curses them, in order to bring them to the point of
action."[5] At this time it was well known that both Tennessee and
Kentucky were "exporting slaves largely."[6]

In 1820, Elihu Embree,[7] at Jonesboro, Tennessee, the county seat of
Washington County, in the far eastern section, began to publish _The
Emancipator_, an abolition journal. Later, there came from this same
county a man who easily became the leader of anti-slavery sentiment in
the Constitutional Convention of 1834 at Nashville, Matthew
Stephenson. It may have been that as a young man Stephenson was fired
with the zeal of Embree. The period of Embree's activity was also one
of large interest in the North and South in behalf of emancipation. In
this same year the Missouri Compromise was passed in the national
legislature. The concessions made both by pro-slavery and anti-slavery
adherents at this time show the relative strength of the two forces
and the remarkable fact is that there could be such near-equality of
fighting strength on both sides.[8] Tennessee seems to have had an
epitome of this national situation within her borders. Not only the
zealous work of Embree indicates this, but the general feeling of the
people of eastern Tennessee toward slavery. It is interesting here to
point out that _The Emancipator_ was the first abolition journal in
the United States.[9]

The outcome of this anti-slavery feeling in Tennessee was that when
the State Constitutional Convention met at Nashville in 1834 to
consider important changes in the Constitution of 1796, there was such
an outburst of sentiment against slavery that it was only with
considerable resistance of the pro-slavery convention delegates that
the State did not abolish it by providing for the gradual emancipation
of slaves over a period of twenty years, when all should have been
emancipated.[10] So significant is the public opinion of that time in
Tennessee history, and so well calculated to give large insight into
the Negro's condition then in the State, that it will hardly be amiss
in this paper to enter into a somewhat detailed discussion of the work
of the convention, and the sentiments there displayed.

The legal enactments of the slave code of Tennessee prior to 1834 will
give us the right perspective here. One of the earliest enactments of
the commonwealth was the absolute denial to slaves of the right to own
property. Property held by them, such as horses, cattle, or anything
of personal va