Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[247] State, was another. Third, and most pressing of all, for Northern liberties, was the nullification of the right of petition at the National Capitol, which had now reached its climax. After the passage of Patton's gag in ¹ December, 1837, the House of Representatives refused to take from the table the Massachusetts resolutions of protest² against the previous gag; and later in the session it appeared that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, entrusted with the subject of Texan annexation, ³ pocketed, without bestowing the least attention on them, the various State resolves against the measure—an affront to ‘State sovereignty’ without a parallel; even Calhoun (in the case of the Vermont anti-Texas resolutions) not⁴ being prepared to exclude such privileged communications. And while silence was thus imposed on States as upon individuals, in regard to vital and fundamental political questions, because slavery was involved in them, Senator Preston, the colleague of Calhoun, was winning the applause of his section by declaring in his seat, that ‘if an abolitionist come within the borders of South⁵ Carolina, and we can catch him, we will try him, and, notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments of the earth, including this Federal Government, we will hang him.’ This lawless and savage threat was heard without remonstrance by the senators from ⁶ Massachusetts—Daniel Webster and John Davis.

It remained for a Northern doughface, Charles G. Atherton, of New Hampshire, to offer the fourth gag-rule,⁷ devised by a pro-slavery caucus at the beginning of the next session, and adopted under the previous question on December 11 and 12, 1838.⁸ The resolutions were prefaced by propositions unfounded in fact, irrelevant, illogical and illegal: (1) that Congress had no jurisdiction over slavery in the States; (2) that petitions for