THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

Ohio and Pennsylvania petitions. Though the Quaker petition was more respectfully
worded, Calhoun claimed “the same principles were embodied in [both petitions], and the
innuendoes conveyed [in the Quaker petition] were as far from being acceptable as the
barefaced insolence” of the Ohio petitions. 20
Defenders of the Quaker petition made a clear distinction between Quakers and
abolitionists. New Jersey Senator Garrett Wall demanded the Caln petition be heard.
The Caln petition, Wall claimed, did not “come from the great laboratory of abolition
incendiarism. It [did] not spring from the heated atmosphere produced by the contention
of men struggling for political power; nor [did] it come from men, who under pretence of
conscience, cloak worldly, selfish, or unholy designs.” Friends were not seeking “to
destroy the constitution or endanger the peace and permanency of the Union.” Using
“the calm, mild, and dispassionate voice of reason,” Wall suggested the Caln petitioners
had exercised their political rights in a manner consistent with the principles of the
Constitution and the discipline of their society. 21 Opponents of the Quaker petition,
however, condemned the Society of Friends for agitating the slavery question. On March
9, the Senate voted to receive the Quaker petition and rejected the petitioners’ prayer.
Afterward the Senate adopted the rule to lay all anti-slavery petitions on the table, a
20 Register of Debates, 24 th Congress, 1 st Session, 100.
21 Speech of Mr. Wall, of New Jersey, on the Memorial of the Caln Quarterly Meeting of the
Society of Friends, of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Praying for the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave
Trade in the District of Columbia, in Senate, February 29, 1836 (Washington: Blair & Rives Printers,
1836), 3-4.
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