1. That if Tennessee were to say that the children of all slaves born after a specified time would become free at a certain age, it would mean either that these slaves would be sold to other slave states before they became free, or that their masters would go there with them.[52] 2. That such congregating of slaves would aggravate their situation and tend toward a servile war.[53] 3. “That in Tennessee, slaves are treated with as much humanity as in any part of the world, where slavery exists. Here they are well clothed and fed, and the labor they have to perform is not grievous nor burdensome.”[54] 4. That the slaves of Tennessee do not want to leave the state and that, if their wishes are respected, the prayers of the memorialists will not be granted. This report admits that slavery is a great evil and utters the following prophecy of its abolition: “The ministers of our holy religion will knock at the door of the hearts of the owners of slaves, telling every one of them to let his bondsman and his bondswoman go free, and to send them back to the land of their forefathers, and the voice of these holy men will be heard and obeyed, and even those who lend a deaf ear to the admonitions in the hour of death, will, on a bed of sickness and at the approach of death, make provision for the emancipation of their slaves, and for their transportation to their home on the coast of Africa.”[55] This report was adopted by the convention by a vote of 44 to 10. Mathew Stephenson, of Washington County, supported by John McGoughey, Richard Bradshaw, and James Gillespey, prepared a protest to the committee’s report in which they said: We believe that the importance of the subject, deeply involving the interest and safety of the State, both in a political and moral point of view, together with the number and respectability of the memorialists, merited from this convention a more respectful notice and consideration, than merely to appoint a committee of three, with instructions to give reasons why the convention would not take up and consider the matter.[56] This protest from members of the Convention was supported by petitions from the anti-slavery forces in the state. A petition from the citizens of Jefferson called attention to some of the weaknesses of the report of the committee of three, such as the admission of the great evil of slavery, its subversiveness of republican institutions, the selling of slaves to the more southern slaveholding states, the pitiable condition of the free negroes, which was equally applicable to white men, and the fallacy of the argument that Tennessee would ever be more favorable to emancipation.