On November 13, 1801, the General Assembly passed an act, entitled “An Act empowering the county courts to emancipate slaves,” the preamble of which recites that, “Whereas the number of petitions presented to this legislature, praying the emancipation of slaves, not only tend to involve the state in serious evils, but are also productive of great expense. For remedy whereof, _Be it enacted_,” &c. The act then proceeds to confer power and authority upon the county courts generally to emancipate slaves upon the petition and request of the owners, and directs the clerks of such courts to record such proceedings and make out and issue to the emancipated slaves a certificate of emancipation. These old records will explain why it was that, twenty and twenty-five years later, the “Manumission Intelligencer” and “The Emancipator” were published at Jonesboro and the “Genius of Universal Emancipation” at Greeneville. They show another fact, viz., that long before _Elihu Embree_,[I] Benjamin Lundy, William L. Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe began the agitation of the abolition of slavery--in theory--in the public press, these people were not only _thinking_, but _acting_, on the subject--the great question that ultimately shook the pillars of the American republic, and earthquaked a continent when the shock of war came--these people were not only teaching but practising emancipation. It would not only be unpatriotic, but filial impiety in the descendants of those people, to allow without protest their fame to diminish, and their views, deeds and accomplishments to be taken from them and credited to others. [Illustration: LIMESTONE HOUSE, 1780. Home of Elihu Embree, the founder and editor of the first abolition paper published in the United States. Erected by his brother, Thomas Embree, about five miles west of Jonesboro, now near Telford’s Station, on Southern Railway. From a photograph taken in April, 1897.] It must not be. It was easy indeed, for Embree, Lundy and others to drop in, twenty to twenty-five years later, and join them in the advocacy of the policy of emancipating slaves, when they found, or had heard before coming to the country, that manumission societies had been in existence for near a quarter of a century before, and when the county court records disclosed the fact that these people were practising what they advocated, and when petitions to the general assembly of the state from the various counties “praying the emancipation of slaves” were so numerous that they were about to involve the state in serious evils by turning irresponsible persons loose upon society and also entailing great expense.