The proceedings in the Senate in regard to the Abolition petitions must be even more concisely stated. The course pursued and the result reached were similar to what has been described in the account of the experiences of the House. The Senate first received and heard the petitions, and voted immediately to deny their prayer. Then, when it became evident that this would not prevent anti-slavery agitation on the floor of the Senate, the body adopted the custom of hearing a motion not to receive a petition, and voting immediately to lay the motion not to receive, and along with it the petition itself, on the table. This practice was modified a little later, by a ruling of the presiding officer, to the effect that an objection to the petition by any member would raise the question of the reception of the petition without a formal motion. Mr. Calhoun had contended for this method of raising the question in regard to the reception of the petitions from the beginning of the struggle over the subject, in January of 1836. He seemed, however, to desire to dispose of them by simply voting not to receive them. In fact, he made a motion to this effect, at the very outset of the contest, but without success. While thus the Senate did not formally adopt the practice finally reached in the House of refusing to receive the petitions, it arrived at about the same result in practice. It is true that the presiding officer of the Senate allowed the petitions to be {265} read before putting the motion upon their reception, which seems to have been an illogical practice indeed, and that any member might move to call up the motion not to receive, and with it the petition or petitions to which that motion referred; but the reading before the motion not to receive, or before the objection to receiving, was perfunctory, and there was no member of the Senate who desired to call up the tabled petitions or persisted in so doing. As a matter of fact, the public opinion which the Abolitionists succeeded in creating in the North concerning the attitude of the Senate toward the Abolition petitions was that the Senate had done the same violence to the people's constitutional right of petition that the House had done. It was held and believed throughout the North, in 1840, that the Congress of the United States, in both of its branches, had set the interests of slavery above the liberties of the people of the North. There were two incidents which happened during the course of the proceedings in the Senate upon the subject to which brief reference should be made. One was the noted passage of words between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Rives, of Virginia, in regard to the morality of slavery, and the other was the petition from the legislature of Vermont for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. [Sidenote: Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun in regard to the morality of slavery.]