subject. The exposure of the abuse of tampering with the mail
created a general reaction, which enabled the abolitionists to
win a spectacular victory. Instead of a law forbidding the
circulation of anti-slavery publications, Congress enacted a law
requiring postal officials under heavy penalties to deliver
without discrimination all matter committed to their charge. This
act was signed by President Jackson, and Calhoun himself was
induced to admit that the purposes of the abolitionists were not
violent and revolutionary. Henceforth abolitionists enjoyed their
full privileges in the use of the United States mail.
An even more dramatic victory was thrust upon the abolitionists
by the inordinate violence of their opponents in their attack
upon the right of petition. John Quincy Adams, who became their
distinguished champion, was not himself an abolitionist. When, as
a member of the lower House of Congress in 1831, he presented
petitions from certain citizens of Pennsylvania, presumably
Quakers, requesting Congress to abolish slavery and the
slave-trade in the District of Columbia, he refused to
countenance their prayer, and expressed the wish that the
memorial might be referred without debate. At the very time when
a New England ex-President was thus advising abolitionists to
desist from sending petitions to Congress, the Virginia
Legislature was engaged in the memorable debate upon a similar
petition from Virginia Quakers, in which most radical abolition
sentiment was expressed by actual slaveowners. Adams continued to
present anti-slavery memorials and at the same time to express
his opposition to the demands of the petitioners. When in 1835
there arose a decided opposition to the reception of such
documents, Adams, still in apparent sympathy with the pro-slavery
South on the main issue, gave wise counsel on the method of