The new Abolitionists were naturally of a more moderate type than Garrison, and most of them would listen only to regular legal methods for the accomplishment of their purposes. The quickening of the public opinion in the North, the conviction of the slaveholders themselves of the error, if not the sin, of slavery, and the appeal to the Government to do all within its constitutional powers against slavery, were the only means which many of them were willing to employ. Their petitions to Congress, and the transmission of their literature of Abolition to the Southerners through the United States mails, brought the whole question of their rights and purposes before the Government, and before the nation, for which that Government was bound to act with impartial justice to all its parts.
Petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had been sent to Congress, generally fromQuaker sources, almost from the day that the capital of the country was established there, but they were not numerous and were not pushed by any anti-slavery organization. In the session of 1826-27, a petition from citizens of Baltimore, probably instigated by Benjamin Lundy, was presented, which contained the same prayer; and in the session of 1827-28, one of like tenor from citizens of the District itself was presented. Such petitions were usually read and referred to the committee on the District. They were irritating to the slaveholders from the first, but it was not until after the excitement of the Southampton massacre that they were angrily resented as an interference with the domestic institutions of the slaveholding Commonwealths.
It was in the session of 1831-32, that the first mutterings of the petition storm were heard. On December 12th, 1831, Mr. John Quincy Adams presented, in the House of Representatives, fifteen petitions from sundry inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the chief prayer of all of which was for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Adams said that he would give no countenance to that prayer, but that there was a prayer in the petitions for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District, which, he thought, might properly be considered, and he moved the reference of the petitions, for this purpose, to the regular committee of the House for the District.
There was in this little to indicate the terrible earnestness which Mr. Adams later displayed in behalf of the Abolition petitions. He seemed at this time to be annoyed at being asked to present them, and to feel that there were superior moral reasons why a slavery agitation should not be excited within the halls of Congress. But all this was soon to change. Mr. Adams's advancetoward radical Abolitionism is as marked a feature of the struggle over the right of petition as Mr. Calhoun's declaration of the righteousness of slavery.
The committee on the District reported, on December 19th, that as the District was composed of cessions of territory from Maryland and Virginia, it would, in the opinion of the members of the committee, be unwise, if not unjust, for Congress to interfere in the question of the relation of slave to master in the District, until Virginia and Maryland should take steps to eradicate the evil from their respective territories. This report seemed to settle the question for the session, and no more petitions appeared in either House.
In the middle of the next session, Mr. Hiester, of Pennsylvania, presented a petition to the House of Representatives from sundry citizens of Pennsylvania praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This was again a Quaker petition, as were the petitions presented by Mr. Adams. Mr. Hiester moved to refer the petition to the committee on the District, and Mr. Mason, of Virginia, rashly called for the yeas and nays, which opened the question to debate. Mr. Adams immediately pointed out this fact to Mr. Mason, and advised him to withdraw his motion, which advice Mr. Mason wisely adopted. The petition went to the Committee, and nothing further was heard of it.
It was first in the session of 1833-34, that petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District from others than Quakers, presumably from the members of the new anti-slavery societies, appeared in both Houses of Congress. Those presented in the Senate were referred to the committee of the Senate for the District, and nothing more was heard of them. Those presented in the House of Representatives were dealt with in the same manner.
It was not until the session of 1834-35, that the first real note of the conflict was sounded. On January 26th, 1835, Mr. Dickson, of New York, presented several petitions praying for the abolition of the slave-trade and of slavery in the District. They were laid over until February 2nd, when Mr. Dickson called them up, made a rather irritating speech, in which he said that the committee on the District had smothered all such petitions referred to it, and moved the reference of those offered by him to a select committee.
Mr. Chinn, of Virginia, the chairman of the regular committee on the District, resented Mr. Dickson's rude assault, and moved to lay the petitions and Mr. Dickson's motion on the table. The House voted Mr. Chinn's motion by a large majority.
