judgments, which it requires no prophet’s eye to see, must follow if repentance is not speedily sought?  Is there no Esther among you who will plead for the poor devoted slave?  Read the history of this Persian queen, it is full of instruction; she at first refused to plead for the Jews; but, hear the words of Mordecai, “Think not within thyself, that thou shalt escape in the king’s house more than all the Jews, for if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place:  but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed.” Listen, too, to her magnanimous reply to this powerful appeal; “I will go in unto the king, which is not according to law, and if I perish.  I perish.”  Yes! if there were but one Esther at the South, she might save her country from ruin; but let the Christian women there arise, as the Christian women of Great Britain did, in the majesty of moral power, and that salvation is certain.  Let them embody themselves in societies, and send petitions up to their different legislatures, entreating their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, to abolish the institution of slavery; no longer to subject woman to the scourge and the chain, to mental darkness and moral degradation; no longer to tear husbands from their wives, and children from their parents; no longer to make men, women, and children, work without wages; no longer to make their lives bitter in hard bondage; no longer to reduce American citizens to the abject condition of slaves, of “chattels personal;” no longer to barter the image of God in human shambles for corruptible things such as silver and gold.

The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong.  Such appeals to your legislatures would be irresistible, for there is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion.  There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity.  If you could obtain but six signatures to such a petition in only one state, I would say, send up that petition, and be not in the least discouraged by the scoffs and jeers of the heartless, or the resolution of the house to lay it on the table.  It will be a great thing if the subject can be introduced into your legislatures in any way, even by women, and they will be the most likely to introduce it there in the best possible manner, as a matter of morals and religion, not of expediency or politics.  You may petition, too, the different, ecclesiastical bodies of the slave states.  Slavery must be attacked with the whole power of truth and the sword of the spirit.  You must take it up on Christian ground, and fight against it with Christian weapons, whilst your feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.  And you are now loudly called upon by the cries of the widow and the orphan, to arise and gird yourselves for this great moral conflict, with the whole armour of righteousness upon the right hand and on the left.