nothing to do with slavery! Nothing to do with it! when, before the date even of the Fugitive Slave Bill, innocent men were liable to be arrested, or kidnapped, by its emissaries, and dragged before the dubious justice embodied in a Southern court!

VIII.

THE OPPOSITION BY THE FEDERAL POWER.

WHILE the States were agitating the question of suppressing the slavery discussion by statutes, the Federal government-faithful to that uniform policy which had acquired the character of an instinct

arrayed itself on the side of despotism. "The occasion for exerting this influence was presented by the excitement growing out of the transmission of anti-slavery publications through the United States mails. Some of these publications were gratuitously sent, not to any portion of the colored people, either the free or the enslaved, — but to prominent citizens, statesmen, clergymen, merchants, planters, and professional gentlemen at the South, whose names and residences were known at the North. There could be no reasonable pretence that this measure could excite an insurrection of the slaves. GENERAL DUFF GREEN, editor of The Washington Telegraph,-one of the most violent opposers of the Abolitionists, admitted that there was little or no danger of this; and that the real ground of apprehension was, that the publications would operate upon the consciences and fears of slave-holders themselves, from the insinuation of

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their dangerous heresies into our schools, our pulpits, and our domestic circles.' 'It is only,' said he, by alarming the consciences of the weak and feeble, and by diffusing among our own people a morbid sensibility on the subject of slavery, that Abolitionists can accomplish their object.'

On the 29th of July, 1835, a riotous mob broke into the post-office at Charleston, South Carolina, violated the United States mail, and destroyed certain anti-slavery publications found there. From an editorial allusion to the outrage in the Courier, it seems that "arrangements had previously been made at the post-office in the city to arrest the circulation of incendiary matter, until instructions could be received from the Post-Office Department at Washington." It would have appeared most expedient, in any law-abiding community, to have waited for the "instructions" before violating the mail. But the people of Charleston were evidently assured that any act they might perpetrate in the interest of slavery, however illegal, would be favorably construed at Washington. The event showed that they were not mistaken. In reply to the application for instructions, the PostmasterGeneral, AMOS KENDALL, said he was satisfied that he "had no legal authority to exclude newspapers from the mail, nor to prohibit their carriage or delivery on account of their character or tendency, real or supposed." The anti-slavery papers, then, were clearly entitled to be transmitted through the mails. What then? MR. KENDALL

continues: "BUT I am not prepared to direct you to forward or deliver the papers of which you speak!" "By no act or direction of mine, official or private, could I be induced to aid, knowingly, in giving circulation to papers of this description," — although he had just confessed that he had no legal authority for excluding them from the mails. "We owe an obligation to the laws," MR. KENDALL proceeds to admit, "but a higher one to the communities in which we live; and if the former be permitted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them." That is to say, if a law of the United States, which that official was sworn to see executed, threatened to endanger the immunities of slavery, he advised that "a higher obligation" required that it be disregarded! Thus we find the "higher law" actually invoked, in the interest of slavery, against a law of the United States.

Encouraged by the example of the postmaster at Charleston, and by the avowed decision of the Postmaster-General to wink at all similar outrages, other postmasters, North as well as South, lawlessly excluded anti-slavery writings from the mails.

To crown the formidable coalition against the cause of Freedom, PRESIDENT JACKSON, in his annual message (December, 1835), called "the special attention of Congress to the subject," and recommended the passage of a penal law against the circulation of anti-slavery publications in the Southern States.

IX.

FINAL STRUGGLE AND TRIUMPHANT ASSERTION OF FREEDOM IN THE NORTH.

THE most gloomy presages ushered in the winter. of 1835-36. It was generally expected that the action recommended by the South to the Northern Legislatures, and by the President to Congress, would be adopted. No remonstrance was uttered, no sign of alarm was expressed, on the part of the Northern community, except by the proscribed and feeble party who were apparently marked for destruction. They, conscious that everything was at stake, girded themselves for a final effort.

The Executive Committee of the American AntiSlavery Society at New York drew up a solemn protest, involving a thorough review of the charges. preferred in the President's Message, and addressed to the Chief Magistrate. In that paper they repelled the charge of insurrectionary designs. "They invited investigation by a Committee of Congress, and offered to submit to their inspection all their publications, all their correspondence, and all their accounts, — promising to attest them, and to answer every question under oath."* The Presi* Goodell, p. 417.