The Quakers led decidedly in the movement of abolition. As early as 1770 in their annual meeting attention was called to the treatment of the slave and to “the iniquitous practice of importing negroes.”[128] In 1772 it was decided in their annual meeting that no Friend should buy a slave of any other person than a Friend in unity. This regulation might be violated if it was to unite husband and wife or mother and children, or for other reasons if approved by monthly meeting.[129] Advance was made again in 1774 and in 1775 when the yearly meeting decided “That Friends in unity shall neither buy nor sell a negro without the consent of the monthly meeting to which they belong.”[130] In 1776 the Friends reached complete abolition.[131] The yearly meeting advised with unanimity that the members of the Friends’ Society “clear their hands” of the slaves as rapidly as possible. By the close of the Revolution the Friends were practically rid of slaves. In the year 1787 there was not a slave in the possession of an acknowledged Quaker.[132] They never recanted on this proposition. The attitude of the Southern Quakers was at first amelioration of the condition of the slave. They were interested in the physical condition of the negro, possibly as much for economic reasons as for altruistic motives.[133] In North Carolina, where the immediate background of Tennessee Quakerism is found, the question of slavery was slow in rising, but soon thereafter became a very stubborn question.[134] The yearly meetings of 1758 and 1770 took decidedly hostile attitude toward the buying and selling of slaves, and demanded that those that were inherited be treated well.[135] The Quakers in North Carolina worked personally among the Friends for abolition and as an organization they petitioned the Legislature of the State to modify its laws in the direction of justice and mercy. They protested bitterly against free negroes, who had been given their freedom by conscientious masters, being taken to other states and sold into slavery.[136] The harshness of North Carolina law created a modified Quakerism not to be found elsewhere. The yearly meeting created agents to take charge of slaves that masters wanted to manumit, and look after them. By this method they proposed to give virtual freedom to the slaves when legal freedom was not recognized by the state.[137] This practice continued to the Civil War.