The time has come, however, when such an astonishing page has been
turned, in the anti-slavery history of America, that the women of our
country, feeling that the great anti-slavery work to which their
English sisters exhorted them is almost done, may properly and
naturally feel moved to reply to their appeal, and lay before them the
history of what has occurred since the receipt of their affectionate
and Christian address.
Your address reached us just as a great moral conflict was coming to
its intensest point. The agitation kept up by the anti-slavery portion
of America, by England, and by the general sentiment of humanity in
Europe, had made the situation of the slaveholding aristocracy
intolerable. As one of them at the time expressed it, they felt
themselves under the ban of the civilized world. Two courses only were
open to them: to abandon slave institutions, the sources of their
wealth and political power, or to assert them with such an
overwhelming national force as to compel the respect and assent of
mankind. They chose the latter.
To this end they determined to seize on and control all the resources
of the Federal Government, and to spread their institutions through
new States and Territories until the balance of power should fall into
their hands and they should be able to force slavery into all the free
States.
A leading Southern senator boasted that he would yet call the roll of
his slaves on Bunker Hill; and for a while the political successes of
the slave-power were such as to suggest to New England that this was
no impossible event.
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