and Indians." This was referred
to the committee of the whole, but, oddly enough, failed of
adoption.[38] The intermittent debate on the subject of emancipation,
led on the one side by Stephenson, and on the other by McKinney, was
resumed a few days later when the latter gave an additional report. He
stated that the memorials with their signatures had been examined and
the names attached to them had numbered 1804 in all. 105 purported to
be slave-holders, said he, but by inquiry the committee had
ascertained that the aggregate number of slaves in their possession
was not greater than 500. He admitted that there were several counties
from which memorials had come, but charged that there had been a
signing of more than one memorial in some counties by the same
persons, so that there was a doubling of names without a proportional
increase of individual signers. He depreciated Stephenson's statement
that these memorials had come from almost every part of the State as
ill-founded; for the sixteen counties of Tennessee which had sent
representatives with memorials favorable to the idea of emancipation
were not from widely scattered portions of the State. Only five
extended westward beyond the longitude of Chattanooga, and there were
none of the more western counties represented. The two sections of the
State seemed to bear no hostility toward each other, but decidedly
disagreed on the slavery question. The question was largely an
economic one with the Tennesseans of the Mississippi Valley. Cotton
was coming into greater and greater importance every year. It could,
they thought, be most profitably raised by large groups of workmen
whose labor was cheap. The slave was the logical person, and they
fastened on him the burden.

Lest the impression has been made that the only portion of the State
from which the sentiment of an anti-slavery nature came was East
Tennessee, it will be well to refer to the vigorous speech of Kincaid,
a delegate from Bedford County, who flung a parting reply to the
friends and sympathizers of the Committee of Thirteen which had
succeeded in thwarting any official action upon the matter proposed by
the memorialists.[39] Bedford County, in the central portion of the
State, represented both economically and socially a type of citizen
different from that of the mountaineer stock. Yet Kincaid fearlessly
defended the plain human rights of the colored population in his
speech as much as Stephenson had done,