The U.S. Mail was censored to keep anti-slavery publications from reaching the South

You can click on this picture to enlarge it.

It shows Frederick Douglass, who publicly spoke and wrote against slavery from 1841 until it was abolished at last.

Until abolitionists, like Douglass, got heard, slavery was not a major subject of public discussion among white people in the United States.

A few old anti-slavery societies had continued a quiet existence, most of them in the South, without being noticed much.

But starting with the 1830's, the abolitionists, Black and white, men and women, got themselves noticed.

They taught that not only the slaveholders, but the people of the North too -- were all responsible for the crime of slavery.

The new abolitionists, of the 1830's, refused the completely insincere proposal of "gradual emancipation" of slaves, or the idea of sending free Black people to form colonies in Africa.

These new abolitionists, in 1831, began to organize the New England Anti-slavery Society, and started a movement which spread throughout the North.

As Carl Schurz, a U.S. Senator after the Civil War, tried to explain it:

"This agitation was carried on with singular devotion, but its startling radicalism did not at first enlist large numbers of converts, or result in the organization of a political force that might have made itself felt at the polls. It did, however, have the effect of exciting great irritation and alarm among the slave-holders, and among those in the North who feared that a searching discussion of the slavery question might disturb the peace of the country; and thus it started a commotion of grave consequences."

In 1831, a slave revolt broke out in Virginia under the leadership of Nat Turner. It was suppressed, but caused a widespread panic among slaveholders, and a huge military mobilization of the white population.

In 1833, the emancipation of the slaves in the British West Indies made the slaveholders keenly aware of the hostility of public opinion in the outside world, and increased their alarm. Events like these gave the agitation of the abolitionists a new significance.

The slaveholders fiercely denounced the Northern abolitionists as reckless incendiaries, inciting the slaves to insurrection, robbery, and murder, -- as enemies to the country, as fiends in human shape, who deserved to be hung.

The slaveholders demanded that the North silence the abolitionists by force; that laws be made to imprison their speakers, to stop their presses, to prevent the circulation of their tracts, and by every means to put down their agitation. They said that, unless this were done, the United States, as a country, could not survive.

A fierce outcry arose in the Free States against the abolitionists. Turbulent mobs, composed in part of men of property and prominent standing, broke up anti-slavery meetings, destroyed their printing-offices, wrecked their houses, and threatened them with violent death. There were riotous attacks upon anti-slavery gatherings in Philadelphia, New York, Utica, and Montpelier. In Boston, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets with a halter round his body. In Connecticut and New Hampshire, schools which received Black pupils were sacked.

In Cincinnati, a large meeting of citizens resolved that an anti-slavery paper published there must cease to appear, and that there must be "total silence on the subject of slavery." A foaming mob executed the decree, threw the press into the Ohio, and looted the homes of Black citizens. Some time later, Pennsylvania Hall, the meeting house of the abolitionists, was burned in Philadelphia, and the famous abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered in Illinois.

But this violent persecution failed to silence the abolitionists.

The number of abolition societies grew, not rapidly, but steadily. The leading abolitionists themselves never became popular with the multitude. But the immediate effect of their work has frequently been much underrated. The abolitionists served to keep alive in the Northern mind that secret trouble of conscience about slavery which later, in a ripe political situation, was to break out as a great force. They accomplished another immediate result of the highest importance.

By the alarm they excited in the South the abolitionists caused slavery to disclose to public view, more openly than ever before, those tendencies which made it incompatible with the fundamental conditions of free government.

The slavery question then started appearing in tracts and periodicals by the abolition societies. Those publications caused an outcry from the South that those publications were calculated to incite slaves to insurrection.

On July 29, 1835, the post-office of Charleston in South Carolina was invaded by a mob, who took out what anti-slavery documents they could find and destroyed them. A public meeting, at which the clergy of all denominations appeared in a body, ratified these proceedings. The postmaster of Charleston assumed the right to prevent the circulation of such literature, and wrote to the postmaster at New York, Samuel L. Gouverneur, to stop its transmission. Gouverneur asked the Postmaster General for instructions.

The U.S. Postmaster General, Amos Kendall, answered that the law had not vested any power in his department to exclude any species of newspapers or pamphlets from the mail, for such a power would be "fearfully dangerous;" but if any postmaster took the responsibility of stopping those "inflammatory papers," he would "stand justified in that step before the country and all mankind." His instructions to the postmaster at Charleston were of the same tenor. It was patriotism, he said, to disregard the law if its observance would produce a public danger. "Entertaining these views," he added, "I cannot sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken."

In August, 1835, the Anti-slavery Society of Massachusetts published an "Address to the Public" in which rushed to say that, no, they were not circulated incendiary publications among the slaves, and, no, they had no desire to incite any slaves to revolt.

But the slaveholders decided that any declaration that all men were born free and equal was "incendiary."

So the U.S. mail became effectively censored, to prevent any anti-slavery material from reaching the South.

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