While the history of the anti-slavery movement after 1830 is well known to every student of American history, the movement during the three decades preceding that date is much less familiar and deserves critical investigation. This period has been characterized frequently by anti-slavery writers as the “neglected interval” or the “period of stagnation,” but it may be regarded more properly as a transition epoch, when the scattered forces were being organized and when issues were being defined and plans of operation adopted.

     The center of this activity lay in the border states, particularly the great Appalachian plateau, where the system of slavery was poorly adapted to the economic, social, political, and religious life of the people. As slavery was a real problem with them, it is not surprising to see them putting forth special efforts to rid themselves of it. In this work, naturally, the way was led by the Quakers, whose antagonism to slavery is proverbial, ably assisted by the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Baptists. The minutes of the American convention of abolition societies during the years immediately preceding the inauguration of the modern abolition movement by Garrison and his followers show in the border states an unusually large number of anti-slavery societies, which at times greatly exceeded in membership those in the free states. This is especially pronounced in 1827 when 106 of the 130 societies and 5,125 of the 6,625 members were located in that section.¹ Western North

Carolina and eastern Tennessee were generally regarded as better fields for anti-slavery labor than either Ohio or New England. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee and for many years one of the leading abolitionists in the country, declared that in his boyhood “a majority of the people of East Tennessee were abolitionists”² and that “it was safer to make an anti-slavery speech in the South than it became during the thirties to make the same speech in the North.”³

     The one important feature of anti-slavery work with which this study is concerned is the establishment and the development of the anti-slavery press, which had its origin in this region during this period. One of the greatest difficulties before the anti-slavery workers in these early years was the small number of periodicals through which they could place before the people their arguments against the system of slavery, since the columns of the regular newspapers were, as a rule, closed to their discussions. The press has always been, as it is today, a powerful agency in determining the final result of any great movement. Horace Greeley wisely stated, “A History which takes no account of what was said by the press in memorable emergencies befits an earlier age than this.” And Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be dreaded than one hundred thousand bayonets.” The steady and persistent opposition of the slave interests of

the South to anti-slavery publications indicated their appreciation of the dangers of such propaganda.

     The editor of the first periodical established primarily for the discussion of slavery was Charles Osborn. Born in North Carolina of Quaker parentage on the twenty-first of August, 1775, he removed at the age of nineteen with his, parents, to East Tennessee, where he entered the ministry about ten years later. On his frequent ministerial visits among the numerous Quaker settlements in that region,⁴ he assisted in every way possible in the organization and the activities of the anti-slavery societies. His time during the three years from 1814 to 1816 was devoted almost exclusively to this work. In 1815 he was one of the eight charter members of the Manumission Society of Tennessee, an organization that developed rapidly in numbers and influence. As a result of his aversion to the institution of slavery, he removed, in the latter part of 1816, to Mount Pleasant in southeastern Ohio, where he became the minister of a Quaker congregation.⁵ Soon after his arrival, he issued the prospectus of a paper that he proposed to establish under the name of the Philanthropist, the first number of which appeared August 29, 1817. This undertaking not prospering as he had hoped, he sold the paper in October of the following year to Elisha Bates⁶ and a few months later removed to Indiana, where he spent the remainder of his long and eventful life.⁷

     The Philanthropist was a weekly newspaper of religious tone intended, as was set forth clearly and forcefully in the prospectus, to aid in the campaign then being waged by the reformers against three great national evils: war, slavery, and intemperance. In its pages the subject of slavery was discussed nearly

ninety times, or on an average about twice in each number. Benjamin Lundy, then residing at Saint Clairsville, Ohio, was from the first an agent and a regular correspondent of the paper and during the last few months of its existence was, an associate editor.⁸

