1835 Andrew Jackson - US Post Office Censors Anti-Slavery mail

In 1835, the US Postal Department censored materials sent out by the Anti-Slavery Society of New York. The materials were part of a campaign to expose the "madness and cruelty of slave holders as an argument to rouse the Christian world against the SIN OF SLAVERY". Postmaster general Amos Kendall reported to President Jackson that it was his constitutional duty to stop these abolitionists from inciting violence and rebellion through "newspapers, pamphlets, tracts, and almanacs, containing exaggerated, and in some instances, false accounts of the treatment of slaves" (Postmaster General Report 1835).  President Andrew Jackson not only stood by his Postmaster General but urged Congress to pass legislation to step in and suppress what he called "lies" calculated "to produce all the horrors of a servile war" (Jackson SOTU 1835). He did not mince words calling the actions of the abolitionists, "repugnant to the principles of our national compact and to the dictates of humanity and religion." Today, it is easy for us to blame 'white supremacy’ but doing so would ignore the struggle to preserve our union even as slavery was tearing it apart. Jackson did not oppose the abolitionists because he supported slavery, but because he believed it was his duty to preserve the union. It may seem contradictory, but Andrew Jackson argued that to preserve the union, independent states must be allowed to protect slavery with state laws and the federal government was bound to stop other states from interfering. Back then, it was universally accepted that the people of one state had no more right to interfere with the interests of another state than they had the right to interfere in a foreign nation. No matter how abhorrent slavery is, the right to own slaves was not prohibited by the constitution, and it was the duty of the United States to protect each of the states against ‘domestic violence’. It did not matter what Jackson's view of slavery was, he argued it was his constitutional obligation to treat each state equally and stop any discussion, either orally or by the distribution of printed papers that put the safety and peace of one state at risk, especially if such discussion was in violation of individual state laws.    

The Great Postal Campaign

In the spring of 1835, Lewis Tappan and the American Anti-Slavery Society of New York began a campaign to mail thousands of anti-slavery pamphlets to addresses in the South causing outrage and hysteria across the slave holding states. Rather than distribute these immediately, many Southern Post Office Departments separated them waiting for further instructions. On July 29, several mail bags stuffed with abolitionist pamphlets were stolen from the Charleston post office.  The next evening 3000 Charlestonians joined in as they burned the pamphlets along with effigies of three well known abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the widely-read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator and Arthur Tappan, the father of Lewis.  As the summer heated up, torchlight parades and anti-abolitionist rallies were held in almost every major city and town in the slave-states. As rumors and fears of servile insurrection spread, citizens formed vigilance committees to question suspicious individuals, patrol the slave communities, and search post offices and mail routes far anti-slavery material. What was just talk of interference from Northern abolitionists now seemed like a real and impending threat. The Great Postal Campaign attempted to make converts of Southerners, but instead it was met with Southern unity and resistance.  

1835 State of the Union Address

On December 1st, Jackson received a report from the Postmaster General who described the events in Charleston along with actions taken by some of the Southern state legislators to prohibit the circulation of “incendiary literature” within their borders. In his 1835, State of the Union Address, Jackson made no attempts to acknowledge the horrors of slavery, nor the cruelty of some slave masters, rather he condemned the actions of the Anti-Slavery Society as being "wicked" and "repugnant to the principles of our national compact and to the dictates of humanity and religion". There is no question here, Jackson was putting the peace, security, and union over the sin of slavery. Nowhere in these words did he condone slavery, but he recognized that it was a constitutionally protected right of the Southern states, and he understood full well that to interfere with this would lead to disunion. Above all else, Jackson believed in preserving our Union, just as Lincoln would 30 years later.  

