Abstract
When Andrew Jackson began his first term as President of the United States in 1829, the halls of Congress had been relatively free from anti-slavery agitation for almost a decade, with the great slavery question having been laid to an uneasy rest by the compromise following the bitter Missouri debate. But by the middle of the 1830's Congress would be once again the scene of factious and angry disputes over the South's "peculiar institution”. While other subjects such as the admission of slave-states and the slave-trade were all grist for the abolitionist mill, the agitation of the decade 1835-1845 revolved primarily around the problems of the circulation of abolitionist literature in the mails and the reception and disposal of anti-slavery petitions.