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he growth of abolition provoked a violent
reaction. Mobs led by "gentlemen
of property and standing" attacked the homes and business of abolitionist
merchants, destroyed abolitionist printing presses, and attacked black
neighborhoods. In 1832, Connecticut politicians prevented a Quaker
schoolteacher, Prudence Crandall, from opening a school for black girls in the
state. That same year, a mob destroyed a racially integrated academy in Dover,
Del. Between 1834 and 1836, white mobs attacked black neighborhoods in Boston,
Cincinnati, Hartford, New York, Pittsburgh, and Utica. In 1837, the
abolitionist movement suffered its first martyr when a mob in Alton, Ill.,
murdered the Rev. Elijah Lovejoy while he was guarding a printing press he
planned to use to print an antislavery newspaper.
The Postmaster General refused to deliver
antislavery tracts to the South and in each session of Congress between 1836
and 1844, the House adopted gag rules forcing the body to automatically table
resolutions or petitions calling for the abolition of slavery.