of 1834 also marked the state's retraction of suffrage for most freed slaves. By 1830 the number of African Americans had increased from less than 4,000 at the beginning of the century to 146,158. This was chiefly related to the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 and the development of large plantations and transportation of numerous enslaved people to the Cotton Belt in West Tennessee, in the area of the Mississippi River. Antebellum years (1841–1861) By 1860 the slave population had nearly doubled to 283,019, with only 7,300 free African Americans in the state. While much of the slave population was concentrated in West Tennessee, planters in Middle Tennessee also used enslaved African Americans for labor. According to the 1860 census, African slaves comprised about 25% of the state's population of 1.1 million before the Civil War. Civil War Secession Most Tennesseans initially showed little enthusiasm for breaking away from a nation whose struggles it had shared for so long. There were small exceptions such as Franklin County, which borders Alabama in southern Middle Tennessee; Franklin County formally threatened to secede from Tennessee and join Alabama if Tennessee did not leave the Union. Franklin County withdrew this threat when Tennessee did eventually secede. In 1860, Tennesseans had voted by a slim margin for the Constitutional Unionist John Bell, a native son and moderate who continued to search for a way out of the crisis. In February 1861, fifty-four percent of the state's voters voted against sending delegates to a secession convention. With the attack on Fort Sumter in April, however, followed by President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to coerce the seceded states back into line, public sentiment turned dramatically against the Union. Historian Daniel Crofts wrote: "Unionists of all descriptions, both those who became Confederates and those who did not, considered the proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand troops 'disastrous.' Having consulted personally with Lincoln in March, Congressman Horace Maynard, the unconditional Unionist and future Republican from East Tennessee, felt assured that the administration would pursue a peaceful policy. Soon after April 15, a dismayed Maynard reported that 'the President's extraordinary proclamation' had unleashed 'a tornado of excitement that seems likely to sweep us all away.' Men who had 'heretofore been cool, firm and Union loving' had become 'perfectly wild' and were 'aroused to a phrenzy[sic] of passion.' For what purpose, they asked, could such an army be