Benjamin Lundy

A death opened the job. Elihu Embree, who published the Emancipator, had died, and Tennessee abolitionists recruited Lundy to continue the work; he bought Embree's printing equipment and moved to Greeneville in 1822, believing antislavery argument counted most when it came from inside a slave state. Here he became president of the local branch of the Tennessee Manumission Society and in 1823 traveled to Philadelphia for the national convention against slavery. The eastern contacts he made drew him to Baltimore. He argued for gradual emancipation and colonization, and later hired William Lloyd Garrison as an editor.

What the plaque says

Benjamin Lundy Here from 1822-1824 Lundy, a Quaker, published the "Genius of Universal Emancipation," a small monthly paper devoted exclusively to the abolition of slavery. While here he also published a weekly paper, the "Economist and Political Recorder." After 1824, the "Genius" was published in Baltimore.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Andrew Johnson National Historic Site — steps away
  The tailor shop, homestead and grave of the seventeenth president in Greeneville, where the people he enslaved are named and where the Eighth of August emancipation celebration took root.
• Rogersville Historic District — 20 mi
  Tennessee's first newspaper was printed in this Hawkins County seat in 1791, and Swift Memorial College, founded in 1883, educated Black students after the state's 1901 law forced Maryville College to expel them.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 22 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 24 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.

More markers nearby

• Capitol of State of Franklin — steps away
• Ellen "Nelly" VanVactor Free Black Female Landowner — steps away
• Greeneville Union Convention — steps away
• Sgt. Elbert L. Kinser — steps away