Jackson also won the support of Vice President John C. Calhoun, who opposed much of Adams's agenda on states' rights grounds. Van Buren and other Jackson allies established numerous pro-Jackson newspapers and clubs around the country, while Jackson made himself available to visitors at his Hermitage plantation. A slaveowner himself, Jackson favored the expansion of slavery into the territories and disapproved of anti-slavery agitation. Postmaster General Amos Kendall gave Southern postmasters discretionary powers to discard the tracts, a decision that abolitionists attacked as suppression of free speech.Another conflict over slavery in 1835 ensued when abolitionists sent the U.S. House of Representatives petitions to end the slave trade and slavery in Washington, D.C. These petitions infuriated pro-slavery Southerners, who attempted to prevent acknowledgement or discussion of the petitions.