     The Philanthropist is regarded by many not only as the first anti-slavery paper published in the United States but as the “first journal in America to advocate immediate, unconditional emancipation.” While Osborn is said to have been from his earliest years a “thoroughgoing abolitionist,”⁹ there is nothing in the Philanthropist to confirm or disprove this, contention, although in one issue it is distinctly stated that emancipation must be gradual.¹⁰ In his first number the editor declares hopefully that the time “is is fast approaching when the United States shall no longer be stained with this foul polution of slavery.”¹¹ The fact has been well established that Charles Osborn advocated immediate, uncompensated emancipation as early as 1816,¹² yet an examination of the Philanthropist indicates that he did not use this paper to any considerable extent as a medium through which to express such sentiments. In fact, the strongest words against slavery are found in the selections from other papers and in communications from Saint Clairsville, in all probability from the pen of Lundy. That the paper exhibited a moderate anti-slavery spirit may be attributed in part to Osborn’s being so much occupied with his ministerial duties that he was forced to depend for most of the articles, including even many of the editorials, upon his co-workers, men as a rule more tolerant than he.

     He had little faith in the colonization movement started in

1816 and emphatically opposed it in the Philanthropist, notwithstanding the fact that the projectors of the scheme were men of high character. In the sixth number he makes the following comment upon the colonization society: “The editor has great doubts of the justice of the plans proposed. It appears to him calculated to rivet closer the chains that already gall the sons of Africa and to insure to the miserable objects of American cruelty a perpetuity of bondage.”¹³

     During a large portion of his life, Osborn carefully abstained from using the productions of slave labor and forcefully advocated the practice in the Philanthropist¹⁴ and wherever else the occasion permitted. His views on the subject are clearly set forth in the following quotation: “A merchant that loads his vessel in the West Indies with the proceeds of slavery does nearly as much at helping forward the slave trade as he that loads his vessel in Africa with slaves. They are both twisting the rope at different ends. It is paradoxical that a man will refuse to buy a stolen sheep, or eat a piece of one that is stolen and should not have the same scruples respecting a stolen man.”¹⁵ Since articles on this subject were quoted by him from other papers, the statement frequently made that he was the first to advocate this practice can not be regarded as sound; yet, if not the originator, he must be recognized as one of the pioneers in the movement.

     Since the Philanthropist discussed other subjects, it can not justly be regarded as an anti-slavery periodical of the extreme type that was later developed. Many newspapers in various parts of the country occasionally published articles in which slavery was condemned as an evil and plans of emancipation were proposed, yet they were not established with that object in view. The Philanthropist might properly be assigned a position midway between these and the anti-slavery papers of a later date.

     Although not all that has been claimed for it can be granted to the Philanthropist, it did, nevertheless, perform a most valuable service. It not only demonstrated the usefulness of anti-slavery papers in forming and organizing public sentiment, but,

as we shall see, proved to be the germ out of which was developed Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation.

     The second anti-slavery paper established in point of time and the first devoted wholly to anti-slavery is notable as being produced in a slave state and in connection with one of the early organizations looking toward the betterment of the slave, the Manumission Society of Tennessee, founded in 1814. Among the charter members of this society were Charles Osborn and John Rankin, men destined to occupy a position of national importance in the anti-slavery movement.¹⁶ So rapid was the growth of the society that by the latter part of 1816 there were twenty branches and a membership of nearly five hundred.¹⁷ Osborn and Rankin removed to Ohio and Kentucky, respectively, and the leadership in this work passed into the hands of other able and worthy men, among whom the most notable was Elihu Embree.”¹⁸

     Elihu Embree, born November 11, 1782, was the son of a Quaker minister, who moved from Pennsylvania to Washington county in East Tennessee about 1790. During his early life, Elihu was associated in the iron manufacturing business with his brother, Elijah, who possessed “uncommon intelligence, a great love of enterprise and commanding executive ability.” Elijah married the granddaughter of the famous Governor John Sevier of Tennessee and at the time of his death in 1846 was the owner of seventy thousand acres of mineral land valued at nearly one million dollars. Elihu, being somewhat visionary and impractical in his plans, was a poor business manager. During his early life he owned slaves, having purchased several and having come into possession of a number of others through his wife. About 1812, however, he freed all of them at a considerable financial sacrifice; soon afterward he became an ardent

anti-slavery worker, and remained so until his death.¹⁹ In 1819, after securing the approval and cooperation of the Manumission Society of Tennessee, of which he was an active member, he began the publication of a weekly anti-slavery paper at Jonesborough (Jonesboro) in East Tennessee under the name of the Manumission Intelligencer, the first number of which appeared in March.²⁰

