The attempt to suppress the Abolitionists was a failure.  It but stimulated the agitation and deepened the popular interest in the subject.  Strong allies within and without the legislature were enlisted on the side of freedom.  The turning of the tide of public sentiment in the grand old State had come.  Slowly did it rise for awhile, but from that event it never ceased to flow in and with increasing volume.  The condemnatory report of the insolent chairman proved as innocuous as the baying of dogs at the moon.  The legislature refused to indorse it and the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it.  They were both ignominiously laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts, their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of his dissatisfied constituents.

The conflict was raging not alone in Massachusetts but all through the free States.  In Congress the battle was assuming an intensely bitter character.  Here the South was the agitator.  Here she kept the political waters in a state of violent ebullition.  As the discord grew, sectionalism threw darkening and portentous shadows over the face of the Union.  The South was insisting in all stages of passion that the tide of Abolition be checked in the North, that the flood of incendiary publications be suppressed at their sources in the free States.  The Southern slave-holding President had suggested the suppression of these by Congress.  He would “prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.”  But when Webster and a few Northern leaders objected to such a proceeding as unconstitutional and in derogation of the freedom of the press, the South treated the objection as inimical to Southern interest and security.  Thereupon the Southern excitement increased all the faster.  The slave-power was not disposed to accept anything short of complete submission on the part of the North.  And this the North could not well yield.  While the slave-holding States were clamoring for the suppression of Abolitionism in the free States, Abolitionism was giving evidences of extraordinary expansion, and activity.  It had risen well above the zero point in politics.  It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes.  A new element had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction.  The slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous rival, and schemed for its destruction.  Southern jealousy took on the character of insanity.  Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern Democrats were permitted to show any regard for the rival.  They were to snub and utterly abolish her, otherwise they should be snubbed and utterly abolished by the slave-power.  They could not with impunity give to Abolitionism the scantiest attention