But now another problem pressed to the front,
far more portentous than all the questions of
banks and deposits and lands, which agitated the
public mind under Jackson's turbulent presidency.
In Benton "Abridgment of the Debates of Con-
gress" the following short foot-note is attached to
the Senate proceedings of January 7, 1836: "At
this session the slavery discussion became installed
in Congress, and has too unhappily kept its place
ever since." The slavery question had assumed a
new character.

The great excitement called forth by the admis-
sion of Missouri bad been allayed by compromise.
During the decade which followed, the slave-hold-
ing interest had indeed made itself felt in politics,
but usually in disguise. The subject of slavery in
its large moral and political aspects had been the
occasional topic of discussion, but only in a pass-
ing way, except among a class of people who soon
were to rise into unlooked-for importance, -- the
"abolitionists."

A few old anti-slavery societies had continued a
quiet existence, most of them in the South, with-
out creating any alarm. Then appeared on the
stage, with all his peculiar strength, that formida-
ble revolutionary factor in human affairs, the man
of one idea. Anti-slavery missionaries came forth,
who carried the word, spoken and written, from
place to place: first, Benjamin Lundy, a mild-
mannered Quaker mechanic, whose "heart was
deeply grieved at the gross abomination," when he

-70-