rict of Columbia, the
prevention of the separation of families, the prohibition of the interstate
slave trade, the restriction of slavery, the general improvement of colored
people through church and school, and especially the establishment among
them of the right of marriage.[43] To procure the abolition of slavery by
argument, other persons of this section organized another body, known as
the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West Tennessee."[44] It once
had a large membership and tended to increase and spread the agitation in
behalf of abolition.

In view of these favorable tendencies, it was thought up to 1830 that
Tennessee, following the lead of Kentucky, would become a free State.[45]
But just as the expansion of slavery into the interior of the Atlantic
States attached those districts to the fortunes of the slaveholding class,
it happened in some cases in the mountains which to some extent became
indoctrinated by the teaching of the defenders of slavery. Then the ardent
slavery debate in Congress and the bold agitation, like that of the
immediatists led by William Lloyd Garrison, alienated the support which
some mountaineers had willingly given the cause. Abolition in these States,
therefore, began to weaken and rapidly declined during the thirties.[46]
Because of a heterogeneous membership, these organizations tended to
develop into other societies representing differing ideas of anti-slavery
factions which had at times made it impossible for them to cooperate
effectively in carrying out any plan. The slaveholders who had been members
formed branches of the American Colonization Society, while the radical
element fell back upon organizing branches of the Underground Railroad to
cooperate with those of their number who, seeing that it was impossible
to attain their end in the Southern mountains, had moved into the
Northwest Territory to colonize the freedmen and aid the escape of
slaves.[47] Among these workers who had thus changed their base of
operation were not only such noted men as Joshua Coffin, Benjamin Lundy,
and James G. Birney, but less distinguished workers like John Rankin, of
Ripley; James Gilliland, of Red Oak; Jesse Lockhart, of Russellville;
Robert Dobbins, of Sardinia; Samuel Crothers, of Greenfield; Hugh L.
Fullerton, of Chillicothe, and William Dickey, of Ross or Fayette County,
Ohio. There were other southern abolitionists who settled and established
stations of the Underground Railroad