Elihu Embree—a Forerunner

Elihu Embree--industrialist, publisher, scholar, and idealist--lived in Tennessee at the turn of the 19th century. He and his family were committed to abolishing slavery in the American South. Over a few short years, Embree raised the public consciousness and achieved wide recognition with the publication of two periodicals devoted to the abolitionist cause. Elihu Embree's crusade was cut short by his early death in 1820, and racial exploitation quickly worsened, leading to that dark period in this nation's history: the Civil War and its aftermath. Nevertheless, Embree's contribution was important, and he is remembered as a forerunner in the quest for human free-dom. The Quakers and Slavery Elihu Embree came from a family of Quakers. The Religious Society of Friends was founded by Englishman George Fox in 1652 and soon spread to the American colonies. Fox preached that “God was in every man, ” making possible an inward experience of God without the need for a structure of organized religion. The Society played a leading role in efforts to abolish slavery, and, by the end of the 18th century, Quaker John Woolman claimed that “there was not a slave in the possession of a Friend in good standing, except where slaves were held by trustees, and state laws did not allow them to be set free. ” The claim may not have been entirely true, but the Society's commitment to emancipation was unquestioned. From the time of the American Revolution, the northern states opposed slavery, and the U.S. Constitution banned the importation of slaves in 1808. But the southern states institutionalized slavery and built their economies around it. Cotton production required large numbers of slaves, as did numerous other rural and urban industries. Slaves already in the United States continued to be bought and sold in market places across the South. Restricted supply coupled with the increasing demand served to enhance sales prices. By the late 1850s, a strong, young male slave could fetch as much as $1,800