“During the last and the present week we have cut out and laid aside more than 500 articles, relating to the various _excitements_ now acting on the people of the United States, public and private! _Society seems everywhere unhinged_, and the demon of ‘blood and slaughter’ has been let loose upon us! We have the _slave_ question in many different forms, including the proceedings of _kidnappers_ and _manstealers_—and others belonging to the _free negroes_: the proscription and prosecution of _gamblers_; with mobs growing out of _local matters_—and a great collection of acts of violence of a _private_, or _personal_ nature, ending in death; and regret to believe, also, that an awful _political_ outcry is about to be raised to rally the ‘poor against the rich’! We have executions, and murders, and riots to the utmost limits of the union. The character of our countrymen seems suddenly changed, and thousands interpret the law in their own way—sometimes in one case, and then in another, guided apparently only by their own will!... We lately gave, by way of a specimen, a few articles of a nature similar to those now in our possession. We cannot consent to hold up our country to the contempt and scorn of the old world, and shall, therefore, generally suppress them, though some cases of peculiar atrocity must be inserted. Let the laws rule. And let no one do anything that may have a tendency to bring them into popular disrespect!”[154] Even though some allowance for exaggeration in the above statements may be necessary, there yet remains unquestionable evidence of a very unsettled state of affairs.[155] An editorial written in a less sensational style appeared in the Register in October. The first sentences are as follows: “Meetings of the people have been held in nearly all the chief cities and towns in the northern states—at which the proceedings of the abolitionists were rejected and disavowed, with great unanimity and much zeal. And in the south we almost daily hear of ‘judge Lynch,’ and of persons who are flogged and driven away, or ‘executed,’ under sentences rendered by him.”[156] Judge Jay in a charge to a Grand Jury at White Plains, New York, in November, 1835, referred to the “spirit of lawless violence” that was abroad in the land, and spoke of the danger to civil and religious liberty if it were not arrested. About the same time, Judge Cranch, in a similar charge to a Grand Jury in the District of Columbia, spoke of the “state of excitement” which existed in some parts of the country.[157]