ons, which nothing
was able to shake. Among these was the great right of petition, viewed
by the ex-President as a right of human nature. For a dozen years he
stood in Congress its sleepless sentinel. And herein did he perform for
freedom most valiant service. It made no difference to the dauntless old
man whether he approved of the prayer of a petition or not, if it was
sent to him he presented it to the House all the same. He presented
petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
one, at least, against it, petitions from black and white, bond and
free, with superb fidelity to the precious right which he championed.

This characteristic of the aged statesman kept the Southern members in a
state of chronic apprehension and excitement. They bullied him, they
raged like so many wild animals against him, they attempted to crush him
with votes of censure and expulsion all to no purpose. Then they applied
the gag: "That all petitions, memorials, and papers touching the
abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring slaves, in
any State, or district, or territory of the United States, be laid on
the table without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no
action be taken thereon." Mr. Adam's denunciation of this action as a
violation of the Constitution, of the right of the people to petition,
and of the right to freedom of speech in Congress, found wide echo
through the North. The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the South
were disgusting many of the most intelligent and influential minds in
the non-slave-holding States, and driving them into more or less close
affiliation with the anti-slavery movement.

And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict and uproar.
Everywhere contrary ideas, interests, institutions, tendencies, were
colliding with inextinguishable rage. All the opposites and
irreconcilables in a people's life had risen and clashed together in a
death struggle for mastery. Freedom and slavery, civilization and
barbarism had found an Armageddon in the moral consciousness of the
Republic. Now the combatants rallied and the battle thickened at one
point, now around another. At Washington the tide rolls in with
resounding fury about the right of petition and the freedom of debate,
then through the free States it surges and beats around the right of
free speech and the freedom of the press. Storm clouds are flying from
the East and from the West, fly