Briggs was what became known in later years as a " Cotton Whig " . He was in favor of protectionist 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 Expenditures 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 was seen there as incendiary ; the matter was of some controversy because southern legislators sought to have these types of mailings banned . Briggs ' friend Hiland Hall , who also sat on the committee , drafted a report in 1836 rebutting the rationales 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 appear 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 Intelligencer , a major political journal . The document was influential in driving later Congressional debate on legislative proposals concerning abolitionist mailings , none of which was ever adopted . Briggs and Hall was both instrumental in drafting and gaining passage of the Post Office Act of 1836 , which included substantive accounting reforms in the wake of financial mismanagement by Postmaster General William Taylor Barry .