At length, in the session of 1835-36, the storm broke in all its fury, in both the Senate and the House. It began in the House, December 16th, 1835, upon the presentation of a petition, containing the usual prayer in regard to slavery in the District, by Mr. Fairfield, of Maine. Mr. Cramer, of New York, moved to lay the petition on the table, and the motion was voted. Mr. Fairfield immediately presented another petition of like purport, and himself moved that it be laid upon the table. Mr. Boon, of Indiana, asked that the petition be read, which was done. Thereupon Mr. Slade, of Vermont, moved that it be printed. This meant, of course, that Mr. Slade was determined to have the slavery question agitated in Congress, if he could. Upon him rather than upon Mr. Adams rests the honor, or the blame, whichever it may be, of provoking the excitement over the Abolition petitions, and of upholding the right of petition in the most extreme degree.
The House first voted to lay the petition on the table.The Speaker, Mr. James K. Polk, then put Mr. Slade's motion to print. Whereupon Mr. Slade attempted to debate the whole question of slavery in the District under the motion. The Speaker ruled that the contents of the petition could not be debated under the motion to print. Mr. Vanderpoel, of New York, then moved to lay Mr. Slade's motion on the table, and the House voted to do so by a large majority.
Two days later the play was on again. Mr. Jackson, of Massachusetts, presented a petition from sundry citizens of Massachusetts, containing the usual prayer, and moved its reference to a select committee. Whereupon Mr. Hammond, South Carolina, moved that the petition should not be received. This was the ultra-Southern position in regard to the anti-slavery petitions, and Mr. Hammond's enunciation of it in the House antedates Mr. Calhoun's in the Senate by more than a fortnight.
The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to assemble peaceably and petition the Government for redress of grievances. The right to petition certainly includes the right to have the petitions heard by the body petitioned. If the body refuses to receive the petition, it prevents its being heard, and by preventing its being heard it makes the right itself a mockery. On the other hand, the Constitution vests in each House of Congress the power to make its own rules of procedure. This power must, of course, be so used as not to violate any other clause of the Constitution. Under this power, however, each House may and should protect itself against all obstacles thrown by outsiders in the way of the discharge of its duties in legislating for the country. If any number of people undertake, by an abuse of the right of petition, to obstruct the legitimate work of the Congress for the whole people, each Housecertainly has the right to meet this attempt in any way which will not deny the right of petition, the right of any one or any number of the people to be heard in asking for a redress of grievances.
Down to 1834, the custom of procedure in Congress had been to receive, hear, and refer all petitions. That was going one step farther than was required by the constitutional right of petition; still it was the regular course, and such men as Mr. Adams thought it unwise to depart from the custom in the case of the Abolition petitions. At any rate, Mr. Hammond's motion was a new proposition. The Speaker said that he was "not aware that such a motion had ever been sustained by the former practice of the House," and appeared to rule Mr. Hammond's motion out of order. A confused wrangle ensued over the attitude assumed by the Speaker, during which Mr. Hammond made a motion to reject the petition, and the Speaker, becoming confused by the two motions, the one not to receive, and the other to reject, and knowing that the House could of course reject the prayer of a petition, yielded to the representations of Mr. Hammond, and put Mr. Hammond's motion not toreceivethe petition to the House. The House voted not to refuse to receive the petition, but the ruling of the Speaker in putting the motion implied that the House possessed the power to refuse to receive, that is, to refuse to hear, a petition. Another confused wrangle ensued over the question whether the House had voted merely not to refuse to receive the petition, or had voted to consider its contents at once. After a day of heated debate and three days of adjournment, during which excited feelings were somewhat calmed, the House reversed all former action, and voted to lay the petition and all the motions relating to it on the table.
Another petition, which, during this wrangle had been inadvertently referred to the committee on the District, was now recalled by a motion to reconsider the vote of reference. It was upon this motion that Mr. Adams made his first great appeal for the right of petition. As we have seen, his view before this was that petitions must be received, heard, and referred. In this speech, however, he indicated that there should be a report from the committee, and a vote upon the report. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, met Mr. Adams' assertions quite successfully, and showed conclusively that, if the right of petition should be interpreted to reach any farther than the right to have the petition received and heard, it would so modify the constitutional right of the House to establish its own rules of procedure as to put it in the power of a few determined obstructionists outside the House, acting with a single member of the House, to prevent the House from doing anything but consider petitions upon a single subject, sacrificing thus the interests of the whole people to the obstinacy of a small number of the people.
