On the Freedom Train (Page 2 of 4)
February 7, 2008By:
“But the single most important accomplishment throughout Birdseye’s life was his eyewitness account, on a daily basis, of the horrors of slavery and the reactions of its victims,” Dunn writes. “Southern proslavery defenders often accused Northern abolitionists of attacking slavery in the abstract and exaggerating only its worst features, with little knowledge of, or perspective on, the day-to-day operation of the peculiar institution, which, slaveowners insisted, was benign and paternalistic in the vast majority of cases, most of the time. Ezekiel Birdseye knew better; since 1818, from the age of twenty-one, he had lived most of his adult life in many parts of the South.”
Fellow abolitionists Charles Osborne and seven others — John Canady, David Maulsby, Thomas Morgan, Elihu Swan, John Swan, John Underwood and Jesse Willis — founded the state’s first emancipation society in New Market in 1815 and met at the Lost Creek Friends Church.
According to oral history, the church was an original depot on the Underground Railroad, and its members were sympathetic supporters who formed the Tennessee Manumussion Society. “[‘Manumission’] means releasing people from bondage or slavery, the whole abolitionist movement is like the peace movement today, it’s a very diverse group of people,” Osborne says.
TMS member Elihue Embree ran both an ironworks factory and a print shop in Telford, Tenn., and was critical to the abolitionist movement as he printed the nation’s first emancipation magazine in 1819. Originally titled Manumission Intelligencer and published weekly, it was later renamed The Emancipator and printed monthly. Readership grew to roughly 2,000 in a relatively short amount of time, and the publication was circulated beyond the region, according to Dunn. Embree, also a Quaker, would die at the age of 38 in 1820 from bilious fever, and The Emancipator eventually died out as well. His childhood home in Telford, between Greenville and Jonesboro, now hosts an Underground Railroad historical marker.
The first annual abolitionist convention was held just months later, Nov. 21, 1815, and though the minutes of those meetings have been lost, many facts remain from the eighth annual convention, held Aug. 22 through 23, 1822. According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia Web site, there were as many as 20 branches of the society in East Tennessee, with more than 600 members. Birdseye’s later letters note active societies flourishing in Blount and Cocke counties: “On the first week of this month [April 1842], the circuit court was held in Newport. I met there William Thompson Esq[uire], a very worthy man from Blount County. I had a conversation with him about the antislavery society there. He said it was prosperous that they had frequent meetings and apprehended no difficulty.”
Maryville College, founded in 1819, was also critical to abolitionists in the area. “Blount County is in a very interesting situation. There is a lively antislavery influence — and that unmolested. It is more important as the site of a college where youth from all parts of the South may imbibe the healing influences — one of the professors being an active abolitionist,” Birdseye wrote Dec. 14, 1841.
Slaveholders were briefly allowed to be members of the Tennessee Manumission Society, but the group excommunicated owners who refused to educate and free slaves in 1825. The group petitioned the state regularly for the emancipation of slaves. Despite the lack of documented evidence, Quaker oral history indicates Friends may have helped slaves running toward freedom on the Underground Railroad.
