Columbia. As the agitation against slavery grew, the number of the signers of such petitions increased from thirty-four thousand in 1835 to three hundred thousand two years later. The impatient southerners determined to stop this flood of petitions. Through their efforts the House of Representatives made a rule in 1836 forbidding the reading or printing of any petition or paper about slavery. This rule is often called the "gag rule," because its purpose was to stop the discussion of slavery in the house. After he retired from the presidency John Quincy Adams rounded out his distinguished public career by serving for seventeen years in the House of Representatives. When the The vote was taken on the "gag rule" Adams said, "I hold the "old man resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the eloquent" United States, of the rules of this house, and of the rights of my constituents." From the moment the "gag" policy was adopted, the "old man eloquent," as Adams was called, became the champion of the right of petition. Able, experienced, and a born fighter, no man was better fitted for the task than the venerable ex-president. He declared that the "gag rule" sacrificed the rights of the people guaranteed by the Constitution, and persisted in offering petitions against slavery in the face of efforts to censure him for violating the rules of the house. At last, after a fight which lasted eight years, he succeeded in having the hateful rule repealed. That night the old Puritan wrote in his diary, "Blessed, forever blessed, be the name of God!" The efforts of the friends of slavery to suppress the right of petition and to prevent any discussion of the slavery question in Congress utterly failed in their purpose. In fact, they won The result of more men to the cause of antislavery than all the appeals of trying to the abolitionists. Many people who had little sympathy for restrain free speech the extreme views of Garrison resented the effort to limit discussion in Congress. Slavery Becomes the Question of the Hour.-Before Jackson retired from the presidency, slavery was rapidly becoming the most important question before the American Growing people. The abolition leaders were slowly winning followers. bitterness An ever-increasing number of people in the free states who between the were not abolitionists were alarmed and disgusted at the sections flict with efforts of the pro-slavery forces to suppress freedom of speech and of the press. In the South, hatred of the abolitionists and fear that the slaves might rise against their masters made the people more irritable and more assertive of their rights. Calhoun called the petitions of the Quakers against slavery "a foul slander" on his part of the country, and another spokesman of the South declared that "slavery is interwoven with our very political existence." The southern states passed more severe laws to keep the slaves in subjection, and the young men of the South banded together to enforce these laws and to defend their section and its institutions against any possible aggression. When the Constitution was first made, the feeling of nationality was weak in our country. Men loved their states better The national than they loved the nation. For fifty years this feeling had been spirit in con- slowly changing. The influence of Washington, pride in the state rights splendid achievements of our gallant navy in the War of 1812, the winning of the West, improved means of communication, the national spirit of Jackson, and the matchless eloquence of Webster were all leading our people to exalt the Union above the states. They were coming to feel that they were all Americans with common interests and a splendid destiny. For a time all sections shared in this growing feeling of national unity. But when slavery began to divide the country, the people of the South felt that they must look to their own states to defend them against attacks upon their peculiar institution. This feeling checked the growth of nationality in their part of the country and revived and strengthened the belief in state rights. An allimportant question In the meantime, as we shall see in the next chapter, the ambitious and land-hungry frontiersmen were pushing their way across the continent to the Pacific Coast. The southern leaders saw that they must create new slave states in the West if they were to keep their power in the national government. Their attempts, between 1840 and 1850, to extend slavery into the West and the efforts of the free North to thwart them, made slavery the all-absorbing question before the country. By 1850 Senator Seward of New York could say with truth, "Every question brings up slavery as an incident, and the incident supplants the principal question. We hear of nothing but slavery, and we can talk of nothing but slavery." REFERENCES. Hart, Slavery and Abolition; Phillips, American Negro Slavery; Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. I, Chap. IV; Ingle, Southern Side Lights; Brown, The Lower South in American History; Histories of the United States by McMaster, Schouler, and Wilson. TOPICAL READINGS. 1. How the North Abolished Slavery. Fiske, The Critical Period, 71-76. 2. The Missouri Compromise. Turner, The Rise of the New West, 149-171. 3. Plantation Life. Hart, Slavery and Abolition, 92-108. 4. Life with a Slave Breaker. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 579-583. 5. A Southern Defense of Slavery. Hart, Source Book of American History, 244-248. 6. A Cheerful View of Slavery. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 591-594. 7. The Buying and Selling of Slaves. Rhodes, History of the United States, I, 318-325. 8. A Scene at a Slave Auction. Wise, The End of an Era, 80-87. 255-257. 10. A Statement of Garrison's Principles. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 595-597. 11. Garrison and the Mob. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, II, 16-27. 12. Phillips' Faneuil Hall Speech. Johnston, American Orations, II, 33-45. 13. An Antislavery Speech in Congress. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 622-625. 14. John Quincy Adams in Defense of Free Speech. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 633-636. ILLUSTRATIVE LITERATURE. Poems: Lowell, Stanzas on Freedom; Longfellow, The Slave's Dream; The Slave in the Dismal Swamp; The Witnesses; Whittier, The Farewell; The Christian Slave; Massachusetts to Virginia; and many other antislavery poems. Novels: Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Hildreth, The Slave; Tiernan, Suzette; Homoselle; Woolson, East Angels; Belt, Mirage of Promise; Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman. Travels and Journals: Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; A Journey through Texas; A Journey in the Back Country; Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter; Longstreet, Georgia Scenes; Johnston, Old Times in Middle Georgia; Page, The Old South. Biographies: Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison; Kennedy, John Greenleaf Whittier; Higginson, Wendell Phillips; Birney, James G. Birney and His Times. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 1. When did Great Britain abolish the slave trade? 2. How did the cotton-gin make slavery more profitable in the slave states that did not grow cotton? 3. Trace the Missouri Compromise line on a map. Was the compromise more favorable to the North or to the South? Why was it a very important law? 4. If all white men could vote, how could the small number of rich planters be "the real rulers of the South"? Is there a similar situation in our country now? 5. Why were the school systems of the South inferior to those of the North? 6. What motives induce people to work? Did the slaves have any of these motives? 7. Why was slavery wrong? Can you answer the argument in favor of slavery given in the quotation from the governor of South Carolina? 8. Do you admire men like William Lloyd Garrison? Why? 9. Find and read several of Whittier's antislavery poems. 10. What is an orator? Did you ever hear one? 11. Are there any publications that the government refuses to carry in the mail now? 12. Why did the efforts to suppress the abolitionists help to make them more numerous? 13. Which do you love more, the United States or your own state? Why? CHAPTER XVIII THE WINNING OF TEXAS AND THE FAR WEST President Tyler Quarrels with the Whigs.-On March 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison was inaugurated president of the United States, and for the first time in its history the Whig Inauguraparty came into control of the government. The Whigs were jubilant, but their joy was soon turned into mourning. Presi- Harrison dent Harrison was sixty eight years old and not robust. He was worn out by the excitement of the noisy campaign which preceded his election and fatigued by the long journey from his home to the capital. The swarms of officeseekers which beset him day and night gave him little opportunity to rest, and careless expos. ure brought on pneu monia of which he died just one month after entering the White House. The Whigs intended to reëstablish a national bank like the one which Jackson fought William Henry Harrison and to raise the tariff, but they were thwarted by John Tyler, tion and death of the vice-president, who became president when Harrison died. The Whigs Tyler was a state rights Democrat who had quarreled with Jack- desert Tyler He was nominated for vice-president by the Whigs to win the votes of discontented Democrats like himself. President Tyler vetoed two bank acts which Congress passed, and he |