Abolitionists seized on the weapons available to them--petitions, lectures, and the newly invented steam press, which made possible the mass production of pamphlets, newspapers, and broadsides--to challenge the conspiracy of silence that increasingly barred discussion of slavery from the national public sphere.43 The movement appealed simultaneously to the hearts and minds of Americans, excoriating slaveowners and exposing the brutal reality of slavery--whippings, separation of families, and so on--while