This bill proposes to commit an outrage, to perpetrate an oppression and cruelty, and it is idle to mince words to soften the fact. This people who were born free and lived as free persons, will preach rebellion everywhere that they may be driven to by this unjust law, whether it be amongst us here in Tennessee or South of us on the cotton and sugar plantations, or in the abolition meetings of the free states. Nor will the women be the least effective in preaching a crusade, when begging money in the North, to relieve their children, left behind in this State, in bondage. We are told it is a popular measure. Where is it popular? In what nook or corner of the State are the principles of humanity so deplorably deficient that a majority of the whole inhabitants would commit an outrage not committed in a Christian country of which history gives any account.... Numbers of the people sought to be enslaved or driven out are members of our various churches, and in full communion. That these great bodies of Christian men and women will quietly stand by and see their humble co-workers sold on the block to the negro-trader is not to be expected; nor will any set of men be supported, morally, or politically, who are the authors of such a law.[27] Since colonization had failed, and efforts at banishment had been defeated, the only remaining alternative that would dispose of the free negro was re-enslavement. In this same year, provision was made for the voluntary re-enslavement of the free negro. Any free negro eighteen years of age might convey himself into slavery by filing a petition to this effect in the circuit or chancery court, signed by himself and witnessed by two persons. The petition named the master selected. After due publication, the petitioner and the master appeared in court and asked the granting of the petition. If the court granted the petition, it named a commission of three men to value the slave. The future master paid one-tenth of this value to the county to be added to the public school fund. The master by giving bond to the court, guaranteeing that the negro would never become a charge to any county in the state, received title to the slave.[28]