Mr. Jones' argument was so sound and rational that it would probably have settled the minds of almost all of the members in regard to the complicated questions of the right of petition, and the powers of the House over its rules of procedure, had not Mr. Granger, of New York, and Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, thrown another firebrand into the House during this debate, in the form of an intimation that Congress had the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The Southerners now advanced to the position of denying that power to Congress, and Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in a long and violent speech, demanded that Congressshould pass a resolution disclaiming the possession of any such power. Mr. Slade immediately accepted the challenge of Mr. Wise, and delivered an anti-slavery speech in reply, such as had never before been heard upon the floors of Congress. He not only vindicated the power of Congress over the question of slavery in the District, but he discussed the whole question of slavery upon its merits. His words were simply a declaration of relentless war upon slavery in the halls of Congress. They created indescribable consternation in all parts of the House, and roused the resentment and anger of the slaveholders to a veritable fury. In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Garland, of Virginia, gained the Speaker's recognition, and made a good argument against some of Mr. Slade's more radical statements. So soon as he had finished, Mr. Mann, of New York, moved to stop the debate with the previous question. This was voted, and the Speaker then put the motion for the reconsideration of the reference of the petition, under which motion this debate had proceeded. This was voted, and immediately the motion was made to lay the recalled petition, with the reconsidered motion to refer it, on the table. This was voted by a majority of more than two to one.
Evidently the House thought that, in receiving and hearing the petitions and then laying them on the table, it had found the solution of the question, which neither violated the right of petition in the people, nor encroached upon the power of the House over its rules of procedure, nor opened the way for anti-slavery agitation in Congress.
It would have been wise for the slaveholders to have left this solution of the question undisturbed, but they did not see it so. On January 4th, 1836, Mr. Adams presented a petition from sundry citizens ofMassachusetts containing the usual prayer, and said that "in conformity with the course heretofore adopted, he should move that the petition, without reading, be laid on the table." Mr. Patton interrupted Mr. Adams with an inquiry addressed to the Speaker as to whether the petition had been received by the House, and the Speaker replied that it had not. He said that, upon looking up the authorities, he "had formed the opinion that the first question to be decided, upon the motion of a member, was whether the petition be received or not." The Speaker, Mr. Polk, had now come out of his uncertainty about the right of petition including the reception of the petition by the House, as a constitutional obligation, and now definitely denied that the right of petition included the right to have the petition received by the House. This was a fatal move, a fatal mistake upon his part. The object professedly sought by all parties, except such Abolitionists as Mr. Slade, was the prevention of agitation upon the slavery question in the halls of Congress. Whether all were sincere in this profession is questionable. It had been insinuated that there were agitators upon this question from both sections of the country, who were disingenuously claiming to be classed with the maintainers of peace. It does really seem that the innuendo was justified as to certain of the Southerners by the position now assumed by Mr. Patton and Mr. Polk, and then by Mr. Glascock, who, immediately after the ruling of the Speaker, moved that this petition be not received. While Mr. Adams, who sincerely believed that reference as well as reception was a necessary consequence of the right of petition, had accommodated himself to the decision which the House had made a fortnight before, these Southern gentlemen were now proposing to drive the House fromthe solid middle ground, then occupied, toward a position which the majority considered to be an encroachment upon the constitutional right of petition, a movement upon their part which was certain, and known by all to be certain, to provoke an excited debate upon the question of slavery. It may be that they thought the refusal to receive one of these anti-slavery petitions would prevent any more from being presented, and that it was better to have it out once for all than to be continually receiving, and listening to the reading of, these petitions. If so, they were wofully mistaken.
Mr. Adams now made one more effort to preserve the Southerners against the consequences of their own folly. He undertook to arrest the debate by calling for the application of the forty-fifth rule of the House, which required that no petition should be debated or decided on the day of its presentation. But the Speaker now decided that this rule could not apply to a petition until it had been received. The gates of Janus were flung wide open, and the House went into an agitation upon the subject, to which all that had gone before was only a prelude. The struggle lasted for more than four months, during which period petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District, signed by over thirty thousand persons, were poured into the House. The slavery question was at last brought before the people of the United States in a way most highly satisfactory to the most radical Abolitionist, and no matter what the immediate compromise upon the subject might be, it was evident to all farseeing minds then that a death-blow had been struck at slavery.
