September 15, 1837, he says: "I have been for some time occupied day and night, when at home, in assorting and recording the petitions and remonstrances against the annexation of Texas, and other (p. 256) anti-slavery petitions, which flow upon me in torrents." The next day he presented the singular petition of one Sherlock S. Gregory, who had conceived the eccentric notion of asking Congress to declare him "an alien or stranger in the land so long as slavery exists and the wrongs of the Indians are unrequited and unrepented of." September 28 he presented a batch of his usual petitions, and also asked leave to offer a resolution calling for a report concerning the coasting trade in slaves. "There was what Napoleon would have called a superb NO! returned to my request from the servile side of the House." The next day he presented fifty-one more like documents, and notes having previously presented one hundred and fifty more.
In December, 1837, still at this same work, he made a hard but fruitless effort to have the Texan remonstrances and petitions sent to a select committee instead of to that on foreign affairs which was constituted in the Southern interest. On December 29 he "presented several bundles of abolition and anti-slavery petitions," and said that, having declared his opinion that the gag-rule was unconstitutional, null, and void, he should "submit to it only as to physical force." January 3, 1838, he presented "about a hundred petitions, (p. 257) memorials, and remonstrances,--all laid on the table." January 15 he presented fifty more. January 28 he received thirty-one petitions, and spent that day and the next in assorting and filing these and others which he previously had, amounting in all to one hundred and twenty. February 14, in the same year, was a field-day in the petition campaign: he presented then no less than three hundred and fifty petitions, all but three or four of which bore more or less directly upon the slavery question. Among these petitions was one
"praying that Congress would take measures to protect citizens from the North going to the South from danger to their lives. When the motion to lay that on the table was made, I said that, 'In another part of the Capitol it had been threatened that if a Northern abolitionist should go to North Carolina, and utter a principle of the Declaration of Independence'--Here a loud cry of 'order! order!' burst forth, in which the Speaker yelled the loudest. I waited till it subsided, and then resumed, 'that if they could catch him they would hang him!' I said this so as to be distinctly heard throughout the hall, the renewed deafening shout of 'order! order!' notwithstanding. The Speaker then said, 'The gentleman from Massachusetts will take his seat;' which I did and immediately rose again and presented another petition. He did not dare tell me that I could not proceed without (p. 258) permission of the House, and I proceeded. The threat to hang Northern abolitionists was uttered by Preston of the Senate within the last fortnight."