 Briggs was what became known in later years as a " Cotton Whig " . He was in favor of <unk> tariffs , and opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories , but did not seek to threaten the unity of the nation with a strong stance against slavery . He served on the Committee on Public <unk> and the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads , serving for a time as the chairman of each . The Post Office committee was a regular recipient of complaints from southern states concerning the transmission of abolitionist mailings , which were seen there as incendiary ; the matter was of some controversy because southern legislators sought to have these types of mailings banned . Briggs ' friend <unk> Hall , who also sat on the committee , drafted a report in 1836 <unk> the <unk> used in such legislative proposals , but the committee as a whole , and then the House , refused to accept the report . Although the authorship of the report appears to be entirely Hall 's , Briggs may have contributed to it , and was a signatory to Hall 's publication of the report in the National <unk> , a major political journal . The document was influential in driving later Congressional debate on legislative proposals concerning abolitionist mailings , none of which were ever adopted . Briggs and Hall were both instrumental in drafting and gaining passage of the Post Office Act of 1836 , which included substantive accounting reforms in the wake of financial <unk> by <unk> General William Taylor Barry . 