There is not space in this work to recount the scenes enacted on the floor of the House during these four exciting months, or even to give a résumé of the debate.The conflict was ended for the moment by the adoption, on May 25th (1836), of a series of resolutions reported by a committee appointed for the purpose, of which Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, was the chairman. These resolutions provided: "That Congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere in any way with the institution of slavery in any of the States of this Confederacy; that Congress ought not to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia; and whereas it is extremely important and desirable that the agitation of this subject should be finally arrested, for the purpose of restoring tranquillity to the public mind, ... that all petitions, memorials, propositions, or papers, relating in any way, or to any extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being printed or referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon."
The solution thus reached by the House of the question of the power of the House to control its procedure, over against the right of a number of individuals to excite interminable discussions and paralyze the business of the House by flooding it with petitions upon one and the same subject, was the laying of all such petitions on the tableas a rule of the House.
Of course this rule must be readopted at the beginning of each session, and a debate upon the readoption might be thus precipitated, but, so long as a majority supported the rule, the previous question could be voted after giving a reasonable opportunity to discuss the question of readoption, and such discussion was then not likely to be renewed during the session. It was possible also for petitions to bepresented, at the beginning of the session, before the readoption of the rule, and these could be disposed of only by a special vote in each case to lay upon the table. There were thus still opportunities for the Abolitionists to cause the House to resolve itself into something more like a bear-garden than an assembly of Witan, as was evident from the scenes which were enacted on February 6th, 1837, when Mr. Adams came into the House with a petition in regard to slavery signed by some twenty slaves, and asked the Speaker if it came under the rule for laying such petitions on the table. Everybody supposed that the petition contained the usual prayer for the abolition of slavery, and that the Abolitionists had incited the slaves to the act. Mr. Adams allowed the excitement produced by this supposition to rage for a time, and then coolly and derisively informed the House that the prayer of the petition was not for abolition but against it. The members now felt that Mr. Adams was playing with the peace, order, and dignity of the House in a scandalous way, and for several days the question of censuring him was considered, but the matter was finally disposed of by a resolution declaring: "That slaves do not possess the right of petition secured to the people of the United States by the Constitution."
At the beginning of the next session, that of 1837-38, Mr. Slade seized the opportunity to present an abolition petition before the re-enactment of the Pinckney rule, and to provoke a debate on the subject of slavery. He was substantially foiled, however, by a vote to adjourn, and, upon reassembly, by a suspension of the rules and a re-enactment of the resolution to lay everything in reference to slavery on the table. This rule covered all matters relating to slavery in the Territories as well as in the Commonwealths and the District.
The more the House did to discourage the petitions the more they increased. In two years from the adoption of the Pinckney resolutions the number of petitioners was tenfold greater than it was before their enactment. At the same time the legislatures of the New England Commonwealths were passing resolutions declaring the rule of the House of Representatives in regard to the abolition petitions to be a violation of the people's constitutional right, and also declaring that Congress possessed the power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
To meet these demonstrations of increasing strength and increasing determination on the part of the Abolitionists, the House not only repeated its rule, but made it more stringent, until, at last, irritated beyond measure at the persistence of the petitioners, it took the fatal step, and, on January 8th, 1840, enacted as a standing rule of the House: "That no petition, memorial, resolution, or other paper, praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or any State or Territory, or the slave-trade between the States or Territories of the United States in which it now exists,shall be received by this House, or entertained in any way whatever."
At last the House had encroached upon the most essential part of the right of petition, the right to have the petition heard. The moderate men of the South and twenty-eight members from the North had given way before the radical men of the South, and had fallen into the ranks under their lead. The Southern radicals thought that they had won a great victory, but it was not so. They had only identified the denial of the right of petition with the interests of slavery. Theyhad only demonstrated that slavery was a matter of national concern, since its interests required that limitations should be placed upon the well understood rights of the people in the non-slaveholding Commonwealths. They only made it manifest that, sooner or later, the nation must deal with the question. Their most violent enemies could not have wished them a more disastrous result.
