Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/530

 advertised; and no one appearing to claim him, lie was sold for life at public auction for the payment of his jail fees, and taken to the south. A stronger anti-slavery document has not in later years been presented to congress; nor did it receive any more efficient action than similar petitions have since received.

In 1833, the National Anti-Slavery Society was formed. Societies were also formed in all the northern states; in some of them, in almost every county. Meetings were held at the south denouncing these movements; and in the north attempts were made to suppress the anti-slavery meetings by violence. Meetings were also held in the north to express sympathy for the south, and to censure the "abolitionists." These anti-abolition meetings were gratifying to the people of the south. The proceedings of the Albany meeting were thus noticed by the Richmond Enquirer: "Amid these proceedings, we hail with delight the meeting and resolutions of Albany. They are up to the hub. They are in perfect unison with the rights and sentiments of the south. They are divested of all the metaphysics and abstractions of the resolutions of New York. They are free from all qualifications and equivocation — no idle denunciations of the evils of slavery — no pompous assertions of the right of discussion. But they announce in the most unqualified terms that it is a southern question, which belongs, under the federal compact, exclusively to the south. They denounce all discussions upon it in the other states, which, from their very nature, are calculated to 'inflame the public mind,' and put in jeopardy the lives and property of their fellow-citizens, as at war with every rule of moral duty, and every suggestion of humanity; and they reprobate the incendiaries who will persist in carrying them on, 'as disloyal to the Union.' They pronounce these vile incendiaries to be 'disturbers of the public peace.' They assure the south 'that the great body of the northern people entertain opinions similar to those expressed in these resolutions;' finally, 'that we plight to them our faith to maintain, in practice, so far as lies in our power, what we have thus solemnly declared.'

"We hail this plighted faith to arrest, by 'all constitutional and legal means,' the movements of these incendiaries. We hail these pledges with pleasure; and should it become necessary, we shall call upon them to redeem them in good faith, and to act, and to put down these disturbers of the peace."

"The Albany resolutions," said the Richmond Whig, "are far more acceptable than those of New York. They are unexceptionable in their general