Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/162



anti-slavery agitation continued, and grew in strength. The petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, presented in the session of 1835-1836, had borne 34,000 signatures. Those presented in 1837-1838 bore 300,000. The number of anti-slavery societies in the Northern States had increased to 2,000. The movement was no longer confined to little conventicles. In fact, some of the original abolitionists, as is often the case with men who give themselves to an idea far ahead of the common ways of thinking, began to run into abstract speculations, — in this case, a variety of theories concerning woman's rights, non-resistance, the wrongfulness of all government, and similar theories; and, drifting into polemics among themselves, they lost much of their immediate influence. But their cause now moved forward by its own impulse. The legislatures of Massachusetts and Vermont passed, by enormous majorities, resolutions censuring the action of Congress in refusing to receive, or to treat with respect, anti-slavery petitions, as hostile to the Constitution, and affirming the power of Congress to abolish slavery in