Amos Kendall, Postmaster-General, was requested to issue an order authorizing such conduct.

He replied that he had no legal authority to issue such an order.

Yet he would not recommend the delivery of such papers.

"We owe," said he, "an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.

Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken." This is an early instance of the appeal to the "higher law" in the pro-slavery controversy.