150 YEARS AGO: Macon Publisher Declares Support for Emancipation of Slaves

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MACON -- Publisher Francis Taylor, in an editorial in the Macon Gazette, declared his support for emancipation of slaves.

Taylor noted that he was a slaveholder and that he was torn over the issue.

"This question is assuming a practical shape before the people of Missouri," Taylor wrote. "It becomes them to meet it in a candid and enlightened spirit, weighing it in all its bearings, and giving it that thoughtful and unprejudiced consideration its merits so richly deserve."

Slavery made Missouri economically backward, and defenders of slavery had made it impossible to discuss emancipation in a rational way, he wrote.

"We have not failed to notice its …