[47] _Cf. Southern Correspondence throughout the Rebellion Records._ THE LEGAL STATUS OF FREE NEGROES AND SLAVES IN TENNESSEE In 1790, the free colored population of Tennessee was 361, while the slave numbered 3,417.[1] In 1787, three years previous, Davidson County, which then, as now, comprised the most important and thickly settled part of the Cumberland Valley, had a population of 105 Negroes between the ages of 1 and 60.[2] Nashville was just a rough community in the wilderness with a few settlers from the older districts of the East, living in several hewed and framed log-houses and twenty or more rough cabins. The census of 1790 gives Davidson County 677 Negroes, a figure which compared with the 3,778 Negroes in the entire State at that enumeration, means that this frontier region had already grown important enough to draw to it nearly one-fifth of the Negro population of the commonwealth. In 1800, there were in the State 13,893 Negroes, of whom 3,104, or nearly one fourth, were in Davidson County. Thereafter, although the ratio between the county and State did not increase in favor of the county, still it kept up so that by 1850 Davidson had the largest Negro population of any county in the State. During the decade 1850-60 Shelby County, containing the important center, Memphis, gained the ascendency in number of Negro inhabitants, which it has since that time maintained. The likely cause of this shifting was the steady growth of cotton-raising districts and their rapid expansion toward the West and South. A general intimidation of the Negroes of Nashville and vicinity occurred in 1856, probably having some influence on the decline of population for that period in question. This cause, however, is not sufficient to explain the constant superiority of numbers in the Southwestern Tennessee region thereafter. As slavery expanded from this small territory into all parts of the State, the attitude of the people of the Commonwealth with respect to the nation and slavery at various times may be shown. After Tennessee had been ceded to the United States in 1790 by North Carolina, she had a most unusual method of throwing off her territorial government for nearly three months in 1796, and existed in absolute independence for that period before being admitted into statehood by the Federal Government.[3] Nevertheless in the period of the Civil War this State was the last to secede and the first to comply with the terms of readmission. With respect to slavery the early attitude of Tennessee toward the national government was peculiar. The cession act of North Carolina provided: "That no regulation made or to be made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves."[4] Probably because of this fact Lincoln did not mention Tennessee in the Emancipation Proclamation.