     Very little is known concerning this paper. It is mentioned by few historians and then only briefly and vaguely. So far as we are able to learn, no library contains even a partial file of the fifty or more numbers that were issued. Some eight or ten copies, however, are in the possession of various individuals of Washington county, Tennessee.²¹

     In April, 1820, the weekly issue was replaced by an octavo monthly and the name of the paper was changed to the Emancipator, though the publication continued under the same editorship. No explanation has been found for these changes. Unfortunately, the Emancipator had an existence of only eight months because of the untimely death of the editor, December 12, 1820.²² A full file of this remarkable journal, comprising some one hundred and twelve pages, has been preserved and is now the property of Elihu Embree Hoss of Nashville, Tennessee, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church, South. The objects

of the paper as set forth in an address to the general public in the first number are as follows:

     “This paper is especially designed by the editor to advocate the abolition of slavery, and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject. It will contain all the necessary information that the editor can obtain of the progress of the abolition of slavery of the descendants of Africa, together with a concise history of their introduction into slavery, collected from the best authorities.

     “The constitutions and proceedings of the several benevolent societies in the United States and elsewhere who have had this grand object in view will be carefully selected and published in The Emancipator.

     “A correspondence between those societies, and between individuals in different parts of the nation on the subject, of emancipation, will be kept up through the medium of this paper by inserting in its pages all interesting communications, letters and so forth, that may come to the knowledge of the editor.

     “The speeches of those who have been and are eminently advocating this glorious cause, either in the Congress of the United States, the state legislatures, or in the parliaments and courts of the nations, will be strictly attended to.

     “Biographical sketches of the lives of those who have been eminent in this cause will also occasionally find a. place in this work.

     A portion of this paper is intended to be devoted to a history of the abolition of the African Slave Trade, in every part of the world, from its first dawn, down to the present time. . . . “The Manumission Society of Tennessee in particular, it is expected, will afford many tracts on the subject of slavery, which the editor assures them he will feel inclined to respect; and where his judgment should not otherwise dictate, will give them an early and gratuitous insertion. They will find The Emancipator a true chronicle of the proceedings of that benevolent society, as far as the editor is enabled. . . .

     “Those who have had, or may have law suits on hand for the freedom of such as are unlawfully held in bondage, are desired to forward the true history of the facts, their progress, final decision, &, with the places of residence and the names of plaintiffs

and defendants, with every interesting particular, and they shall find in The Emancipator a true repository.

     Although the editor is as far from being a man of leisure as any in his acquaintance, and not the owner of the office where the paper will be printed, and therefore shall have to hire the printing of it; and although he has spent several thousand dollars already in some small degree abolishing and in endeavoring to facilitate the general abolition of slavery, yet he feels not satisfied without continuing to throw in his mite, hoping that if the weight of it should not at present be felt that when the scale comes nearly to a preponderancy, it. will be more sensibly perceived and in some small degree hasten an even balance of equal rights to the now neglected sons of Africa.

     “And since it will be at considerable trouble and expense that the work will be published, agreeably to the editor’s intention, it is hoped that none who have any love for African liberty will think hard of paying $1. annually to the support of the only paper of this kind in the United States.”²³

     In this paper, slavery and slaveholders, upon one occasion characterized as “monsters in human flesh,” were condemned in the strongest terms; and the evils of the system were forcefully pointed out. In a memorial to the Tennessee legislature in 1820, which was printed in the Emancipator, Embree said “Your memorialist conceives that it would be offering an indignity to the understanding of your honorable body, to offer to prove that the laws which first sanctioned slavery were passed in a dark and barbarous age: and that were they yet to be passed, there is not a civilized legislature now upon the earth that would do it; but would humbly ask, Are these the only laws which the representative of a free and enlightened republic can not modify or repeal? Or are they to stand as lasting monuments of depravity?”²⁴

