 The Mississippi River was federal territory, and the federal government did not enforce the Missouri law against education of blacks.Peck founded the Missouri Bible Society in 1818, the Green County Sunday School Association in 1824, female mite societies in town and villages, the American Baptist Historical Society, and Baptist associations in Missouri and Illinois.Peck became an agent of the American Colonization Society—which founded Liberia and returned freed blacks to Africa—a might advocate of temperance, a student of the intricate problems of immigration, and a stout opponent of the effort to make Illinois a slave state.