The planters of Tennessee realized that slavery was profitable, and were jealous of all forces that threatened its existence. They knew that the cotton system depended on slave labor. The slaveholding sections of the state were the strong supporters of colonization societies, not in the sense of anti-slavery, but as a protection to slavery. “The existence of colored freedom in the midst of a slave population,” said their petitions, “has a tendency to impair the value and utility of that description.” It will cause “those who might have considered bondage as one of the decrees of Fate, or provisions of superior power, imposed upon their sable race, where all were placed in a like condition ... to view with jealousy and discontent the elevation of some of their own family to a grade so far above their reach.”[45] This memorial suggested the expediency of abolishing colored freedom, which was actually attempted in the later fifties.
“The farmer should remember,” said Coggesball, “that he has not merely farmers’ duties to attend to, but that, as a slaveholder, and as a member of society, he has personal and political rights to watch over and protect. Will he look at the assembled combinations that are against him; at the encroachments upon his homestead, who are advancing with torch in hand and fanatic cry of freedom, even at the price of extermination of the white race of slaveholders? And see that they are headed by the pulpit, composed of its three thousand clergy, with the anti-Christ motive of a Judas Iscariot marked upon their physiognomy, and instigated by the price of thirty shekels of silver, from England’s commercial schemers, swearing in their fanatical zeal that the Bible itself is not the Word of God, they recognize in the establishment and the sustaining of this relation, and reading their homilies on the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line, to the mob collections from the purlieus of their cities, who, like themselves aspire to the distinction given to the Beecher family, by some way, who lately discovered that in this world there were three distinct classes of people, to-wit: the saint, the sinner, and the Beecher family.”
As the pressure became more intense, the planters became more intolerant of any discussion on the slavery question. The conclusion of Coggesball’s discussion gives the frame of mind that most of the slaveholders had acquired by 1860. “For myself,” he said, “my relation to slavery is one that I allow no man, even my neighbor, who is a non-slaveholder, to counsel me respecting. So sinister and heartless has the northern public become, they but elucidate the fact that there is no tyranny like that of the full-blooded fanatic. I have no missionary ground in my heart for them to reach; my duty is a responsible one. God and my country recognize it, and I care not what others think of me respecting it. I believe that slavery is a blessing to the slave in the largest extent, produced by the wisdom of God, and retained as such by his overruling providence, and that the Christian slaveholder is the true friend of the black man.”[46]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Knox, Bledsoe, Bradley, Granger, Greene, Hawkins, McMinn, Monroe, Roane, and Hamilton were counties noted for their production of corn and wheat.
[2] Comptroller’s Report for 1850, p. 44.
[3] Census of 1850, Population I, p. 63.
[4] Comptroller’s Report for 1856, p. 44.
[5] Comptroller’s Report for 1857-8, p. 165.