The founders of the Northern anti-slavery societies, while taking their stand in opposition to the Constitution, had yet, in all that they asked Congress to do, to address themselves to a public body every member of which had taken an oath to support that instrument. In their own communities, those who carried on the agitation could appeal to the emotional natures of men, women and children upon the wrongs and the sin of slavery, and fill them with hatred of the slaveholder, without discriminating between questions on which the citizens of a non-slaveholding State could and those on which they could not legitimately act. A great moral force of abhorrence of slavery could thus be, and in fact was, in process of time accumulated. This force expended itself in two ways; first, in supplying to the managers of the agitation the means of sending into the Southern States, pamphlets, newspapers and pictorial representations setting forth the wrongs and cruelties of slavery. For this purpose, the mails of the United States had, by the year 1835, been so much used for the circulation in the South of matter which was there regarded as incendiary and calculated to promote servile insurrections, that President Jackson deemed it to be his duty to propose legislation to arrest such abuses of the post office. Congress did not adopt his recommendation, and the abuse remained unchecked.[58] Another mode in which the anti-slavery agitation expended itself was in petitions to Congress. During the session of 1835-6, and for several of the following years, Congress was flooded with what were called “abolition petitions.” On some of them Congress could legitimately act: such as those which prayed for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the forts, arsenals, and dock-yards of the United States situated in slaveholding States. On others, which petitioned for a dissolution of the Union on account of the existence of slavery in some of the States, or for action on the subject of slavery in general, Congress of course could do nothing. A question arose whether such petitions could be received at all, which led to a very memorable and a very excited discussion of the right of petition. Not only was a large part of the time of Congress taken up with these topics, but the opposing representatives of the two sections were guilty of excesses in crimination and recrimination, which foreshadowed the formation of two geographical parties, one Northern and the other Southern, having nothing but slavery as the cause of their division. Footnote 58: See the message of President Jackson, December 3, 1835. It is not intended in the text to express any opinion whether the abuse could or could not have been restrained in the way proposed. The fact that the President of the United States deemed it his duty to make this recommendation attests the character of the abuse which he sought to remedy.