     When he was confronted with the practical difficulties of emancipation, Embree coolly replied that “as slavery is a moral evil, it ought to be removed as speedily as possible, and trust the consequences

of such duty in the hands of unerring Providence.”²⁵ In a reply to the suggestion that abolition would lead to miscegenation he said that he would have less fear of a mixture in consequence of freedom than in continued bondage, and attempted to prove this assertion by a comparison of the conditions in the free and in the slave states. In respect to the dreaded equality of the blacks with the whites he declared that he had never been able to discover “that the Author of Nature intended that one complexion of the human skin should stand higher in the scale of being than another.”²⁶ He denounced the states North and South that had passed laws prohibiting the incoming of free negroes into their bounds. And, as one would naturally expect, he opposed the Missouri compromise with all his might. “Not another foot of slave territory” was his war cry.²⁷

     The Emancipator, though a pronounced abolition paper, was well received by the public. At the time of Embree’s death it could boast of a paying list of 2,000 subscribers, which was in all probability as large as that of any newspaper in either Tennessee or Kentucky.²⁸ In speaking of the change of opinion on the subject of slavery and of the unexpected success of his paper, Embree himself said: “I have no hesitation in believing that less than twenty years ago a man would have been mobbed and the printing office torn down for printing and publishing anything like ‘The Emancipator,’ whereas it now meets the approbation of thousands, and is patronized perhaps at least equal to any other in the state. But little by little, times are, much changed here, until societies, of respectable citizens have arisen to plead the cause of abolition; and instead of it being a disgrace to a man to be a member of these societies, it is rather a

mark of the goodness of his heart, and redounds to his honor.”²⁹ On the other hand, the paper naturally encountered considerable opposition, based upon various grounds, which are succinctly set forth in a letter to Embree from Governor Poindexter of Mississippi, to whom, as well as to the governors of all the other states, sample copies of the Emancipator had been sent for inspection.³⁰ The letter, representing at this early date the sentiment that prevailed in the South during the thirties, and that resulted in a decided attempt to suppress all anti-slavery agitation in that region, follows:³¹

“SIR:

     ”You, have thought proper to address to me several numbers of ‘The Emancipator,’ edited and published by you, at Jonesborough, in Tennessee; an honor, which was both unsolicited and unexpected.

     “The price demanded for your sheet annually, being one dollar, is to my mind, conclusive evidence, that you represent an association of individuals, in another section of the United States, who bear the expense of the work you have undertaken and reward your labors; and that your position in the Western country, has been selected with a view to economy. I regard it as an effort, mischievous, in its tendency: designed to sever the bonds of social harmony, which ought to be cherished, and strengthened in every part of the Union, and totally unworthy of public patronage. I cannot, therefore, subscribe even one cent for your paper, and have no wish to receive it on any terms.

     “The same Providence, which has permitted African Slavery in the new world, will point to the period of its happy termination. Every real Christian and patriot, will look with patient hope, for the consumation devoutly to be wished, of that event, without resorting to means calculated, if not intended, to excite passions and prejudices the most unfavorable to domestic tranquility, and national prosperity.

     Although, as indicated, there prevailed in East Tennessee a strong anti-slavery sentiment, which was in part responsible for the unusual success of Embree’s paper during its short existence, yet the ability and the standing of the editor contributed very largely to that end. Stephen B. Weeks gives this estimate of him: “He removed to Tennessee at an early age and had in him the stuff of which enthusiasts and martyrs are made, for he was, a radical, outspoken and aggressive abolitionist. . . . Had he lived a decade longer he would have made a name for himself.”³² And Niles³³ in a brief announcement of his death speaks of him as “a man of a very strong mind and one of the most enterprising citizens of the state.” It is his unique distinction that, though resident in a southern state, he was a radical, outspoken abolitionist at a time when New England had only a nascent conscience on the subject of slavery. Speculation as to the probable outcome of his work, if he had lived to be an old man, is at least interesting if not conclusive. The name of Embree might well, have outlived that of Lundy or Garrison.

