In the mean time, while nullification was hopelessly prostrate, and before the coalition was complete, the prolific mind of the aspiring Carolinian devised a new plan and a new system of tactics which it was expected would sectionalize and unite the South. This new device was a defence of slavery--a subject in which the entire South was interested--against the impudent demands of the abolitionists. Not until the nullifiers were defeated, and had failed to draw the South into their nullification plan, was slavery agitation introduced into Congress and made a sectional party question with aggressive demands for national protection. The abolitionists were few in numbers, and of little account in American politics. Some benevolent Quakers and uneasy fanatics, who neither comprehended the structure of our Federal system nor cared for the Constitution, had annually for forty years petitioned Congress to give freedom to the slaves. But the statesmen of neither party listened to these unconstitutional appeals until the defeated nullifiers professed great apprehension in regard to them, and introduced the subject as a disturbance, and made it a sensational sectional issue in Congress and the elections. From the first agitation of the subject as a party question, slavery in all its phases was made sectional and aggressive by the South. Beginning with a denial of the right to petition for the abolition of slavery, and with demands for new and more exacting national laws for the arrest and rendition of fugitives, the new sectional party test was followed by other measures; such as the unconditional admission of Texas, the extension of slavery into all the free territory acquired from Mexico, the repeal of the Missouri compromise, a denial to the people of Kansas of the right to frame their own constitution, and other incidental and irritating questions that were not legitimately within the scope of Federal authority. Fierce contentions prevailed for years, sometimes more violent than at others.