There was no sympathy with nor even toleration for any public expression of hostility to slavery. The zeal of the followers of Jackson, although he had ceased to be President, had been whetted by his public denunciations of the antislavery propaganda; little more than a year before he had called upon Congress to take measures to "prohibit under severe penalties" the further progress of such incendiary proceedings as were "calculated to stimulate the slaves to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of civil war." But in spite of all this, people with uneasy consciences continued to write and talk and petition Congress against slavery, and most of the State legislatures began to pass resolutions denouncing them. In the last days of 1836 Governor Duncan sent to the Illinois Legislature the reports and resolutions of several States in relation to this subject. They were referred to a committee, who in due time reported a set of resolves "highly disapproving abolition societies"; holding that "the right of property in slaves is secured to the slave-holding States by the Federal Constitution"; that the general Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District, without a manifest breach of good faith; and requesting the Governor to transmit to the States which had sent their resolutions to him a copy of those tranquilizing expressions. A long and dragging debate ensued of which no record has been preserved; the resolutions, after numberless amendments had been voted upon, were finally passed, in the Senate, unanimously, in the House with none but Lincoln and five others in the negative. [Footnote: We are under obligations to John M. Adair for transcripts of the State records bearing on this matter.] No report remains of the many speeches which prolonged the debate; they have gone the way of all buncombe; the sound and fury of them have passed away into silence; but they woke an echo in one sincere heart which history will be glad to perpetuate.