The attempts to suppress the abolitionists' agitation both in and out of Congress by at tacking ancient popular rights very naturally produced a reaction in their favor and against the cause of slavery. The battle for the right of petition was waged, therefore, with untiring energy by John Quincy Adams, Joshua R. Gid dings and others. The threats made to expel them from Congress and the denunciation heaped upon them only aided them in the end by bringing to their aid an increasing number of congressmen and in 1844 victory crowned their efforts; the gag rule was repealed.
Additional meaning was given to the ques tions of freedom of the press and the right of petition by the demands of the slaveholders that all anti-slavery documents be excluded from the United States mails. Some of the inhabitants of Charleston, S. C., broke into the post office (1835), seized a quantity of abolition literature and burned it in the presence of spectators. The Postmaster-General gave it as his opinion that although such documents could not lawfully be excluded from the mails, the postmasters owed .a higher duty to their communities than to the laws. President Jackson, in a message to Congress, severely criticised the work of the abolitionists and recommended that Congress prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation of such documents through the mails. Congress not only did not accept the President's recom mendation, but instead passed a law providing for fining and imprisoning postmasters for with holding mail from the persons to whom it was addressed. On none of the points of contention had the opponents of the abolitionists been able to score a permanent victory. On the contrary the permanent results were against slavery. Among them may be enumerated the rapid in crease of anti-slavery, if not abolition, senti ment and the formation of a political party. Another result was the feeling of many North ern men, who had little or no sympathy with the agitators, that the friends of slavery were de manding too great a sacrifice of cherished prin ciples for its protection. One of the most de plorable results of 10 years of bitter agitation was the ill will engendered between the radical elements of the two sections. Neither could do right in the eyes of the other. The danger lay in the fact that other events might cause the spread of this sentiment to the steady minded classes of the two sections. Such events were already on the horizon.
The South came to feel that safety to slav ery and to the social and industrial fabric based upon it lay in preserving the equilibrium be tween the sections in the Senate. That equi librium had been hopelessly lost in the House of Representatives and to preserve it in the Senate required the addition of new territory to the United States. To accomplish this end, the annexation of Texas quickly followed the Texan revolution and the cession of California and New Mexico came as a consequence of war with Mexico. But it was far more diffi cult to determine slavery's relation to the new territory than it had been to win the territory by war. The South gave an indication of its coming attitude by defeating Van Buren for renomination in 1844, because he had opposed the immediate annexation of Texas. Northern anti-slavery men followed by defeating Henry Clay in New York by voting for a candidate of their own, because Clay, after opposing im mediate annexation, had written a letter trying to explain the matter to the satisfaction of Southern Whigs. In 1846 President Polk asked Congress to vote a sum of money to assist him in making peace with Mexico. David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, offered an amend ment to the appropriation bill, providing that in any territory obtained from Mexico slavery should never exist. This amendment is the
famous Wilmot Proviso (q.v.). Twice it passed the House, but each time failed to get through the Senate. Southern leaders were stirred to combat more vigorously the idea that Con gress could exclude slavery from the Territo ries. Northern men affirmed more vehemently the right of Congress in this matter, because, to admit the South's contention would invalidate the anti-slavery features of the Ordinance of 1787 and the Compromise of 1820. The debates in Congress and the discussions by pulpit and press began to shake men's allegiance to the old parties. Therefore, the Whig party, the ma jority of whose votes was generally in the North, nominated for President (1848) Gen. Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana slaveholder, but refused to commit itself on the slavery ques tion. The Democratic party, whose main strength lay in the South, nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan and likewise uttered no de cisive word on the vital question. This non committal attitude of the leaders of the old parties angered anti-slavery men of all parties who promptly coalesced and launched the Free Soil party at Buffalo, N. Y. (1848). The plat form contained 19 resolutions mainly relating to slavery and declaring in favor of "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men' It also declared that Congress had, and ought to exercise, the power to exclude slavery from the Territories, but that it possessed no authority to interfere with slavery in the States where it already existed. Although this platform did not satisfy the extreme abolitionists, it offered a line of defense, on constitutional grounds, which appealed to moderate reformers who could not sympathize with the Anti-Union sen timent of Garrison and his radical followers. The slaveholders were right in believing that the underlying cause and the logical conse quences of the Free Soilers and the abolition ists were not greatly different. The Free Soil ers nominated Martin Van Buren for Presi dent and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-Presi dent. The Van Buren Democrats in New York, nicknamed the "Barnburners," .supported the new party. The result was a nominal Free Soil vote of over 290,000, the loss of New York by Cass and the triumph of General Taylor. The Van Buren supporters were avenged by the defeat of Cass, and most of them returned to this allegiance.
During the next four years the Free Soil idea gained at the North, but the party made but little progress. The Compromise of 1850, and the consequent effort to discourage all agitation as dangerous to the perpetuity of the Union, discouraged any great gain by the party. Both the old parties in their nominating conventions (1854) pledged themselves to stand by the Com promise, and Hale, the Free Soil candidate only polled 156,000. The passage of the Kansas Nebraska Bill (q.v.) (1854), suddenly precipi tated the anti-slavery conflict in a more virulent form than ever before. The result was the break-up of the Whig party. Thousands of its Southern supporters joined the Democratic party (q.v.), while the majority of its Northern voters co-operated with other anti-slavery ele ments in forming a new .party the Republican. Although the organization of the Free Soil party was thus disbanded, its principle became the rallying cry of the Republican party (q.v.). See also SLAVERY.
Garrison, W. P. and F. J.,