At about the same time as the Utica riots occurred the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, by "gentlemen of property and standing." And all over the North were enacted scenes of violence, encouraged by a large portion of the press, which were intended to gratify the Southern demand that abolitionism should be put down at all hazards. The sanctity of the mails, the constitutional right of free speech and of lawful assemblage, were forgotten by a large portion of the people. And they were forgotten by the President of the United States himself. In December, 1835, Andrew Jackson, in his message to Congress, gave a tacit approval to mob rule, to the suppression of the freedom of the press, and to the oft-exposed falsehood that the abolitionists distributed documents among the slaves intended to incite them to insurrection; and he recommended the closing of the mails to antislavery people. The position taken by President Jackson was so unjust, so unconstitutional, and so calculated to aggravate the situation, that the American Antislavery Society determined to make an official reply to it. Judge Jay was chosen to answer the President on behalf of the society, and he prepared an address which was signed by all the officers. This document was a complete exposure of the falsity of the charges made and of the unlawfulness of the restrictive measures which Jackson proposed to Congress. "You have accused," said Jay, "an indefinite number of your fellow-citizens, without designation of name or residence, of making unconstitutional and wicked efforts, and of harbouring intentions which could be entertained only by the most depraved and abandoned of mankind; and yet you carefully abstain from averring _which_ article of the Constitution they have transgressed; you omit stating when, where, and by whom these wicked attempts were made; you give no specification of the inflammatory appeals which you assert have been addressed to the passions of the slaves. You well know that the 'moral influence' of your charges will affect thousands and tens of thousands of your countrymen, many of them your political friends--some of them heretofore honoured with your confidence--most, if not all of them, of irreproachable character; and yet, by the very vagueness of your charges, you incapacitate each one of this multitude from proving his innocence.... It is deserving of notice that the _attempt_ to circulate our papers is alone charged upon us. It is not pretended that we have put our appeals into the hands of a single slave, or that in any instance our endeavours to excite a servile war have been crowned with success. And in what way was our most execrable attempt made? By secret agents, traversing the slave country in disguise, stealing by night into the hut of the slave, and reading to him our inflammatory appeals? You, sir, answer this question by declaring that we