reference to this subject of the first abolition paper, see an interesting note on Elihu Embree, in the interpretation of the “Centennial Dream,” in the [appendix] to this volume.