It was not until 1846 that Dr. Howe’s conversion took place. For seventeen years the abolitionists had been dancing like dervishes before him; and as late as February 3, 1846, he wrote a note declining Dr. H. I. Bowditch’s invitation to an anti-slavery meeting, in such terms of polite deprecation as might have been employed by George Ticknor:--“My duties at home will prevent my joining you at eleven o’clock.... “I carefully cultivate my few social relations with slave-holders, because I find I can do so, and yet say to them _undisguisedly_ that slavery is the great _mistake_, as well as the great _sin_ of the age. Now, do what they may, they cannot prevent such words from a friend making some impression upon their hearts, which are as hard as millstones to denunciations from an enemy. It is not enmity and force, but love and reason, that are to be used in the coming strife.”... Then comes a sudden illumination, a break, a discovery, a cry of anguish, and the curse of slavery has leaped like a wild-cat upon the conscience of Dr. Howe. He runs up and down with pain:--“Indeed, I for one can say that I would rather be in the place of the victim whom they are at this moment sending away into bondage--I would rather be in his place than in theirs! Ay! through the rest of my earthly life I would rather be a driven slave upon a Louisiana plantation than roll in their wealth and bear the burden of their guilt.”... “I feel as though I had swallowed a pepper corn, when I think that no one _dares_ to be made a martyr of in the cause of humanity.”... “Government must be regarded as a divine institution! Ay! and so must right and justice be regarded as divine institutions; older, more sacred, more imperative; and when they clash, let the first be as the potsherd against the granite.”... “O! for a man among our leaders who fears neither God, man nor devil, but loves and trusts the first so much as to fear nothing but what casts a veil over the face of truth. We must have done with expediency; we must cease to look into history, into precedents, into books for rules of action, and look only into the honest and high purposes of our own hearts; that is, when we are sure we have cast out the evil passions from them.”... “Would to God I could begin my life again or even begin a new one from this moment, and go upon the ground that no fault or error or shortcoming should ever be covered up from my own eyes or those of others.”...