Lewis Tappan: “Now is the time, fellow-citizens, to assail the foe.”

By abolishing slavery you will become the architects of your own fortune, and of your country's greatness.

Do you ask that your children may be rescued from the ignorance and irreligion to which they are now doomed, and that avenues may be opened for you and for them to honest and profitable employment?

Unite then, we beseech you, with one heart and one mind, for the legal, constitutional abolition of slavery.

He is terrified by the echo of his own threats, and the very proposal to dissolve the Union and leave him to his fate, throws him into paroxysms.