They started by censoring ideological attacks on slavery. When northern reformers tried to circulate anti-slavery literature to prominent southern white men through the federal mails in summer 1835, postmasters refused to deliver the packages, and mobs broke into the post offices, seized the mail, and burned it. The next year, when abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions asking it to curtail slavery in Washington, D.C., southern congressmen passed a “gag rule” in the House, automatically tabling all such petitions. Many people who didn’t care much at all about the morality of slavery
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