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