     The next anti-slavery paper to be established and the first to have an existence of more than two years was the Genius of Universal Emancipation, edited and published by Benjamin Lundy, who like Osborn and Embree before him, was the son of a Quaker. Like his predecessors, also, he had a, varied career before he entered newspaper work.

     He was born in the state of New Jersey in 1789. When nineteen he went to Wheeling, Virginia, where he took up the saddler’s trade, which he followed for four years in Wheeling and three years in Mount Pleasant, Ohio. After his marriage in 1815, he moved to Saint Clairsville, Ohio, where he went into the saddlery business for himself. Though he had no capital to begin with, he was so successful that at the end of the first four years of work he possessed more than three thousand dollars,’ worth of property.³⁴

     During the first year of his residence at Saint Clairsville, he

was instrumental in organizing an anti-slavery society in that place and the following year he published an address to the philanthropists of the United States recommending the formation of anti-slavery societies under a common title and constitution with a general convention for important business, a plan which was later adopted by the abolitionists. At the close of this address he stated that he had considered the subject for a long time and that he had now taken it up never to lay it down while he breathed or until the end should be obtained.³⁵ Soon after this, proposals were issued by Charles Osborn for the publication of the Philanthropist at Mount Pleasant. From the beginning Lundy was very much interested in the undertaking and began at once to secure subscribers for the paper and to select material for publication in it. After it had been in existence for a few months, Osborn asked Lundy, much to his surprise, to assist in editing it. After some hesitation the latter decided to do so, though he continued his residence at Saint Clairsville.³⁶ Osborn found in Lundy a kindred spirit and a thoroughly trustworthy man. In 1818 he proposed a partnership in the business, offering to him the superintendence of the office. Lundy agreed to the proposition on the condition that he be given time in which to dispose of his business. To effect this end he made two trips to Saint Louis, Missouri, thus consuming the greater part of the next two years.³⁷ Concerning his consequent plans Lundy makes this comment: “Before I left Saint Louis, I heard that, as I had staid from home so much longer than had been anticipated, Charles Osborn had become quite tired of the employment of editor, and had sold out his printing establishment to Elisha Bates, and also that Elihu Embree had commenced the publication of an anti-slavery paper called ’The Emancipator’ at Jonesborough in Tennessee. I therefore made up my mind to settle my family in Illinois. But on my way home I was informed of the death of Embree and as Elisha Bates did not come up to my standard of anti-slavery I determined immediately to establish a periodical of my own. I

therefore removed to Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and commenced the publication of the ’Genius of Universal Emancipation.’”³⁸ The first number of the new paper was issued in July, 1821.³⁹ Lundy spent much time traveling from place to place securing subscribers and endeavoring to excite an interest in the subject by conversation and lectures. Notices were sent to papers in different sections of the country setting forth the nature and the purpose of the publication. One of these reads: “This work is intended to be devoted exclusively to the discussion of African Slavery, and will be an active instrument in the attempt to abolish that cruel and disgraceful system in the American Republic. The proposed editor believes that the time has come when advocates of African emancipation should speak out, that they may be heard, and use their utmost exertions to arouse and awaken the American people to a sense of the inconsistency, the hypocracy and the iniquity of which many of them are chargeable in suffering this foul blot to remain upon their national escutcheon and as he considers it almost criminal to be lukewarm in a cause so important as this the public may be assured that his best endeavors shall be used, consistent with justice and propriety to draw the attention of his countrymen toward this subject, and to induce them to think more upon it.”⁴⁰

     The fame of the paper soon reached East Tennessee, where the friends of Elihu Embree were lamenting the loss of the Emancipator and its editor. They at once urged Lundy to publish his paper in that section.⁴¹ Accordingly, after having issued eight monthly numbers in Ohio, he removed to Greeneville, East Tennessee, where volume one, number ten appeared in April, 1822.⁴² In this number he stated that if the paper met

with sufficient encouragement it would continue to be published in that place. The circulation of the paper increased in that locality beyond all expectation.⁴³

