Some attributed the cause of all this excitement to the abolitionists.[158] A correspondent of the Medina (Ohio) Free Press early in the year 1836 wrote as follows: “When a body of men with such feelings and principles, begin to distract the nation with their mad schemes, it is high time for a community to notice them. I am no advocate of Lynch law, but I must say that if Lynch law must be practised, I know of no fitter subjects for its operation than such fanatics.”[159] The following appears in an article on Lynch Law in America published in England in 1877: “Among the institutions specially American, few have had worse odour in England than what is commonly known as ‘Lynch law.’ In the time of the anti-slavery agitation the recourse to Lynch law by the supporters of ‘the domestic institution,’ or ‘involuntary servitude,’ as it was euphoniously called, caused just indignation. It was by Lynch law that men who dared to speak against slavery were silenced in the Slave States.”[160] Thus, the defenders of slavery in the Southern States were highly incensed at the interference of abolitionists whom they felt knew but little about the actual conditions, and laid upon the shoulders of these “fanatics” the blame for the necessity of resorting to lynch-law; the abolitionists, on the other hand, said that lawless violence was the direct result of slavery[161] and the attempt of the South to put down free discussion by means of force. The years of Jackson’s presidency, 1829–1837, have been distinguished by political writers as the Jacksonian period,—a period in which there was an unusual amount of turbulence and violence. It has been repeatedly suggested that Jackson’s own arbitrary temperament and example did something to set this fashion. “It is, however, more just to see, both in the President himself and in the mobs of his time of power, symptoms of one and the same thing; namely, a great democratic upheaval, the wilful self-assertion of a masterful people, and of a man who was their true representative.... During Jackson’s eight years everything is changing; both society and politics are undergoing revolution; deep organic processes are in progress; significant atmospheric changes are setting in.”[162] “It is not possible that a growing nation should spread over new territory, and feel the thrill of its own young energies contending successfully with nature in all her rude force, without social commotions and a certain recklessness and uproar. The contagion of these forms of disorder produces other and less excusable forms.”[163]