he Negro to be taken
in charge by the Tennessee Colonization Society. The State
appropriated $10 for every black man removed from the State, an
expense finally sanctioned by a law of 1833.[32]

Two years prior to the year of the Tennessee Constitutional Convention
of 1834, Virginia in her State Legislature, had witnessed an exciting
scene of debate on the question of slavery. In the District of
Columbia, also, there was sent to Congress in the session of 1827-28 a
petition requesting the "prospective abolition" of slavery in that
district, and the repeal of certain laws authorizing the sale of
runaways. Similarly in Tennessee the outbreak of antislavery
sentiment, long fostered in the eastern part of the State, came into
the Convention of 1834. The few details presented here concerning the
convention show conclusively that there was a strong, even violent
opposition to human slavery in the State. Certain representatives of
counties from East Tennessee were conspicuous for their protest
against the system, and maintained their convictions despite the
failure to win their point at that time.

Many memorialists in the State had addressed the legislature on the
question of emancipation both pro and con prior to the convention, and
finally, in the convention, on June 18, Wm. Blount of Montgomery
County, Northern Tennessee, offered a memorial that on the subject of
slavery the General Assembly should have no power or authority to pass
laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their
owners or without paying their owners.[33] The memorial further prayed
that, the legislature should not discourage the foreign immigration
into the State and that certain laws providing for the owners of
slaves to emancipate them should be made with the restriction that
beforehand such manumitted persons should be assuredly prevented from
becoming a charge to any county.

There were presented other memorials respecting the slave population
at this time. Hess, of Gibson and Dyer counties, wanted no
emancipation of slaves except by individual disposition of their
masters as the latter saw fit, or at least never unless the price of
the slave was paid, provided the master did not freely give
manumission, and the good of the State seemed to demand the liberation
of the slave. But memorials of a different sentiment also were coming
in. On May 26, McNeal presented a memorial of sundry citizens of
McMinn County, asking for the emancipa