The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-11-18


 against this kind of propagandism
 All the same, the mails carried very | inf1ammable material The Charleston
 authorities seized the mail pouches reg
 ularly, and as regularly rifles them of
 material that they did not approve. l When sufficient quantity of obiec-
 ttonable documents were gathered, the people assembled and built great bon
 lire in the central square. The whole
 city turned out, and, as an accompani-
 nlent, eiligies of noted abolitionists like
 Phillips and Garrison were hung and
 then burned. The city of Philadelphia
 undertook to stop the offensive materi-
 al, en route, flinging some of it In the
 Delaware, tied to stones. Richmond ap-
 pealed to the postmaster-gener ask
 Ing for authority to open the malls and
 dis8orge what was not approved The
 Iiberator, Garrisons paper was still
 found In the farthest south and slaves
 were found reading it. Jackson was as
 thunderous as ever in his method of
 denouncing the agitators. He placed | Amos Kendall in charge of the post
 office for purpose.
 The peculiar business charged upon ] Kendall was to pacify the south and
 find some way to head off the invading
 literature New York ard Charleston at about the same time asked for in- structions. Could they legally stop mah
 matter? Kencall answered that the United States had no right to transmit
 material through states which the in | dividual states forbade, He was the
 first in American political history to ! ny on1 tH Li.
 tuition. He said: Il cannot sanction. and l will not condemn, the step you
 have taken" Jackson in his annual mfssage took up the subject with his usual vim The south. he said, was in state of ferment, and endangered "by attempts to circulate through the mails 1nfiammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves in prints and in various sorts of publications calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and t. introduce all the horrors of serviIe war; He suggested a law "phohibi- ting, under severe punishments, the cir culagion in the southern states, through the mails, of incendiary publications in- tended to instigate the slaves to insur- rectlon." But the north was reacting. + ,ould not, with cool deliberation, tol- crate the breaking open of mails. Con- mcrcial men foresaw immense danger from any precedent in this direction. It would be difficult to find a limit to censorship of the kind. A committee reported to the senate a bill embodying the presidents suggestion. Calhoun wished five thousand extra copies print ed. It was a curious piece of work en bodying the extreme views of Cal houn himself. It declared that the Con- stitution was a compact; that the north was criminally involved as a whole and that the south had a just right 10 revolt and break up the Union. The b'l, was fought over with acerbitv Benton would not endorse it; in fact, he was consistently and determinedly an opponent of any interference with the sacredness of the mails. At last Grun- dy offered a substitute. which was agreed to. At the last, however, the substitute bill was lost in the senate, while the house went round the subject | with caution.
 Dropped in congress the matter was | presumed to have been given over to the states for their separate action. | This was precisely what Colhoun and | the extremists demanded Calhoun, in 1886, reported that If congress could prohibit, it could also enforce, the cir cuation of what matterNit chose" In | his judgment the states had control of all mail matter inside their own limit The pouches might be opened by every state as soon as they passed the border His views carried, so far as the south cit time mails were not held to be private, to the extent that matter might be ex- amined by post-office authorities and sfted of offensive matter.
 During the civil war the mails were under supervisory control as war measure. This the people submitted to without general protest. In the year 1890 the ostmaster-general, MT. Wana- maker, taking advantage of a general statute, refusing the passage of licen- tious literature through the mails, is sued an order excluding TolHoi's 'Kreutzer Sonata" The quality of this famous book was not such as to rally to It's defence large number of protes- Iants, but it was perceived that if a great author like Tolstoi could be shut put of the mails, by the judgment of a single man, we were creating censor ship of the press that knew no limits and Balzac and Dean Swift would be excluded on the same ground or circulated in expurga ted edi- ions. And so it came near turning out, or MT. Farreley, president of the Amer can News company, was arrested l.. New York for selling Balzaz. The fa- nous Comstock seized the occasion to )rder the arrest of four persons for selling the "Kreutzer Sonata" The prisoners were arraigned before Judge White, and copies of the offending books were handed to his, with pas ages marked for his examination The udge read carefully and then replied hat he could see nothing in those pas ages to affect the morals of either old IT young. Then, turning to the officers le ordered the release of the prisoners nd the return of the property seized. The Anti-Vice society went so far as to eize literature which in their judgment vas not sound in its theological teach ng They pronounced heretical books . o be obnoxious to the public veal, and n some cases they were flung out of the nails A certain Sweeney, in congress, brought in a bill flor the exclusion , rom the mail of any pamphlet, maga- { inc, newspaper, story paper or other l