The outcome of this anti-slavery feeling in Tennessee was that when the State Constitutional Convention met at Nashville in 1834 to consider important changes in the Constitution of 1796, there was such an outburst of sentiment against slavery that it was only with considerable resistance of the pro-slavery convention delegates that the State did not abolish it by providing for the gradual emancipation of slaves over a period of twenty years, when all should have been emancipated.[10] So significant is the public opinion of that time in Tennessee history, and so well calculated to give large insight into the Negro's condition then in the State, that it will hardly be amiss in this paper to enter into a somewhat detailed discussion of the work of the convention, and the sentiments there displayed. The legal enactments of the slave code of Tennessee prior to 1834 will give us the right perspective here. One of the earliest enactments of the commonwealth was the absolute denial to slaves of the right to own property. Property held by them, such as horses, cattle, or anything of personal value was to be sold and one half of the proceeds given to the informer, the other half to the county.[11] Another law forbade the slave to go about armed unless he was the huntsman of the plantation. Small penalties were provided.[12] Still another made it unlawful for slaves to sell "any article whatever without permission from owner or overseer." The penalty for breaking this law was a maximum of "39 lashes on his, her, or their bare backs."[13] Many other matters were rigidly prescribed in the early statutes, chiefly concerning the slave's right to go or not to go from place to place, and to conduct himself under certain circumstances. Among slaves perjury was punished by mutilation and whipping. The brutality of the former was all the more disgusting because defended by law.[14] The slaying of a black or mulatto slave, however, was actually deemed murder and made punishable with death. It has not yet been ascertained, as far as the writer knows, whether any white citizen of Tennessee was ever indicted under the provision of this law. We do have a case of a famous old slave-holder in a community not far from Nashville being tied to his gate post and severely whipped by his neighbors, because of his brutal murder of one of his slaves.[15]