abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance.”  As to our characters they are before the world.  You would probably look in vain through our ranks for a horse-racer, a gambler, a profane person, a rum-drinker, or a duellist.  More than nine-tenths of us deny the rightfulness of offensive, and a large majority, even that of defensive national wars.  A still larger majority believe, that deadly weapons should not be used in cases of individual strife.  And, if you should ask, “where in the free States are the increasing numbers of men and women, who believe, that the religion of the unresisting ’Lamb of God’ forbids recourse to such weapons, in all circumstances, either by nations or individuals?”—­the answer is, “to a man, to a woman, in the ranks of the abolitionists.”  You and others will judge for yourselves, how probable it is, that the persons, whom I have described, will prove worthy of being held up as murderers.

The last of your charges against the abolitionists, which I shall examine, is the following:  Having begun “their operations by professing to employ only persuasive means,” they “have ceased to employ the instruments of reason and persuasion,” and “they now propose to substitute the powers of the ballot box;” and “the inevitable tendency of their proceedings is if these should be found insufficient, to invoke finally the more potent powers of the bayonet."

If the slaveholders would but let us draw on them for the six or eight thousand dollars, which we expend monthly to sustain our presses and lecturers, they would then know, from an experience too painful to be forgotten, how truthless is your declaration, that we “have ceased to employ the instruments of reason and persuasion.”

You and your friends, at first, employed “persuasive means” against “the sub-treasury system.”  Afterwards, you rallied voters against it.  Now, if this fail, will you resort to “the more potent powers of the bayonet?” You promptly and indignantly answer, “No.”  But, why will you not?  Is it because the prominent opposers of that system have more moral worth—­more religious horror of blood—­than Arthur Tappan, William Jay, and their prominent abolition friends?  Were such to be your answer, the public would judge, whether the men of peace and purity, who compose the mass of abolitionists, would be more likely than the Clays and Wises and the great body of the followers of these Congressional leaders to betake themselves from a disappointment at “the ballot-box” to “the more potent powers of the bayonet?”

You say, that we “now propose to substitute the powers of the ballot-box,” as if it were only of late, that we had proposed to do so.  What then means the following language in our Constitution:  “The society will also endeavor in a Constitutional way to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slave-trade, and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common country, which come under its control—­especially