The proceedings in the Senate in regard to the Abolition petitions must be even more concisely stated. The course pursued and the result reached were similar to what has been described in the account of the experiences of the House. The Senate first received and heard the petitions, and voted immediately to deny their prayer. Then, when it became evident that this would not prevent anti-slavery agitation on the floor of the Senate, the body adopted the custom of hearing a motion not to receive a petition, and voting immediately to lay the motion not to receive, and along with it the petition itself, on the table. This practice was modified a little later, by a ruling of the presiding officer, to the effect that an objection to the petition by any member would raise the question of the reception of the petition without a formal motion. Mr. Calhoun had contended for this method of raising the question in regard to the reception of the petitions from the beginning of the struggle over the subject, in January of 1836. He seemed, however, to desire to dispose of them by simply voting not to receive them. In fact, he made a motion to this effect, at the very outset of the contest, but without success. While thus the Senate did not formally adopt the practice finally reached in the House of refusing to receive the petitions, it arrived at about the same result in practice. It is true that the presiding officer of the Senate allowed the petitions to beread before putting the motion upon their reception, which seems to have been an illogical practice indeed, and that any member might move to call up the motion not to receive, and with it the petition or petitions to which that motion referred; but the reading before the motion not to receive, or before the objection to receiving, was perfunctory, and there was no member of the Senate who desired to call up the tabled petitions or persisted in so doing. As a matter of fact, the public opinion which the Abolitionists succeeded in creating in the North concerning the attitude of the Senate toward the Abolition petitions was that the Senate had done the same violence to the people's constitutional right of petition that the House had done. It was held and believed throughout the North, in 1840, that the Congress of the United States, in both of its branches, had set the interests of slavery above the liberties of the people of the North.
There were two incidents which happened during the course of the proceedings in the Senate upon the subject to which brief reference should be made. One was the noted passage of words between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Rives, of Virginia, in regard to the morality of slavery, and the other was the petition from the legislature of Vermont for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
The Abolitionists had assumed to have the ethical principle entirely upon their side, and this had not, down to 1836, been clearly disputed by the slaveholders. The slaveholders had, themselves, as we have so often seen, acknowledged slavery to be an evil, and had, therefore, defended it chiefly from the point of view of positive law. Of course so profound a thinker as Mr. Calhoun knew that positive law cannot permanently withstand theassaults of ethical principle. He knew that the moral arguments against slavery must be met upon moral grounds, as well as upon legal grounds. The discussion was carried over upon ethical premises by the remark of Mr. Rives that he, though a slaveholder, was not in favor of slavery in the abstract, and differed on that point with the gentleman from South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun immediately denied that he had expressed any opinion in regard to the question of slavery in the abstract, and said he had spoken of slavery only "as existing where two races of men, of different color, and striking dissimilarity in conformation, habits, and a thousand other particulars, were placed in immediate juxtaposition." Mr. Calhoun elaborated his argument in many directions, but the gist of it was that where a civilized race and a barbarous race, nearly equal numerically, must live together, the civilized race must, in the interests of the civilization of both races, control the barbarous race, through the relation of the slavery of the latter to the former, and that the only alternative to this would be the barbarizing of the whole society by the uncontrolled deeds and passions of the barbarous race, if the two races are left to themselves, or the establishment of a barbaric despotism over the civilized race, if the barbaric race be aided by successful interference from without. In contrast with either of these conditions, Mr. Calhoun contended that the slavery of the barbarous race to the civilized race was a moral good.
From a metaphysical point of view the only question between Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun was whether every departure from the perfect good must be considered an evil, or whether a nearer approximation to the perfect good may be called a good in contrast with a lower approximation. Mr. Rives was looking at the subjectfrom an abstract, transcendental point of view, while Mr. Calhoun was regarding it from the historical point of view. Mr. Rives was with the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but against them as to the time and means of applying it. Mr. Calhoun was not against the Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but the time of its possible application appeared to him so far distant, and the impropriety and unfairness of interference by outsiders in the matter and the disastrous consequences which must flow from such interference seemed to him so plain and so certain, that he almost lost sight of the abstract height upon which the Abolitionists stood behind the many intervening elevations, which must be first attained and traversed in order to reach their position.
