During the 1850s and 1860s, Sherman continued to develop and to participate in regional politics. Because many residents of North Texas had migrated from the Upper South and only a low percentage were slaveholders, considerable Unionist sentiment existed in the region. E. Junius Foster, the publisher of Sherman's antisecessionist Whig newspaper, the "Patriot", circulated a petition to establish North Texas as an independent free state. Following Confederate passage of a conscription law, resistance arose to conscription in North Texas, especially as owners of many slaves were exempt.