"The Chair reminded the gentleman that it was out of order to address the House after the demand for the previous question. "Mr. Adams. I ask the House--(continued cries of 'Order!' which completely drowned the honorable member's voice.)" Order having been restored, the next question was--"Is the demand for the previous question seconded?"--which seconding would consist of a majority of the whole House--which, on a division, quickly showed itself. Then came the further question--"_Shall the main question be now put?_"--on which the yeas and nays were demanded, and taken; and ended in a repetition of the vote of the same 63 against it. The main question was then put, and carried; but again, on yeas and nays, to hold free State members to their responsibility; showing the same 63 in the negative, with a few additional votes from free State members, who, having staked themselves on the vital point of suspending the rules, saw no use in giving themselves further trouble at home, by giving an unnecessary vote in favor of stifling abolition debate. In this way, the ranks of the 63 were increased to 74. Thus was stifled, and in future prevented in the House, the inflammatory debates on these disturbing petitions. It was the great session of their presentation--being offered by hundreds, and signed by hundreds of thousands of persons--many of them women, who forgot their sex and their duties, to mingle in such inflammatory work; some of them clergymen, who forgot their mission of peace, to stir up strife among those who should be brethren. Of the pertinacious 63, who backed Mr. Slade throughout, the most notable were Mr. Adams, who had been President of the United States--Mr. Fillmore, who became so--and Mr. Caleb Cushing, who eventually became as ready to abolish all impediments to the general diffusion of slavery, as he then was to abolish slavery itself in the District of Columbia. It was a portentous contest. The motion of Mr. Slade was, not for an inquiry into the expediency of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia (a motion in itself sufficiently inflammatory), but to get the command of the House to bring in a bill for that purpose--which would be a decision of the question. His motion failed. The storm subsided; and very few of the free State members who had staked themselves on the issue, lost any thing among their constituents for the devotion which they had shown to the Union. CHAPTER XXXVII. ABOLITIONISTS CLASSIFIED BY MR. CLAY ULTRAS DENOUNCED: SLAVERY AGITATORS NORTH AND SOUTH EQUALLY DENOUNCED AS DANGEROUS TO THE UNION.