Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Gag resolution

Regrettably, also, the controversy over free people endangered free speech in the entire country. Piles of petitions poured in upon congress from the antislavery reformers, and in 1863 sensitive southerners drove through the house the so-called Gag Resolution. It required that all such antislavery appeals be tabled without debate. This attack on the right of petition aroused the sleeping lion in the ex-president, representative John Quincy Adams, who took part in a successful 80 yr. fight for its repeal.

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