in
Carolina, he would be HANGED. But, as the Slaveholders could not
destroy the lives of the Abolitionists, they determined to murder
their characters. Hence, the President of the United States was
induced, in his Message of 1835, to Congress, to charge them with
plotting the massacre of the Southern planters; and even to stultify
himself, by affirming that, for this purpose, they were engaged in
sending, by _mail_, inflammatory appeals to the _slaves_--sending
papers to men who could not read them, and by a conveyance through
which they could not receive them! He well knew that the papers
alluded to were appeals on the immorality of converting men, women,
and children, into beasts of burden, and were sent to the masters,
for _their_ consideration. The masters in Charleston, dreading the
moral influence of these appeals on the conscience of the
slaveholding community, forced the Post Office, and made a bonfire
of the papers. The Post Master General, with the sanction of the
President, also hastened to their relief, and, in violation of oaths,
and laws, and the constitution, established ten thousand censors of
the press, each one of whom was authorized to abstract from the mail
every paper which _he_ might think too favorable to the rights of man.

For more than twenty years, petitions have been presented to Congress,
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The right
to present them, and the power of Congress to grant their prayer,
were, until recently, unquestioned. But the rapid multiplication of
these petitions alarmed the slaveholders, and, knowing that they
tended to keep alive at the North, an interest in the slave, they
deemed it good policy to discourage and, if possible, suppress all
such applications. Hence Mr. Pinckney's famous resolution, in 1836,
declaring, "that all petitions, or papers, relating _in any way, or
to any extent_ whatever to the _subject of slavery_, shall, without
being printed or referred, be laid on the table; and no further
action, whatever shall be had thereon!"

The peculiar atrocity of this resolution was, that it not merely
trampled upon the rights of the petitioners, but took from each
member of the House his undoubted privilege, as a legislator of the
District, to introduce any proposition he might think proper, for the
protection of the slaves. In every Slave State there are laws
affording, at least, some nominal protection to these unhappy beings;
but, accordin