There was a possible moral ground upon which Mr. Calhoun and the Abolitionists might have met. Could the Abolitionists have conceived that the existence of certain conditions would justify domestic slavery as a relation which couldtemporarilyproduce a better state of morals in a particularly constituted society than any other relation, that is, could they have taken the historical view of ethics, the evolutionary view of morals, and could Mr. Calhoun have seen that the time had come for a modification of the existing form of negro slavery in the South, for a step toward a greater degree of personal liberty for the slave, an approach between him and them might have been, at least, begun; but their implacable dogmatism, and his stern resentment at their persistent interference in what he thought no concern of theirs, widened the gulf between him and them from day to day. They regarded him as a sinner and a criminal because he held persons to service and labor who had not freely agreed to the same, and heconsidered them to be greater sinners and criminals because they would overturn the existing order of society in communities where they had no personal interests to be affected, and would introduce into these communities the reign of plunder, rapine, and murder.
When Mr. Calhoun saw that he could not bring the Senate to refuse formally to receive the Abolition petitions, he undertook to bring the Senate over to his views of the "States' sovereignty" character of the Union, of the obligation of the general Government to protect slavery in the slaveholding Commonwealths, of the ethical obligation of the people of the non-slaveholding Commonwealths not to attack the institution of slavery, and of the practical impotence of Congress to deal with slavery in the District of Columbia and in the Territories. He did not, however, succeed. The Senate did not repudiate his "States' sovereignty" view of the Union, but, while it was willing to say that neither the Northern Commonwealths nor the Northern people had any legal right to attack slavery under moral or religious pretexts, it would not say that they were under moral or religious obligations to abstain from the attack. Neither would the Senate say that the general Government must so exercise its powers as to give increased security to slavery, nor that the general Government had no power over the subject of slavery in the District and the Territories. It modified these demands of Mr. Calhoun so as to make them read, that the general Government should not so exercise its powers as to interfere with the security of the domestic institutions of the Commonwealths, and that the general Government ought not in good faith to undertake to abolish slavery in the District or in the Territories, except under certain conditions.
The immediate occasion of the presentation of these resolutions of December 27th, 1837, by Mr. Calhoun, was probably the other incident to which reference has been made, the introduction, by Senator Swift, of Vermont, of a petition from the legislature of Vermont praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This shaft had struck Mr. Calhoun in his most vulnerable part. Here was, according to his own doctrine, a "sovereign State" instructing its governmental agent for general affairs. Could that agent refuse to receive the instructions of one of his principals? There certainly was no precedent for any such procedure as that in any system of jurisprudence known to the world. Mr. Calhoun recognized fully the embarrassment of his position. He begged that the communication from the Vermont legislature might lay upon the table until he could prepare his mind for action upon the subject, and pledged himself to call it up very shortly, if no one else should do so. Mr. Swift helped the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun especially, out of the dilemma by withdrawing the petition for the time being. This incident occurred on December 19th.
Mr. Swift assumed that Mr. Calhoun's resolutions of the 27th contained the results of his preparation of mind to meet the Vermont memorial, and after the consideration of them by the Senate, Mr. Swift reintroduced the memorial on January 16th (1838). The Southerners had been thrown into such confusion by thecoup de surprisesprung upon them by the Vermonters that they had not been able to agree upon any plan for meeting the exigency. Some of them denounced the action of the Vermont legislature as incendiary, outrageous, and degrading. Mr. King gave his "States' sovereignty" creed entirely away in saying: "Wedefend the legitimate rights of the States, but we do not defend a sovereign State when she asserts calumny and falsehood."
Mr. Calhoun was measured in his language, but evidently greatly disturbed in mind. He said that as a "States' rights" man, in the strongest sense, he believed that the "State" of Vermont had a right to come there and be heard; that, on the best reflection he could give to the matter, he could not vote against receiving the petition; but that, on the other hand, he considered the language of the memorial so objectionable that he could not vote to receive it.
It does seem as if this incident should have taught Mr. Calhoun the fallacy of his logic in insisting upon the power of the Senate to refuse to receive a petition. Here was a case in which his doctrine of parliamentary procedure had absolutely broken down, according to his own acknowledgment. Mr. Strange, of North Carolina, committed the folly of objecting to the reception of the petition, and moving that the question of reception, and with it the petition, be laid on the table. The motion was defeated by a vote of twenty-six to twelve. The memorial was received and the debate upon it was in order. The Southerners were helpless, and had not Mr. Swift himself come to their rescue, no man can say what would have happened. Mr. Swift moved that the papers from the Vermont legislature be laid upon the table, without being printed. They had accomplished their immediate purpose, and it was wise as well as patriotic to let them rest in dignity and honor.
