“I repent that I ever owned one. And indeed the crime is of such a hue, that the time may yet come, that a man who has, in a single instance, gone astray thus far, may never be able in his life time to regain public confidence; and should this change of public sentiment take place in my day, and render me disqualified to act in the promotion of this glorious cause, I hope to acquiesce in, and be resigned to suffer the just judgment, and be more humble under a sense of my past misconduct; meanwhile I shall doubtless have the pleasure of rejoicing at seeing this stigma on our religious professions, and scar upon our national escutcheon, eradicated by men of clean hands.”[35] III. ABOLITION LITERATURE. The first issue of the Manumission Intelligencer was published in March, 1819, at Jonesboro, Tennessee. It was a weekly at first, and, in this form, about fifty issues were published, eight or ten copies of which are in the possession of various individuals in Washington County. In 1820, Embree changed the paper to a monthly octavo and called it The Emancipator.[36] Due to Embree’s death, December 12, 1820, The Emancipator was forced to discontinue, after a very prosperous existence of eight months, during which time a subscription list of 2000 had been secured.[37] The numbers issued were bound in one volume of one hundred and twenty pages, a copy of which is in the possession of Esq. Thomas J. Wilson, who married Mr. Embree’s daughter. Embree said that the purpose of “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 authority.”[38] Mr. Embree, in discussing the progress of abolition in Tennessee and his publication, said: