Abolitionists understand the slaveholding spirit too well to be surprised at any thing that has yet happened at the South or the North; they know that the greater the sin is, which is exposed, the more violent will be the efforts to blacken the character and impugn the motives of those who are engaged in bringing to light the hidden things of darkness.  They understand the work of Reform too well to be driven back by the furious waves of opposition, which are only foaming out their own shame.  They have stood “the world’s dread laugh,” when only twelve men formed the first Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1831.  They have faced and refuted the calumnies of their enemies, and proved themselves to be emphatically peace men by never resisting the violence of mobs, even when driven by them from the temple of God, and dragged by an infuriated crowd through the streets of the emporium of New-England, or subjected by slaveholders to the pain of corporal punishment.  “None of these things move them;” and, by the grace of God, they are determined to persevere in this work of faith and labor of love:  they mean to pray, and preach, and write, and print, until slavery is completely overthrown, until Babylon is taken up and cast into the sea, to “be found no more at all.”  They mean to petition Congress year after year, until the seat of our government is cleansed from the sinful traffic of “slaves and the souls of men.”  Although that august assembly may be like the unjust judge who “feared not God neither regarded man,” yet it must yield just as he did, from the power of importunity.  Like the unjust judge, Congress must redress the wrongs of the widow, lest by the continual coming up of petitions, it be wearied.  This will be striking the dagger into the very heart of the monster, and once this done, he must soon expire.

Abolitionists have been accused of abusing their Southern brethren.  Did the prophet Isaiah abuse the Jews when he addressed to them the cutting reproof contained in the first chapter of his prophecies, and ended by telling them, they would be ashamed of the oaks they had desired, and confounded for the garden they had chosen?  Did John the Baptist abuse the Jews when he called them “a generation of vipers,” and warned them “to bring forth fruits meet for repentance!” Did Peter abuse the Jews when he told them they were the murderers of the Lord of Glory?  Did Paul abuse the Roman Governor when he reasoned before him of righteousness, temperance, and judgment, so as to send conviction home to his guilty heart, and cause him to tremble in view of the crimes he was living in?  Surely not.  No man will now accuse the prophets and apostles of abuse, but what have Abolitionists done more than they?  No doubt the Jews thought the prophets and apostles in their day, just as harsh and uncharitable as slaveholders now, think Abolitionists; if they did not, why did they beat, and stone, and kill them?