TRANSMITTING ANTI-SLAVERY MAIL

By Postmaster-General Amos Kendall.

APPOINTED Postmaster-General by Jackson in 1835, the year in which this letter was addressed to the postmaster at New York, Amos Kendall had ably filled many public offices, and during the Jackson administration was extremely influential. He aided in shaping Jackson's anti-bank policy, was a special treasury agent to conduct negotiations with State banks, and is credited with having written several of Jackson's state papers. He was a prominent member of what was known as Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," a group of advisers who are supposed to have influenced "Old Hickory" more than did the members of the Cabinet themselves.

For the first time in its history, Kendall cleared the Postoffice Department of debt, and introduced numerous salutary reforms. Later he became associated with S. F. B. Morse in the ownership and management of the Morse electric telegraph patents, bringing about their commercial success and amassing a fortune.

IT was right to propose to the Anti-Slavery Society voluntarily to desist from attempting to send their publications into the Southern States by public mails; and their refusal to do so, after they were apprised that the entire mails were put in jeopardy by them, is but another evidence of the fatuity of the counsels by which they are directed.

After mature consideration of the subject, and seeking the best advice within my reach, I am confirmed in the opinion, that the Postmaster-General has no legal authority, by any order or regulation of his department, to exclude from the mails any species of newspapers, magazines or pamphlets. Such a power vested in the head of this department would be fearfully dangerous, and has been properly withheld. Any order or letter of mine directing or officially sanctioning the step you have taken, would therefore be utterly powerless and void, and would not in the slightest degree relieve you from its responsibility.

But to prevent any mistake in your mind, or in that of the abolitionists, or of the public, in relation to my position and views, I have no hesitation in saying, that I am deterred from giving any order to exclude the whole series of abolition publications from the Southern mails only by a want of legal power; and that if I were situated as you are, I would do as you have done.

Postmasters may lawfully know in all cases the contents of newspapers, because the law expressly provides that they shall be so put up that they may be readily examined; and if they know those contents to be calculated and designed to produce, and if delivered, will certainly produce the commission of the most aggravated crimes upon the property and persons of their fellow citizens, it cannot be doubted that it is their duty to detain them, if not even to hand them over to the civil authorities. The Postmaster-General has no legal power to prescribe any rule for the government of postmasters in such cases, nor has he ever attempted to do so. They act in each case upon their own responsibility, and if they improperly detain or use papers sent to their offices for transmission or delivery, it is at their peril and on their heads falls the punishment.

From the specimens I have seen of anti-slavery publications, and the concurrent testimony of every class of citizens except the abolitionists, they tend directly to produce in the South, evils and horrors surpassing those usually resulting from foreign invasion or ordinary insurrection. From their revolting pictures and fervid appeals addressed to the senses and passions of the blacks they are calculated to fill every family with assassins and produce at no distant day an exterminating servile war. So aggravated is the character of those papers that the people of the Southern States with an unanimity never witnessed except in cases of extreme danger, have evinced, in public meetings and by other demonstrations, a determination to seek defense and safety in putting an end to their circulation by any means, and at any hazard. Lawless power is to be resisted; but power which is exerted in palpable self-defense, is not lawless. That such is the power whose elements are now agitating the South, the united people of that section religiously believe; and so long as that shall be their impression, it will require the array of armies to carry the mails in safety through their territories, if they continue to be used as the instrument of those who are supposed to seek their destruction.

As a measure of great public necessity, therefore, you and the other postmasters who have assumed the responsibility of stopping these inflammatory papers, will, I have no doubt, stand justified in that step before your country and all mankind.

But perhaps the legal right of the abolitionists to make use of the public mails in distributing their insurrectionary papers throughout the Southern States, is not so clear as they seem to imagine. When those States became independent they acquired a right to prohibit the circulation of such papers within their territories; and their power over the subject of slavery and all its incidents, was in no degree diminished by the adoption of the Federal Constitution. It is still as undivided and sovereign as it was when they were first emancipated from the dominion of the king and Parliament of Great Britain. In the exercise of that power, some of those States have made the circulation of such papers a capital crime; others have made it a felony punishable by confinement in the penitentiary; and perhaps there is not one among them which has not forbidden it under heavy penalties. If the abolitionists or their agents were caught distributing their tracts in Louisiana, they would be legally punished with death; if they were apprehended in Georgia, they might be legally sent to the penitentiary; and in each of the slave-holding States they would suffer the penalties of their respective laws.

Now, have these people a legal right to do by the mail carriers and postmasters of the United States, acts, which if done by themselves or their agents, would lawfully subject them to the punishment due to felons of the deepest dye? Are the officers of the United States compelled by the Constitution and laws, to become the instruments and accomplices of those who design to baffle and make nugatory the constitutional laws of the States to fill them with sedition, murder and insurrection to overthrow those institutions which are recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution itself ?

And is it entirely certain, that any existing law of the United States would protect mail carriers and postmasters against the penalties of the State laws, if they shall knowingly carry, distribute or hand out any of these forbidden papers? If a State by a constitutional law declare any specific act to be a crime, how are officers of the United States who may be found guilty of that act, to escape the penalties of the State law? It might be in vain for them to plead that the post office law made it their duty to deliver all papers which came by mail. In reply to this argument it might be alleged, that the post office law imposes penalties on postmasters for "improperly" detaining papers which come by the mail, and that the detention of the papers in question is not improper, because their circulation is prohibited by valid State laws. Ascending to a higher principle, it might be plausibly alleged, that no law of the United States can protect from punishment any man, whether a public officer or citizen, in the commission of an act which the State, acting within the undoubted sphere of her reserved rights, has declared to be a crime.

Upon these grounds a postmaster may well hesitate to be the agent of the abolitionists in sending their incendiary publications into States where their circulation is prohibited by law, and much more may postmasters residing in those States refuse to distribute them. Whether the arguments here suggested be sound or not, of one thing there can be no doubt. If it shall ever be settled by the authority of Congress, that the post office establishment may be legally, and must be actually employed as an irresponsible agent to enable misguided fanatics or reckless incendiaries to stir up with impunity insurrection and servile war in the Southern States, those States will of necessity consider the General Government as an accomplice in the crime they will look upon it identified in a cruel and unconstitutional attack as their unquestionable rights and dearest interests, and they must necessarily treat it as a common enemy in their means of defence. Ought the postmaster or the department, by thrusting these papers upon the Southern States now, in defiance of their laws, to hasten a state of things so deplorable?

I do not desire to be understood as affirming that the suggestion here thrown out, ought, without the action of higher authority, to be considered as the settled construction of the law, or regarded by postmasters as the rule of their future action. It is only intended to say, that in a sudden emergency, involving principles so grave and consequences so serious, the safest course for postmasters and the best for the country, is that which you have adopted.