enied his oath in a court of justice, he
is unable to have wrongs of whites against him redressed, that any
interference with slavery at this time would cause a speedy removal of
Tennessee population since slave-owners would seek other States with
their slaves, and that if Tennessee should free all her slaves, there
would be a greater concentration of all the slaves of the United
States, giving slaves more advantage in case of uprising.

Since the slave population in 1830 was 142,530, a fair estimate for
1834 would be 150,000, and this host of newly-made freedmen, thought
he, would jeopardize the social safety of the white population of
Tennessee, and incite the slave inhabitants of adjoining States to
sedition. Slavery would not always exist, he believed, but Tennessee
could abolish it then without dire results. Colonization was
difficult, but possible and practicable.

This report was given on June 19. A few days later a motion was made
by a Bedford County delegate to strike out that part of the report
referring to the condition of the free man of color as "tragic." This
did not prevail. Still later Stephenson in a set speech protested
vigorously against the acceptance of the report of the Committee of
Thirteen. He declared that the report was "an apology for slavery,"
and did not show the convention willing to discharge its duty to the
memorialists, and to the people whose protests could not there be
heard. His principal argument was that the principles guiding this
committee in its decision were subversive of the principles of true
republicanism; that they were also against the principles of the
Bible. Since the committee had admitted the evil of slavery, he
contended, the failure to find a remedy is unworthy of the
representatives of the people of the State. He maintained that there
is no soundness in the argument that because of the physical
differences, the black man should be deprived of the "common rights of
man," and that it is not better to have slavery distributed over a
large area of country than to concentrate it, if slavery is an evil,
since the spread of any evil cannot be better than its limitation.[37]

As an indirect blow at any possible suffrage right of any persons of
color under the new constitution, Marr, delegate from Weakley and
Obion, introduced a resolution at this time intended to restrict
suffrage permanently and definitely to white males, specifically
prohibiting all "mulattoes, negroes,