scaloosa County,
Alabama, and Governor Gayle of Alabama made a requisition on Governor
Marcy of New York for his extradition. Williams had never been in
Alabama. His offense consisted in publishing in the New York Emancipator
a few rather mild utterances against slavery.

Governor McDuffie of South Carolina in an official message declared
that slavery was the very corner-stone of the republic, adding that
the laboring population of any country, "bleached or unbleached," was
a dangerous element in the body politic, and predicting that within
twenty-five years the laboring people of the North would be virtually
reduced to slavery. Referring to abolitionists, he said: "The laws of
every community should punish this species of interference with death
without benefit of clergy." Pursuant to the Governor's recommendation,
the Legislature adopted a resolution calling upon non-slaveholding
States to pass laws to suppress promptly and effectively all abolition
societies. In nearly all the slave States similar resolutions
were adopted, and concerted action against anti-slavery effort was
undertaken. During the winter of 1835 and 1836, the Governors of the
free States received these resolutions from the South and, instead of
resenting them as an uncalled-for interference with the rights of free
commonwealths, they treated them with respect. Edward Everett, Governor
of Massachusetts, in his message presenting the Southern documents to
the Legislature, said: "Whatever by direct and necessary operation is
calculated to excite an insurrection among the slaves has been held, by
highly respectable legal authority, an offense against this Commonwealth
which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." Governor Marcy
of New York, in a like document, declared that "without the power to
pass such laws the States would not possess all the necessary means for
preserving their external relations of peace among themselves." Even
before the Southern requests reached Rhode Island, the Legislature had
under consideration a bill to suppress abolition societies.

When a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature had been duly
organized to consider the documents received from the slave States, the
abolitionists requested the privilege of a hearing before the committee.
Receiving no reply, they proceeded to formulate a statement of their
case; but before they could publish it, they were invited to appear
before the joint committee of the two ho