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.