While there was this anti-slavery minority expressing itself in an intermittent way after 1834, the great majority of the state was thoroughly pro-slavery. In 1835, Rev. Amos Dresser, an active member of the Abolition Society of Ohio, was arrested in Nashville for publishing and circulating pamphlets among the slaves to incite them to insurrection. The Committee of Vigilance and Safety, consisting of sixty-two citizens, tried him and found him guilty. He was sentenced to receive twenty stripes on his bare back and to leave the city within twenty-four hours. He received the flogging, and did not wait for the expiration of the twenty-four hours.[69] Public meetings were generally held, denouncing such insurrectionists and their accomplices. It was reported that Arthur Tappan and others of New York City had furnished funds to aid the circulation of abolition literature in the state. At one of these meetings held by the Committee of Vigilance and Safety, the merchants of Tennessee were requested to boycott Arthur Tappan and Company and all other abolitionists. These incidents were largely responsible for the Act of 1836 mentioned above and the Gag Resolution in Andrew Jackson’s administration. In the debate in the Senate on the Calhoun Resolution, both of the senators from Tennessee, Hugh Lawson White and Felix Grundy, defended the flogging of Rev. Dresser. Senator Grundy advocated a “summary disposal of such abolitionists.”[70] Tennessee was never a unit on the slavery question. There were scattered groups of abolitionists throughout the state as long as slavery existed, while East Tennessee was almost solidly anti-slavery. The contest over slavery in the convention of 1834, in the churches, and in politics created divisions among the people of the state that have had a permanent influence upon the life of the state.