A persistent attack was also directed against the use of the
United States mails for the distribution of anti-slavery
literature. Mob violence which involved the post-office began as
early as 1830, when printed copies of Miss Grimke's Appeal to the
Christian Women of the South were seized and burned in
Charleston. In 1835 large quantities of anti-slavery literature
were removed from the Charleston office and in the presence of
the assembled citizens committed to the flames. Postmasters on
their own motion examined the mails and refused to deliver any
matter that they deemed incendiary. Amos Kendall,
Postmaster-General, was requested to issue an order authorizing
such conduct. He replied that he had no legal authority to issue
such an order. Yet he would not recommend the delivery of such
papers. "We owe," said he, "an obligation to the laws, but a
higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former
be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard
them. Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction, and will not
condemn, the step you have taken." This is an early instance of
the appeal to the "higher law" in the pro-slavery controversy.
The higher law was invoked against the freedom of the press. The
New York postmaster sought to dissuade the Anti-slavery Society
from the attempt to send its publications through the mails into
Southern States. In reply to a request for authorization to
refuse to accept such publications, the Postmaster-General
replied: "I am deterred from giving an order to exclude the whole
series of abolition publications from the Southern mails only by
a want of legal power, and if I were situated as you are, I would
do as you have done."