One other act of his in this session cannot be ignored. It is a
sinister note in the hopeful chorus of the Tenth Assembly. For months
there had come from the Southern States violent protests against the
growth of abolition agitation in the North. Garrison's paper, the
"infernal Liberator," as it was called in the pro-slavery part of
the country, had been gradually extending its circulation and its
influence; and it already had imitators even on the banks of the
Mississippi. The American Anti-slavery Society was now over three
years old. A deep, unconquerable conviction of the iniquity of slavery
was spreading through the North. The South felt it and protested, and
the statesmen of the North joined them in their protest. Slavery
could not be crushed, said the conservatives. It was sanctioned by the
Constitution. The South must be supported in its claims, and agitation
stopped. But the agitation went on, and riots, violence, and hatred
pursued the agitators. In Illinois, in this very year, 1837, we have
a printing-office raided and an anti-slavery editor, Elijah Lovejoy,
killed by the citizens of Alton, who were determined that it should
not be said among them that slavery was an iniquity.

To silence the storm, mass-meetings of citizens, the United States
Congress, the State legislatures, took up the question and voted,
again and again, resolutions assuring the South that the Abolitionists
were not supported; that the country recognized their right to their
"peculiar institution," and that in no case should they be interfered
with. At Springfield, this same year (1837) the citizens convened and
passed a resolution declaring that "the efforts of Abolitionists
in this community are neither necessary nor useful." When the
riot occurred in Alton, the Springfield papers uttered no word of
condemnation, giving the affair only a laconic mention.