The abolitionists were no more given than other reformers to the choice of soft words in their objurgations of what they knew to be a sin against God and their fellow-men; yet they were men of peace, almost without exception,--non-resistants,--and freedom of speech was their right. It is humiliating to remember that there was an element in this State base enough to oppose them by mob violence. An anti-slavery meeting convened at the capital in 1835 was broken up by a ruffianly rabble, who pelted the speakers with rotten eggs, and became so violent in their demonstrations that it was unsafe for the principal speaker, Rev. Samuel J. May of Boston, to leave the building, till a Quaker lady quietly stepped forward, and, taking his arm, walked out with him through the turbulent crowd, which, though noisy and threatening, had decency enough to respect a lady and her escort. There were like disturbances in some other Vermont towns where the abolitionists gathered to advocate their cause, but the intensity of bitterness against them gradually wore away, and they continued to gain adherents, till the question of the extension of slave territory became the all-absorbing subject of political controversy. In 1820 the representatives of Vermont in Congress opposed the admission of Missouri as a slave State, though her senators were divided. In 1825 the legislature passed resolutions deprecating slavery as an evil, and declaring, "This General Assembly will accord in any measures which may be adopted by the general government for its abolition in the United States that are consistent with the right of the people and the general harmony of the States." Ten years later, in the same year that the anti-slavery meeting was broken up by the rabble in the very shadow of the capitol, the legislature assembled there declared, that "neither Congress nor the state governments have any constitutional right to abridge the free expression of opinions, or the transmission of them through the public mail," and that Congress possessed the power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.