"In connection with these provisions in relation to the Post-Office Department, I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints and in various sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of a servile war. There is doubtless no respectable portion of our countrymen who can be so far misled as to feel any other sentiment than that of indignant regret at conduct so destructive of the harmony and peace of the country, and so repugnant to the principles of our national compact and to the dictates of humanity and religion. Our happiness and prosperity essentially depend upon peace within our borders, and peace depends upon the maintenance in good faith of those compromises of the Constitution upon which the Union is founded. It is fortunate for the country that the good sense, the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of the people of the nonslaveholding States to the Union and to their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the South have given so strong and impressive a tone to the sentiments entertained against the proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in these unconstitutional and wicked attempts, and especially against the emissaries from foreign parts who have dared to interfere in this matter, as to authorize the hope that those attempts will no longer be persisted in. But if these expressions of the public will shall not be sufficient to effect so desirable a result, not a doubt can be entertained that the nonslaveholding States, so far from countenancing the slightest interference with the constitutional rights of the South, will be prompt to exercise their authority in suppressing so far as in them lies whatever is calculated to produce this evil."

Postmaster General Report of 1835 

It is important to note that this section of Jackson's report was for the most part a summary and agreement of one of his most trusted members of his cabinet, Amos Kendall the Postmaster General had written. Kendall, a lawyer himself presented his arguments on censoring the abolitionist material.  In his report, he laid out a logical argument why the Post Office Department was obligated to censor the mail. Kendall argued that because the constitution was silent about slavery, state laws were the supreme law of the land and the US Postal Service as a federal agency was obligated under the constitution to obey them. Here are his arguments: 

1. It is universally accepted states are united only for certain purposes. There remain "interests" where the states remain as independent as the original colonies were. Slavery was one of those interests.
2. The union neither gives any state the right to own slaves, nor took it away.
3. No state has the right to interfere with right of slavery in another state anymore then they hvae the right to interfere in the internal affairs of a foreign nation.
4. If the United States allowed papers to be distributed among the laboring population in another nation, calculated to produce discontent and rebellion, it would be just cause for war.
5. The constitution of the United States provides that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," but this clause cannot put the privileges of one state over the immunities of another. Therefore, citizens of one state cannot distribute materials that are forbidden in that state especially if they put the peace and security of that state at risk.  
6. The US Constitution does not appear to have any power over slavery.
7. Some Southern states have passed laws forbidding the circulation of anti-slavery materials citing the safety of their people.
8. The constitutionality of these laws has not been challenged by the United States, nor can they because they relate to a subject that the federal government has no authority under the constitution.
9. Therefore, the state laws censoring anti-slavery materials are for all intents and purposes the supreme laws of the land on the subject.
10. The constitution makes it the duty of the United States "to protect each of the States against invasion; and against domestic violence".  For Southern states, the greatest fear of domestic violence is that of a slave revolt.
11. State censorship laws have been enacted to prevent domestic violence stemming from a slave revolt.
12. The United States has no rights through their officers or departments to knowingly participate in "the very mischief which the constitution commands them to repress".
13. It would be an abuse of power for the United States Post Office to circulate papers calculated to produce domestic violence in contradiction of the laws of the state

Here is the actual excerpt of Postmaster General Amos Kendall's Report on the delivery of Abolition Materials in the Southern States

"A new question has arisen in the administration of this Department. A number of individuals have established an association in the Northern and Eastern States and raised a large sum of money, for the purpose of effecting the immediate abolition of Slavery in the Southern States. One of the means reported to has been the printing of a large mass of newspapers, pamphlets, tracts, and almanacs, containing exaggerated, and in some instances, false accounts of the treatment of slaves, illustrated with cuts calculated to operate on the passions of the colored men, and produce discontent, assassination, and servile war. These they attempted to disseminate throughout the slaveholding. States, by the agency of the public mails.

As soon as it was ascertained that the mails contained these productions, great excitement arose, particularly in Charleston, S.C.., and to ensure the safety of the mail in its progress Southward, the postmaster at that place agreed to retain them in his office until he could obtain instructions from the Postmaster General. In reply to his appeal, he was informed, that it was a subject upon which the Postmaster General had no legal authority to instruct him. The question again came up from the Postmaster at New York, who had refused to send the papers by the steamboat mail to Charleston, S.C. He was also answered that the Postmaster General possessed no legal authority to give instructions on the subject; but as the undersigned had no doubt that the circumstances of the case justified the detention of the papers, he did not hesitate to say so. Important principles are involved in this question, and it merits the grave consideration of all departments of the Government.

