Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/250

224 Press, (Bennington, 1828); and the Liberalist, (New Orleans, 1828). But the greatest came in 1831, when Garrison, only twenty-six years of age, founded the Liberator and began his historic fight on slavery.

The attitude of the Jackson administration in encouraging the slave-holding power to dominate the country, and the action of Jackson's Postmaster-General, Amos Kendall, in countenancing the non-delivery of northern newspapers in which there were abolition sentiments—as well as the burning of the newspapers in the public square of Charleston in 1835,—mean that, so far as the slaveholders were concerned, the reign of public opinion was at an end in the south. The post-office, which meant the government, here directly aligned itself with the small body of slaveholders and declared that sentiments which were objectionable to them should not pass through the mails. The situation would be equally anomalous if we could imagine the postmaster of the City of New York, in which Wall Street is located, taking the attitude, in the period of 1901-1908, that the western newspapers attacking the so-called "interests" were not to be allowed within the city because of their criticism of various financial concerns.

During the winter of 1835-1836 an effort was made in every free state legislature to pass bills making it a misdemeanor to publish or print writings that could be construed as inciting the slaves to rebellion. The vigilance committee in Louisiana offered $50,000 for the delivery of Arthur Tappan, who, with other abolitionists, had started the New York Journal of Commerce as an anti-slavery paper in 1827, putting at the head of it, as editor, a Virginia abolitionist, William Maxwell.

To cap the climax. President Jackson, in his annual message in December, 1835, recommended to Congress