A persistent attack was also directed against the use of the United States mails for the distribution of anti-slavery literature.Mob violence which involved the post-office began as early as 1830, when printed copies of Miss Grimke's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South were seized and burned in Charleston.In 1835 large quantities of anti-slavery literature were removed from the Charleston office and in the presence of the assembled citizens committed to the flames.Postmasters on their own motion examined the mails and refused to deliver any matter that they deemed incendiary.Amos Kendall, Postmaster-General, was requested to issue an order authorizing such conduct.He replied that he had no legal authority to issue such an order.Yet he would not recommend the delivery of such papers."We owe," said he, "an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken." This is an early instance of the appeal to the "higher law" in the pro-slavery controversy.
The higher law was invoked against the freedom of the press.The New York postmaster sought to dissuade the Anti-slavery Society from the attempt to send its publications through the mails into Southern States.In reply to a request for authorization to refuse to accept such publications, the Postmaster-General replied: "I am deterred from giving an order to exclude the whole series of abolition publications from the Southern mails only by a want of legal power, and if I were situated as you are, I would do as you have done."Mr.Kendall's letters to the postmasters of Charleston and New York were written in July and August, 1835.In December of the same year, presumably with full knowledge that a member of his Cabinet was encouraging violations of law in the interest of slavery, President Jackson undertook to supply the need of legal authorization.In his annual message he made a savage attack upon the abolitionists and recommended to Congress the "passing of such a law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications."This part of the President's message was referred to a select committee, of which John C.Calhoun was chairman.The chairman's report was against the adoption of the President's recommendation because a subject of such vital interest to the States ought not to be left to Congress.The admission of the right of Congress to decide what is incendiary, asserted the report, carries with it the power to decide what is not incendiary and hence Congress might authorize and enforce the circulation of abolition literature through the mails in all the States.The States should themselves severally decide what in their judgment is incendiary, and then it would become the duty of the general Government to give effect to such state laws.The bill recommended was in harmony with this view.It was made illegal for any deputy postmaster "to deliver to any person whatsoever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper, or pictorial representation touching the subject of slavery, where by the laws of the said State, territory, or district their circulation is prohibited." The bill was defeated in the Senate by a small margin.Altogether there was an enlightening debate on the whole subject.The exposure of the abuse of tampering with the mail created a general reaction, which enabled the abolitionists to win a spectacular victory.Instead of a law forbidding the circulation of anti-slavery publications, Congress enacted a law requiring postal officials under heavy penalties to deliver without discrimination all matter committed to their charge.This act was signed by President Jackson, and Calhoun himself was induced to admit that the purposes of the abolitionists were not violent and revolutionary.Henceforth abolitionists enjoyed their full privileges in the use of the United States mail.
An even more dramatic victory was thrust upon the abolitionists by the inordinate violence of their opponents in their attack upon the right of petition.John Quincy Adams, who became their distinguished champion, was not himself an abolitionist.When, as a member of the lower House of Congress in 1831, he presented petitions from certain citizens of Pennsylvania, presumably Quakers, requesting Congress to abolish slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, he refused to countenance their prayer, and expressed the wish that the memorial might be referred without debate.At the very time when a New England ex-President was thus advising abolitionists to desist from sending petitions to Congress, the Virginia Legislature was engaged in the memorable debate upon a similar petition from Virginia Quakers, in which most radical abolition sentiment was expressed by actual slaveowners.Adams continued to present anti-slavery memorials and at the same time to express his opposition to the demands of the petitioners.When in 1835there arose a decided opposition to the reception of such documents, Adams, still in apparent sympathy with the pro-slavery South on the main issue, gave wise counsel on the method of dealing with petitions.They should be received, said he, and referred to a committee; because the right of petition is sacred.
