Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient Abolitionist of them all. Previous to 1835, though petitions against slavery reached Congress in great numbers and nettled many members, they had been received and referred in the usual manner. But in February, 1836, the House created a special committee to consider these petitions. It reported a resolution, which passed under the previous question, that thereafter all papers of the kind should be tabled without printing or reference. Adams declared to the House: "I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, the rules of this House, and the rights of my constituents." In this rencounter Adams advanced the view on which the Emancipation Proclamation by and by proceeded, that slavery, even in States, was not beyond reach of the national arm, but would be at the mercy of Congress the instant slave-masters should rebel. This, the first of the gag laws, was, however, enacted. The second, or Patton gag, was passed on December 21, 1837, and the third, or Atherton gag, a year later. The principle of these, practically cutting off all petitions to Congress respecting slavery, was taken up in the twenty-first rule of the House in 1840. Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union, and he presented all.