On the Freedom Train (Page 1 of 4)

Mountainous terrain and rolling, wooded hills, deep-rooted religious beliefs and a landscape that lent itself to iron, coal, marble and limestone mining distinguished 19th century East Tennessee from its counterparts in the western and middle parts of the state. But the region was also different in one important social aspect: its growing support for secessionist and abolitionist views.

East Tennessee has long been regarded as the South’s most emancipation-friendly pocket, with the state’s first antislavery group forming in Jefferson County in 1815. Though not a main route for the Underground Railroad, one tract brought those fleeing toward freedom through East Tennessee, with many creeks and rivers to follow, caves and sympathetic supporters to sustain the passage and a coded song to lead the way.

These stories will be brought to life Feb. 8 in a celebration of the courage of those who sought freedom and those who supported their flight. “On the Freedom Train in Jefferson County: Stories of the Tennessee Manumission Society and Underground Railroad” will be held in New Market, Tenn., at the Lost Creek Friends Church.

“What we want to do with this first [event] is assemble a group of local people who are interested in preserving this history and then do a bigger and better job next year,” says Larry Osborne, a Carson-Newman College professor and member of the local Quaker congregation West Knox Friends. “Raise it on the consciousness and radar of people who write the history books so this part of the story is included... There are important community memories to be preserved before it’s lost.”

With music from the Young’s Memorial AME Zion Choir, Lost Creek Friends Church Children’s Choir and the acoustic group Elihue & the Emancipators, the night will also feature John Beckwith, a Quaker Civil War re-enactor. “Since Quakers are pacifists and generally refuse to take up arms, he’ll tell stories of those individuals and families who were conscientious objectors during the [Civil] war,” Osborne says.

The truth of the region’s emancipation efforts may never be fully known because of the dangers faced by those who opposed and escaped slavery, but fragments handed down through oral history, legend and family lore provide seeds of knowledge local residents seek to preserve and cultivate at the event.

The fight for emancipation in East Tennessee

Ezekiel Birdseye, an East Tennessee abolitionist, was instrumental in organizing the antislavery movement. In a letter dated Sept. 1, 1842, Birdseye wrote: “It has been an object with us to try if possible to effect a separation of East Tennessee from the other part of the state. Our prosperity would be much promoted by it we think in all respects. We could then put an end to slavery in a little time in East Tennessee… The most intelligent men that I have found in the state are clearly of the opinion that we can effect it so far as Tennessee is concerned. There are county meetings held on the subject in a number of counties… Resolutions will doubtless pass in favor of the measure.”

The eastern part of the state had its fair share of slaveholders, although far fewer than its counterparts in West and Middle Tennessee. A correspondence from Birdseye in 1843 noted that the region “had 220,000 whites and 20,000 slaves. Most of the nonslaveholders and two-thirds who are slaveholders, wish the evil abolished.” Whether the lack of economic gain from slavery or the religious and moral aversion to it fueled the abolitionist sentiments in the region, active societies in Blount, Jefferson and Cocke counties, among others, regularly met to strategize an end to slavery.

Birdseye, originally from Connecticut, came to the South in 1818 and lived not only in East Tennessee, but also Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina and traveled the South frequently for business. His letters to Gerrit Smith, a reformer in New York, date from 1841 to 1846, and provide first-hand observations of the antislavery movement in the Appalachian region. Durwood Dunn, chairman of history and political science at Tennessee Wesleyan College, collected the letters in his book An Abolitionist in the Appalachia South.