This society issued in 1824 a memorial to the Methodist Episcopal Conference which met that year at Columbia, Tennessee. The conference agreed to the anti-slavery spirit of the memorial and to a coöperation with the society in the realization of its aims.[40] March 22, 1825, the society at its thirtieth quarterly meeting sent an address to the Manumission Societies of America, making suggestions for the celebration of Fourth of July, 1826, as Jubilee Day.[41]
The Moral, Religious Manumission Society sent an address to the American Convention in 1826 that was too radical for publication.[42] The society seems to have been dissolved about 1827.[43]
The manumission societies came to realize that the state would not tolerate a large element of free negroes within its borders. They saw that their success was conditioned on the colonization of the free negroes as rapidly as they were emancipated. The Tennessee Manumission Society in its memorial of 1816 to the churches of the United States advocated in regard to free negroes, “that a colony be laid off for their reception as they became free.”[44] The Presbyterian Synod of Tennessee in session at the Nashville church the following year, adopted resolutions favoring colonization, and congratulated the society for its efforts in this direction.[45] A colonization society seems to have been organized in 1822, but there is no evidence of its continued existence.[46] The Tennessee Manumission Society, in its report to the American Convention for the year 1823, suggested that Congress make an appropriation for the purchase of a parcel of land on the American continent for the colonization of free negroes.[47] In 1825, the legislature of Tennessee advised its senators and representatives in Congress to use their influence in promoting a scheme of colonization of the free people of color.[48] In this same year, James Jones, president of the Tennessee Manumission Society, wrote Benjamin Lundy that he was much gratified at the progress being made to colonize the free people of color in the Haytian Republic,[49] and he quotes the resolution of the Tennessee Manumission Society, favoring the Haytian Republic as a rendezvous for free negroes.[50] Two years later, the legislature of Tennessee, in response to memorials and petitions of manumission societies and churches again instructed the Tennessee representatives in Congress to give their aid to the government of the United States in carrying into effect a plan of colonizing the free people of color.[51] From 1816 to 1829, there was constant agitation in Tennessee for a colonization society.
In 1829 the American Colonization Society worked out a plan for state societies. The state societies were to be auxiliaries to the national society, and were themselves to be a confederacy of county societies which in turn were to be composed of town and district societies. The town and district societies were to hold regular annual meetings and send delegates to the annual meeting of the state society, which was to be represented at the annual meeting of the national society.[52] In accordance with this plan Mr. Josiah F. Polk, agent for the American Colonization Society for the states of Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, and Alabama, on December 21, 1829, organized, at Nashville, the Tennessee Colonization Society, consisting of sixteen members. A president and one vice-president were elected. The membership soon increased to seventy-three and a fund of one hundred dollars was collected.[53]
The society held its first meeting on January 1, 1830, and elected a complete set of officers. Rev. Philip Lindsey, D.D., president of the University of Nashville, was made president of the society; R. H. McEwen, recording secretary; Henry A. Wise, corresponding secretary; and Orville Ewing, treasurer. Six vice-presidents and a board of six managers, consisting of prominent citizens, were elected.[54] The society at this time numbered about one hundred and twenty members[55] and contained twenty auxiliaries.[56] These auxiliaries had a large membership, and a list of strong officers of the most prominent people of the state. Andrew Jackson was much interested in colonization. He was vice-president of the American Colonization Society from 1819 to 1822.[57] Polk, in reporting on his work to the American Colonization Society, in 1829, said that much might be expected from the Tennessee Society.[58] Henry A. Wise, who was secretary of the Tennessee Colonization Society, made a very flattering report of its work to the national society in 1830. “We may expect,” said the African Repository, “benefits of the most important character, from the energy and liberality of the citizens of Tennessee. It cannot be forgotten that the legislature of this state was among the first to express its approbation of our scheme, as meriting the countenance and aid of the National Government.”[59] “Believing as I do,” said a Tennessee correspondent of the African Repository, “that under Providence it is the only feasible and judicious plan to ameliorate the condition of the free people of color in these states, and that it is a cause in which patriotism and humanity, are largely embarked, I shall do all I can to aid its progress; and I hear, with pleasure, of its continued prosperity.”[60] Polk, in his report of 1830, states that “The colored population is considered by the people of Tennessee and Alabama in general, as an immense evil to the country—but the free part of it, by all, as the greatest of all evils.”[61] A correspondent of the African Repository from Tennessee stated in 1831 that “the colonization movement had many friends in Tennessee and that they were determined to make every possible effort to aid the good cause.”[62]
The society at its meeting on November 8, 1831, appointed a committee of seven to solicit funds to defray the expenses of sending free negroes to Liberia. A committee of three was appointed to memorialize the legislature of Tennessee to make an appropriation for the aid of the society.[63] The legislature appointed a committee on colonization to consider the petition of the society, and, on September 30, 1833, passed two resolutions, requesting this committee to investigate the expediency of asking Congress for an annual appropriation of $100,000 and the general assembly for $5,000 to aid in colonizing free negroes in Liberia.[64] In response to this request, the legislature in 1833 passed a law, giving ten dollars to the state society for every free negro sent to Liberia, provided that not more than $500 was expended in any one year.[65]
The society held its annual meeting in the Hall of Representatives at the State Capitol, October 14, 1833, and was addressed by James G. Birney, of Alabama, agent of the American Colonization Society. “We admire this institution,” said the Nashville Banner, “and feel the utmost veneration and respect for the humane motives of its founders, and for those who are engaged in promoting its objects. It would afford us unfeigned pleasure to see all its generous designs crowned with complete success.”[66]
The petitions received by the legislature in 1832 and 1833 from the State Colonization Society and its auxiliaries contain the leading reasons advanced by these societies for colonization. The memorialists said:
We take it to be self-evident general proposition, that the benefits of government, should be extended alike to all its citizens; we are compelled, however, by our peculiar circumstances, to violate this general principle, by withholding from that class of citizens, the exercise of many political rights. They are excluded from the ordinary means of education, on the ground of prejudices which are quite natural, and which will probably never be removed. Nor is it at all likely for the same reasons, that they will be suffered to participate to any great extent if at all, in the benefits of an enlarged system of common schools, when carried into effect in our State; they must therefore of necessity remain ignorant, and by consequence vicious.