     During the winter of 1823-1824, Lundy attended the biennial meeting of the American convention of abolition societies at Philadelphia as a delegate of the Manumission Society of Tennessee, with which he had been closely associated during his residence in that state.⁴⁴ As a result of his becoming personally acquainted for the first time with the leading abolitionists east of the Allegheny mountains, he decided to transfer his publication to one of the Atlantic cities, in the hope of increasing its circulation and influence. Accordingly in August of 1824 he set out for Baltimore, his chosen location.⁴⁵ He continued his work there until October, 1830, when, owing to certain difficulties which confronted him, he moved his paper to Washington, D. C., and remained there until 1834, when he went to Philadelphia, in which city he died in 1839.

     The Genius of Universal Emancipation, during the greater part of its existence, was a monthly periodical containing usually twelve to sixteen pages, though from March until September, 1823, it was issued as a semi-monthly. The monthly numbers continued from that time with no material alterations until July, 1825, when a complete change was made by issuing along with the monthly a weekly paper on larger sheets. This practically replaced the monthly except for a lapse of several months during the partnership of Garrison and Lundy in 1829 and 1830, after which the monthly edition was resumed. During 1837, 1838 and 1839, Lundy published in addition to the monthly numbers a quarterly magazine under the title The genius of universal emancipation and anti-slavery review.

     It is not easy to be sure of the exact position Lundy, held on the anti-slavery question, or, more particularly, on the question of how to abolish slavery. It is generally claimed that he was not in any degree an advocate of immediate or general emancipation; yet he was willing to allow arguments for immediate

emancipation to be inserted in his paper, even before the time of Garrison. So far as we can judge from his writings, it would seem that he was uncompromisingly opposed to slavery, on all grounds; that he relied on gradual emancipation as the only means which would commend itself to a sufficient number of people to insure its success; that he believed in a constant discussion of slavery and in a constant denunciation by its opponents; that he favored the immediate abandonment of the slave trade and the immediate passage of all possible laws for the amelioration of the condition of the slaves, as tending towards ultimate emancipation. Later he became an advocate of the colonization scheme, preferring, however, to send the negroes to Haiti rather than to Africa.

     Lundy’s words in denunciation of slavery are as strong in many instances as any of Garrison’s, and sometimes possibly stronger. The difference seems to lie in the application of the words. Lundy denounced slavery as a system, the slave trade as a business, the desire for new slave territory as chicanery; and he pleaded for the negro as a race. Garrison, on the other hand, not only condemned slavery, but assailed slave traders and slave owners as individuals and consequently incited greater and more determined opposition than did Lundy.

     In the first volume of the Genius of Universal Emancipation Lundy presented a plan of emancipation announced as distinctly his own. It is in seven articles. 1. The national government should totally abolish slavery, in all districts over which congress has exclusive control, and receive no new state without constitutional prohibition of slavery. 2. The transportation of slaves from one state to another should be prohibited under the severest penalties. 3. Blacks should be received into the free states on the same footing as whites. 4. Aid should be given to all blacks who are willing to leave the country. 5. All slaveholding states should make simultaneous arrangements for gradual but certain emancipation, and repeal their laws against the blacks. 6. The regulation concerning slave representation should be immediately abolished. 7. The details of a regular system of operation should be settled by annual conventions called for that purpose.⁴⁶

     In an editorial in 1823 Lundy said, “Nobody urges an immediate liberation of the slave,”⁴⁷ and again in 1824, “in short, the end and aim of this publication is the gradual, though total, abolition of slavery in the United States of America.”⁴⁸ In 1825 he presented another plan for gradual emancipation, quite different from that given in 1821, perhaps because his readers were not ready for even so moderate a plan as the first proposed. This second plan consisted of a system of cooperative labor, on land purchased for the purpose, until the negroes had worked out their purchase money, when they were to be colonized. Thus he advocated compulsory colonization.⁴⁹ Whether Lundy favored gradual or immediate emancipation, he most certainly believed in abolition, not in the mere amelioration of the condition of the slaves,⁵⁰

