It was not long before the South perceived that if free inquiry and free discussion were going to be allowed in Massachusetts, it would be all over with them, and like men who were brought up always to have their own way and had but to command to be obeyed, several southern states sent immediate and earnest communications to the Massachusetts Legislature, requesting the General Court to enact laws making it penal for the citizens of Massachusetts to form abolition societies or print and publish abolition sentiments.
The Governor of Massachusetts, in his message to the Legislature at this time, expressed his belief that the abolitionists were guilty of an offence punishable by common law.
This part of the Governor's message, together with the resolutions from the Legislatures of slaveholding states, was referred to a committee of five.
The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society addressed a memorial to this committee, praying to be permitted to appear before them and show that they had done nothing but what they had a perfect constitutional right to do by the laws of Massachusetts.
On the Fourth and Eighth of March, 1836, these memorable interviews took place at the state house, in the chamber of the representatives.
A committee of some of the leading abolitionists attended—Mr. I. May, Mr. E. Gray Loring, Mr. Sewell, Dr. Follen, of Harvard College, and Mr. Garrison. Dr. Channing also met with them as an expression of sympathy and to mark his sense of the vitally important nature of the transactions to the rights of personal liberty in Massachusetts.
The meeting was attended by many spectators, and the abolitionists had opportunity to defend their course and conduct.
Mr. Garrison's speech at this time is one of the most energetic and characteristic of his utterances. After alluding to the duty of all men to plead for the rights of the dumb and the oppressed, he then went on to say:
"Mr. Chairman, there is one aspect of this great question which has not yet been presented to the committee. The liberties of the people of the free States are identified with those of the slave population. If it were not so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of the peaceful deliverance of the latter class from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow which cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the nation itself will be in bondage; let it remain untrammelled, and southern slavery must speedily come to an end." The chairman of the committee however insulted the abolitionists, refused them a fair hearing, and substantially turned them out of the Legislature, to protest at their leisure. The Legislature however did not pass the laws demanded by the South.
Miss Martineau, who visited Boston in those days, described feelingly what she justly called the martyr age in America.