nce 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
in the District of Columbia--and likewise to prevent the extension of it
to any State, that may be hereafter admitted to the Union?" What then
means the following language in the "Declaration" of the Convention,
which framed our Constitution: "We also maintain, that there are at the
present time the highest obligations resting upon the people of the Free
States to remove slavery by moral and political action, as prescribed in
the Constitution of the United States?" If it be for the first time,
that we "_now_ propose" "political action," what means it, that
anti-slavery presses have, from year to year, called on abolitionists to
remember the slave at the polls?

You are deceived on this point; and the rapid growth of our cause has
been the occasion of your deception. You suppose, because it is only
within the last few months, that you have heard of abolitionists in this
country carrying their cause to "the ballot box," that it is only within
the last few months that they have done so. But, in point of fact, some
of them have done so for several years. It was not, h