The Abolitionists were more successful in their attempt to use the United States mails for the distribution of their literature throughout the South. During the course of the year 1835, it became known thattheir opinions and doctrines were being disseminated by this means. The Southerners considered these opinions to be incendiary and dangerous to the peace and safety of their communities and their firesides. They thought that they had the legal right to prevent the delivery of such mail matter in their respective communities. They did not wait, however, to deal with the subject through legal forms. On the night of July 29th, 1835, a mob of respectables broke into the post-office at Charleston, S. C., in search of Abolition documents. They found a sack full of them, took it away with them, and publicly burned its contents. On August 4th following, a meeting of the citizens took place, at which a committee of public safety was elected, which should, in understanding with the postmaster, determine what mail matter should not be delivered by him to the addressees. The postmaster apparently acquiesced in this arrangement, but he wrote, upon his own responsibility, a letter to the postmaster of New York City, whence the Abolition pamphlets had come, requesting him not to forward any more such documents. The postmaster at New York endeavored to induce the Abolitionists not to put any more of their literature into the mails until he could receive instructions from the Postmaster-General at Washington in regard to the question; and when the Abolitionists repelled his request, he refused to forward their documents, pending his conference with the Postmaster-General.
The Postmaster-General, Mr. Amos Kendall, one of the shrewdest of politicians, though no great constitutional lawyer, answered the appeal from the postmaster at New York immediately. He instructed his subordinate that the executive power of the Government had no legal authority to exclude mail matter, as defined byCongress, from the mails on account of the character of its contents, real or supposed. If Mr. Kendall had stopped with this he would have been entirely correct; but he went on to say that he would not direct the postmaster at New York to forward the Abolition documents or the postmaster at Charleston to deliver them, commended their assumption of the responsibility of withholding them from the addressees, and declared that the United States officials owed an obligation to the laws of the United States, but a higher one to the communities in which they lived. Mr. Kendall probably meant this part of his communication as the advice of one private citizen to another. Looked at in the most charitable light possible, however, it was unjustifiable and pernicious. It was nothing less than an encouragement to his subordinates to suspend the execution of the laws which they were appointed to execute and sworn to execute, when in their several opinions the welfare of the communities in which they might live should require it. This was nullification, not by a "State" convention, but by an individual United States officer. How the President, who had always so sternly denounced any attempt to prevent the execution of the laws, could approve this is difficult to understand. His indignation at the Abolitionists in persisting in what he considered an abuse of the freedom of the mails probably blinded him to the real significance of the matter.
In his message of the following December, the President denounced the methods of the Abolitionists in sending their incendiary literature into the South as calculated and intended to excite a servile war with all its horrors, and recommended Congress to pass a law prohibiting, "under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States,through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection."
Mr. Calhoun himself moved the reference of this part of the President's message to a select committee in the Senate. Mr. Calhoun was appointed the chairman of the committee, and on February 4th, 1836, he brought in a report and a bill.
In the report Mr. Calhoun took the ground that the freedom of the mails was a necessary part of the freedom of the press, and argued that, as Congress was prohibited by the first amendment to the Constitution from passing any law abridging the freedom of the press, so Congress possessed no power to pass any law excluding mail matter from the mails on account of the character of its contents or authorizing such matter to be withheld from the addressees. Mr. Calhoun's conclusion was that only the "States" could make such laws as would effect these things. He proposed in his bill, therefore, that no deputy postmaster in any "State," Territory, or district of the Union should knowingly receive and put into the mail any printed or written paper or pictorial representation touching the subject of slavery, addressed to a person or a post-office within any "State," Territory, or district in which the circulation of such papers and representations was forbidden by the local laws; that the officers and agents of the Post-Office Department should co-operate with the local officials in preventing the circulation of such papers and representations where their circulation was prohibited by the local laws; that the matter so detained from transmission by a post-office official should be burned, after one month's notice, if the person depositing the same should not claim it within that period; and that the post-office officials who should violate these duties should not beprotected by the laws of the United States against the jurisdiction of the local law and government.