APPENDIX.

No. I.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS.

On the 3d of August a large public meeting was held at the City Hall of Charleston, at the call of the City Council. This meeting appointed a committee of 21 members to take charge of the United States' mail, and at a future meeting report the means best adapted to put down the abolitionists. We have not at hand a list of this committee, but suffice it to say, it is headed by Ex-Senator Hayne, and composed of the mightiest men of Charleston. They have already quarantined the mail steamboats, and established a regular censorship of the mail itself. They take the liberty to arrest every package which is in their judgment "incendiary."-In the mean time, the following letter of instructions to the Postmaster at Charleston has been published:

Post-Office Department, 5th August, 1835. Sir-My views in relation to the subject of your letter of the 3d instant, may be learned from the enclosed copy of a letter to the Postmaster at Charleston, S. C. dated 4th inst.

Very respectfully, your obt. servant,

AMOS KENDALL.

Edm'd Anderson, Asst. P. M. Richmond, Va.

Post-Office Department, August 4th, 1835.

P. M., Charleston, S. C.

Sir-In your letter of the 29th ult. just received, you inform me that by the steamboat mail from New-York your office had been filled with pamphlets and tracts upon slavery—that the public mind was highly excited upon the subject that you doubted the safety of the mail itself out of your possession—that

you had determined, as the wisest course, to detain these papers -and you now ask instructions from the Department.

Upon a careful examination of the law, I am satisfied that the Postmaster General has no legal authority to exclude newspapers from the mail, nor prohibit their carriage or delivery on account of their character or tendency, real or supposed. Probably it was not thought safe to confer on the head of an executive department a power over the press, which might be perverted and abused.

But I am not prepared to direct you to forward or deliver the papers of which you speak. The Post-office Department was created to serve the people of each and of all of the United States, and not to be used as the instrument of their destruction. None of the papers detained have been forwarded to me, and I cannot judge for myself their character and tendency; but you inform me, that they are, in character, "the most inflammatory and incendiary-and insurrectionary in the highest degree.".

By no act or direction of mine, official or private, could I be induced to aid, knowingly, in giving circulation to papers of this description, directly or indirectly. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.* Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction and will not condemn the step you have taken.

Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained, and the circumstances by which you are surrounded.

* The obligation that we owe to the community in which we live requires us to conform to its laws, and if any, such as Amos Kendall, shall attempt to pervert these laws, so as to destroy the community that established them, we are to discard these perversions and false constructions, and not disregard the laws. No attempt at perversion, no arts of intrigue, no essay at collusion can shake the fidelity, or alter the spirit and true intent of a written statute of the United States. It is the same at Boston and New-Orleans, the same to-day and to-morrow. We have therefore only to reject all false interpretations, and go right on rendering strict and unqualified obedience to the laws themselves. The idea that one obligation which we owe to the community in which we live requires us to violate others, or in other words, that this community ever requires us to violate its requirements, is too absurd to become the subject of a grave attempt at refu

tation.

No. II.

LETTER FROM THE POSTMASTER GENERAL CREATING TEN THOUSAND CENSORS OF THE PRESS.

Post-Office Department, 22d August, 1835.

TO SAM'L. L. GOUVERNEUR, Postmaster at New-York:

Sir-Your letter of the 11th inst. purporting to accompany a letter from the American Anti-Slavery Society, and a resolution adopted by them, came duly to hand, but without the documents alluded to. Seeing them published in the newspapers, however, I proceed to reply without waiting to receive them officially.

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 view, I have no hesitation in saying, that I am deterred from giving an 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.*

* Such are the sentiments of the Postmaster General of the United States. "To prevent any mistake," he has taken special care to expose his rotten principles to the view of the whole nation. Lest Mr. Gouverneur and the abolitionists should after all fail to see his shame, he explicitly confesses that it is the want of legal power alone, that deters him from conduct far more arbitrary, than that which occasioned our disseverance from

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 Postthe dominions of Great Britain. He would exclude from the southern mails the whole series of publications which advocate sentiments differing from his own. He would establish a censor

ship of the press more odious than the world has ever before witnessed. HE CONFESSES THAT IT IS THE WANT OF POWER ALONE

WHICH PREVENTS HIS DOING THIS. Mr. Gouverneur has already done it, and he has sanctioned his conduct. "And yet we must bear it in this land of liberty; we must submit." Mr. Kendall proves what the author has before asserted, that there are tyrants in our country as well as in others, who are restained from acts of the most intolerable oppression only by the "want of power."

66

* If it should so happen hereafter that newspapers, committed to the post-office, should become addicted to going out at nights stealing sheep, or committing robbery, or murder, or any other such heinous erimé " upon the property and persons of their fellow-citizens,” and should be caught in the very act by any person, that person, whether he were a Postmaster or private citizen, would be authorized by the common law, not only to "detain" such offending newspaper, but "to hand it over to the civil authorities," even without any warrant for that purpose. But in other cases, and even in the foregoing (unless the offending newspaper should be likely to escape in the mean time) it would generally be necessary to apply on oath to a magistrate, and procure his precept to be issued to the proper officer, because the Postmasters do not take the necessary oath to qualify them to execute these duties. In all cases the charges against the newspaper must be verified by the oaths of disinterested witnesses, and moreover the accused newspaper would be entitled to a speedy public trial before an impartial jury, and might claim the right to be confronted with the witnesses against it, to have compulsory process for its witness, and the assistance of counsel in its defence. But until newspapers become addicted to these overt acts of criminality, we shall have to employ another species of weapons in combat ing their tendency. When Mr. Kendall wrote this clause he undoubtedly looked forward in his imagination to a more improved and highly cultivated state of society, when Postmasters should become omniscient as well as just, so as infallibly to know what consequences "their contents are calculated and designed to produce, and if delivered, will certainly produce," and thence to

master 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 such 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.*

If it be justifiable to detain papers passing through the mail, for the purpose of preventing or punishing isolated crimes against individuals, how much more important it is that this responsibility should be assumed to prevent insurrections and save communities! If in time of war, a Postmaster should detect the letter of an enemy or spy passing through the mail, which if it reached its destination would expose his country to invasion and her armies to destruction, ought he not to arrest it? Yet, where is his legal power to do so?t

From the specimens I have seen of the 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 the passions of the blacks, they are calculated to fill every family with act justly and impartially. It is much to be doubted whether we shall have such Postmasters during the present generation, at least while Mr. Kendall remains at the head of the Department. * "Pretty good Indian, one truth to two lies." This is a correct position, except as to the fact of Mr. Kendall's attempting to prescribe rules, &c.

Does not the law of nations give this right? By the hypothesis the individual who employs the mail for this purpose is a common enemy, and entitled to no rights or protection under the municipal laws. It is in "time of war," and the rules of war must govern, for the belligerents acknowledge no authority but the authority of the God of battles. But is it come to this, that a large and highly respectable class of our brethren and fellow-citizens are proscribed as common enemies, and denied the rights of American citizens? Is an appeal already made to the laws of war? Let it be declared to the world then, by an open and public declaration of hostilities. The abolitionists, if they are treated as a common enemy, are entitled to his privilege. When an appeal is made to laws of war, as between the contending parties, the municipal law must cease, and when the municipal law resumes its authority, the laws of war must cease.