     In the Indiana Gazette of Thursday, November 29, 1821, and in Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation for March, 1822, proposals were issued for the publication of a semi-monthly paper at Shelbyville, Kentucky, by John Finley Crowe, a Presbyterian minister, under the patronage and control of the Kentucky Abolition Society. These proposals enumerated the principles of the society, quoting extracts from the constitution declaring that the publication would be devoted entirely to its interests.⁵¹

     The first number of the paper appeared as a monthly, instead of a semi-monthly as stated in the proposals, in May, 1822, under the name of the Abolition intelligencer and missionary magazine.”⁵² It gave a more full and explicit enumeration of the

designs of the society and the paper than had been set forth previously. It declared the great object to be to aid suffering humanity so far as was within their power; to meliorate the situation of the free people of color by giving them aid and encouragement in the discharge of the great duties of morality and religion; to aid those unlawfully kept in bondage; to prepare the public mind for the gradual constitutional abolition of slavery, and to convince the people that the institution was a national, an individual and a moral evil, hostile to the spirit of government, ruinous to the prosperity of the nation, destructive to social happiness and subversive to the great principles of morality.⁵³

     Each monthly number of the Abolition intelligencer and missionary magazine contained sixteen pages, the first eight of which were devoted wholly to a discussion of slavery and the last, eight to missions. Since the undertaking was not supported as well as had been anticipated and the state society, which had less than two hundred members at that time, was unable to give any substantial aid to the paper, it had to be discontinued. The twelfth and last number was issued in April, 1823, when the paid subscribers numbered less than five hundred.⁵⁴ The anti-slavery forces seem to have been very inactive in Kentucky during the early twenties. Could the paper have been continued till after Lundy’s removal to Baltimore in 1824, it doubtless would have received enough supporters from the anti-slavery strongholds of East Tennessee and Ohio to have made the publication profitable or at least self-supporting. The Abolition intelligencer and missionary magazine displayed a determined and aggressive though not a radical spirit. The doctrine of immediate emancipation was condemned and that of gradual emancipation, with which the colonization idea, was usually associated,

was repeatedly declared to be the object for which it was working.⁵⁵

     In 1824 proposals were made before the annual convention of the Manumission Society of Tennessee for the publication of a paper designed to assist the society in accomplishing the objects of the organization, but no definite decision was reached on the subject. The convention, however, resolved, the following year, to establish at Greeneville a quarterly anti-slavery magazine under the name of the Manumission journal.⁵⁶ No further information has been found concerning this publication and the probabilities are that it was never issued.

     After 1825 anti-slavery papers appeared in rapid succession. The African Observer was established in Philadelphia in 1826, Freedom’s Journal in New York city in 1827, the National Philanthropist in Boston in 1827, the Investigator in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1827, the Free Press in Bennington, Vermont, in 1828, and the Liberalist in New Orleans in the same year. The new impetus given the anti-slavery movement by the appearance of the Liberator in 1831 encouraged the establishment of similar papers throughout the free states. James G. Birney in 1838 estimated the number of such papers actually being published at that time as upward of one hundred.⁵⁷

     In an examination of the five anti-slavery papers that were established before 1826, two facts are especially noticeable. First, all were published in the region west of the Allegheny mountains and in slave states, with the exception of the Philanthropist, whose editor was, a native of North Carolina; and second, four of the five papers were edited by Quakers.

     The historical value of these early anti-slavery papers can hardly be overestimated. They serve as a repository for all plans for the abolition of slavery, for all laws, arguments, opinions, essays, speeches, reviews, statistics, congressional proceedings, notices of books and pamphlets, colonization efforts,

political movements, in short, for everything relating to slavery. They kept alive the anti-slavery sentiment, organized it and formulated definite plans of operation. In so doing they paved the way for the coming of Garrison and the modern abolitionists. They were the pioneers of the movement, struggling almost single-handed against the numerous difficulties that threatened to overwhelm them; yet out of chaos they brought an organization, a well defined purpose and a unity of action that made possible the success of the efforts of those who were to follow them.⁵⁸