It is universally conceded, that our States are united only for certain purposes. There are interests, in relation to which they are believed to be as independent of each other as they were before the constitution was formed. The interest which the people of some of the States have in slaves, is one of them. No State obtained by the union any right whatsoever over slavery in any other State, nor did any State lose any of its power over it, within its own borders. On this subject, therefore, if this view be correct, the States are still independent, and may fence round and protect their interest in slaves, by such laws and regulations as in their sovereign will they may deem expedient.

Nor have the people of one State any more right to interfere with this subject in another State, than they have to interfere with the internal regulations, rights of property, or domestic police, of a foreign nation. If they were to combine and send papers among the laboring population of another nation, calculated to produce discontent and rebellion, their conduct would be good ground of complaint on the part of that nation; and, in case it were not repressed by the United States, might be, if perseveringly persisted in, just cause of war. The mutual obligations of our several States to suppress attacks by their citizens on each others' reserved rights and interests, would seem to be greater, because by entering into the Union, they have lost the right of redress which belongs to nations wholly independent. Whatever claim may be set up, or maintained, to a right of free discussion within their own borders of the institutions and laws of other communities, over which they have no rightful control, few will maintain that they have a right, unless it be obtained by compact or treaty, to carry on such discussions within those communities, either orally, or by the distribution of printed papers, particularly if it be in violation of their peculiar laws, and at the hazard of their peace and existence. The constitution of the United States provides that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," but this clause cannot confer on the citizens of one State, higher privileges and immunities in another, than the citizens of the latter themselves posses. It is not easy, therefore, to perceive how the citizens of the Northern States can possess or claim the privilege of carrying on discussions within the Southern States, by the distribution of printed papers, which the citizens of the latter are forbidden to circulate by their own laws.

Neither does it appear that the United States acquired, by the constitution, any power whatsoever over this subject except a right to prohibit the importation of slaves after a certain date. On the contrary, that instrument contains evidences, that one object of the Southern States, in adopting it, was to secure to themselves a more perfect control over this interest, and cause it to be respected by the sister States. In the exercise of their reserved rights, and for the purpose of protecting this interest, and ensuring the safety of their people, some of the States have passed laws, prohibiting under heavy penalties, the printing or circulation of papers like those in question, within their respective territories. It has never been alleged that these laws are incompatible with the constitution and laws of the United States. Nor does it seem possible that they can be so, because they relate to a subject over which the United States cannot rightfully assume any control under that constitution, either by law or otherwise. If these principles be sound, it will follow that the State laws on this subject, are, within the scope of their jurisdiction, the supreme laws of the land, obligatory alike on all persons, whether private citizens, officers of the State, or functionaries of the General Government.

The constitution makes it the duty of the United States "to protect each of the States against invasion; and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive, (, (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence" There is no quarter whence domestic violence is so much to be apprehended, in some of the States, as from the servile population, operated upon by mistaken or designing men. It is to obviate danger from this quarter, that many of the State laws, in relation to the circulation of incendiary papers, have been enacted. Without claiming for the General Government the power to pass laws prohibiting discussions of any sort, as a means of protecting States from domestic violence, it may safely be assumed, that the United States have no right, through their officers or departments, knowingly to be instrumental in producing within the several states, the very mischief which the constitution commands them to repress. It would be an extraordinary construction of the powers of the general Government, to maintain that they are bound to afford the agency of their mails and post offices, to counteract the laws of the States, in the circulation of papers calculated to produce domestic violence; when it would, at the same time, be one of their most important constitutional duties to protect the States against the natural, if not necessary consequences produced by that very agency.

The position assumed by this Department, is believed to have produced the effect of withholding its agency, generally, in giving circulation to the obnoxious papers in the Southern States. Whether it be necessary more effectually to prevent, by legislative enactments, the use of the mails, as a means of evading or violating the constitutional laws of the States in reference to this portion of their reserved rights, is a question which, it appears to the undersigned, may be submitted to Congress, upon a statement of the facts, and their own knowledge of the public necessities."

References

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