[43] Richmond Examiner, December 9, 1864—Gov. Smith's Message. Jones, Diary, Vol. II, p. 43; pp. 432-433. Schwab, The Confederate States of America, p. 194.
[44] Off. Reds. Rebell., Series IV, Vol. III, p. 1161.
Ibid., Series III, Vol. V, pp. 711-712; Davis, Confederate Government, Vol. II, p. 660.
[45] Rhodes, History of U. S., Vol. V, 1864-1865, p. 81.
[46] Off. Reds. Rebell., Series IV, Vol. III, pp. 1193-1194 and Appendix.
[47] Cf. Southern Correspondence throughout the Rebellion Records.
THE LEGAL STATUS OF FREE NEGROES AND SLAVES IN TENNESSEE
In 1790, the free colored population of Tennessee was 361, while the slave numbered 3,417.[1] In 1787, three years previous, Davidson County, which then, as now, comprised the most important and thickly settled part of the Cumberland Valley, had a population of 105 Negroes between the ages of 1 and 60.[2] Nashville was just a rough community in the wilderness with a few settlers from the older districts of the East, living in several hewed and framed log-houses and twenty or more rough cabins. The census of 1790 gives Davidson County 677 Negroes, a figure which compared with the 3,778 Negroes in the entire State at that enumeration, means that this frontier region had already grown important enough to draw to it nearly one-fifth of the Negro population of the commonwealth. In 1800, there were in the State 13,893 Negroes, of whom 3,104, or nearly one fourth, were in Davidson County. Thereafter, although the ratio between the county and State did not increase in favor of the county, still it kept up so that by 1850 Davidson had the largest Negro population of any county in the State. During the decade 1850-60 Shelby County, containing the important center, Memphis, gained the ascendency in number of Negro inhabitants, which it has since that time maintained. The likely cause of this shifting was the steady growth of cotton-raising districts and their rapid expansion toward the West and South. A general intimidation of the Negroes of Nashville and vicinity occurred in 1856, probably having some influence on the decline of population for that period in question. This cause, however, is not sufficient to explain the constant superiority of numbers in the Southwestern Tennessee region thereafter.