The reader, must not however, confuse the policy advocated and practised by those people of emancipation or of manumitting their slaves, with the doctrine of forcible abolition, or of freeing slaves by legislative enactment, without the consent of the owner. Petitions, with nearly two thousand signers or names to them, coming from all settlements in the state (territory) were presented to the Constitutional Convention in 1796, asking that a provision be embodied in the constitution prohibiting slavery in the state after the year 1864. This was the voice of prophecy coming up out of the Western Wilderness.
True philanthropy liberates its own slaves, and not other people’s without their consent.
The first private corporation chartered by the general assembly of Tennessee was the “Nolichucky River Company,” November 10, 1801. Its objects are briefly stated to be “to clear out and remove from the bed or channel of so much of the river Nolichucky as shall be within the limits of Washington, Greene and Jefferson counties, all and every obstruction which in any way impede or hinder the navigation of the same.” The tenth section of the act is as follows:
Be it enacted, That three custom houses be established on said river, for the purpose of receiving toll, in such places as the said Nolichucky River Company may think expedient; and any boat, craft or other vessel, entering in above the upper custom house shall pay at the rate of one dollar per ton; any boat, craft or other vessel, entering between the upper custom house and the second below, shall pay at the rate of seventy-five cents per ton; and any boat, craft or other vessel, entering in between the second custom house and the third, shall pay at the rate of fifty cents per ton.
It is worth the time of the curious to read the whole of this act, as it is not probable that another like it can be found in the statute law of any other state.
Another act deserving our attention is one passed by the third general assembly, creating the second private corporation chartered in Tennessee. What a model it was and is for the guidance of all future general assemblies, and how free we would be today from the many questions that now vex courts and legislative bodies, if we had only followed this wise precedent. But we have not; our “swollen estimate of our own pre-eminence” seems to have so beclouded our minds as to cut off vision in both directions: too proud and stiff-necked to look back and study the example and teachings of our fathers, and too weak-minded, with all our boasting, to see a single span of life into the future, we have lost that which they, in their far-reaching mental grasp, held on to in the charter—control and regulation of private corporations by means of commissions appointed by state authority and compensated by the corporation, these provisions being part and parcel of the charter. The act referred to was passed November 14, 1801, and incorporated the Cumberland Turnpike Company—nothing but a little turnpike company, to build a road or public highway “from the district of Hamilton, across the Cumberland mountains to the district of Mero”: but these backwoods pioneers, who (as we, their offspring, have supposed) did not know how to spell “railroad,” “commission,” “regulation,” “freight,” etc., actually had sense and foresight enough, without books and court decisions bearing on the subject to guide them, to embody in this second charter of a private corporation granted in Tennessee provisions as follows:
1. It might make by-laws, rules and regulations not inconsistent with the laws of the state.
2. It must “measure and mile-mark” the whole road, “erect bridges and causeys” (causeways?), dig and level fields, hills and mountains to the width of fifteen feet, and maintain and keep the road in good order and repair.
3. The life of the franchise is limited to a period of ten years.
4. The corporation is required to execute a bond, in the sum of two thousand dollars, with approved security, for keeping the road in safe condition and good repair.