It is singularly true, however, that Tennessee did finally abolish slavery by popular vote. She was the only one of the Confederate States that was excepted from President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863[71] and that abolished slavery by its own act. There was an attempt to hold a convention of Union men in Nashville in the fall of 1864, but the Confederate army in the vicinity of Nashville made it unsafe for the convention to meet. It did meet January 8, 1865, and on the ninth recommended that Article II, Section 31, of the Constitution of 1834, to the effect that “the General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their owner or owners,” be abrogated and that slavery be abolished forever, and the legislature be forbidden to re-establish property in man. These proposed constitutional changes were submitted to popular vote of the Union men, February 22, 1865, and Andrew Johnson as military governor of Tennessee announced that the amendments had been adopted and that “the shackles have been formally stricken from the limbs of more than 275,000 slaves in the state.”[72] “The amended constitution of the State of Tennessee adopted on the 22nd of February, 1865,” said Judge Shackelford in 1865, “prohibits slavery or voluntary servitude, in the State of Tennessee, and it has forever ceased to exist.”[73] It is clear, then, that his amendment was not the ratification of President Lincoln’s Proclamation, which did not apply to Tennessee, but was itself the act of emancipation by which the slaves of Tennessee ceased to be property and became free men. FOOTNOTES [1] Acts of 1777, Ch. 6, Sec. 2. [2] Acts of 1829, Ch. 29, Sec. 1. A special legislative grant was requisite for a valid emancipation in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. See James’ Dig., 398, Act of 1820; Prince’s Dig., 456, Act of 1801; Toulman’s Dig., 632; Mississippi Rev. Code, 386. In North Carolina and Tennessee, the courts granted emancipation—Haywood’s Manual, 525; Act of 1801, Ch. 27. In Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Maryland, the master exercised this power under rules and regulations established by the statutes of these states. 2 Litt. and Swi., 1155; 2 Missouri Laws, 744; 1 Rev. Code of Virginia, 433; Maryland Laws, Act of 1809, Ch. 171. [3] Acts of 1854, Ch. 50, Sec. 1. [4] Petitions in State Archives. [5] Acts of 1801, Ch. 27, Sec. 3. [6] Ibid., Sec. 4. [7] Acts of 1784, Ch. 10, Sec. 7. [8] Fisher’s Negroes v. Dabbs, 6 Yerger, 119 (1834). [9] Acts of 1829, Ch. 29, Sec. 1. [10] Harris v. Clarissa, 6 Yerger, 227 (1834). [11] Acts of 1833, Ch. 81, Sec. 2. [12] Lewis v. Simonton, 8 Humphrey, 189 (1847). [13] Acts of 1784, Ch. 10, Sec. 7. [14] Lewis v. Simonton, 8 Humphrey, 189 (1847). [15] Wheeler, p. 385. [16] Ibid., p. 335. [17] Supra, p. 160. [18] Phillips, Ulrich Bonnel, American Negro Slavery, p. 120. [19] Nile’s Weekly Register, Vol. 14, pp. 321ff.