Non-slaveholders of the South! up to the present period, neither as a body, nor as individuals, have you ever had an independent existence; but, if true to yourselves and to the memory of your fathers, you, in equal copartnership with the non-slaveholders of the North, will soon become the honored rulers and proprietors of the most powerful, prosperous, virtuous, free, and peaceful nation, on which the sun has ever shone. Already has the time arrived for you to decide upon what basis you will erect your political superstructure. Upon whom will you depend for an equitable and judicious form of constitutional government? Whom will you designate as models for your future statesmen? Your choice lies between the dead and the living--between the Washingtons, the Jeffersons and the Madisons of the past, and the Quattlebums, the Quitmans and the Butlers of the present. We have chosen; choose ye, remembering that freedom or slavery is to be the issue of your option. As the result of much reading and research, and at the expenditure of no inconsiderable amount of time, labor and money, we now proceed to make known the anti-slavery sentiments of those noble abolitionists, the Fathers of the Republic, whose liberal measures of public policy have been so criminally perverted by the treacherous advocates of slavery. Let us listen, in the first place, to the voice of him who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," to THE VOICE OF WASHINGTON. In a letter to John F. Mercer, dated September 9th, 1786, General Washington says:-- "I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my _first wishes_ to see some plan adopted by which slavery, in this country, may be abolished by law." In a letter to Robert Morris, dated Mount Vernon, April 12, 1786, he says:-- "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it. But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting." He says, in a letter:-- "To the MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE--April 5th, 1783:-- The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose as a precedent, to encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from the state of bondage in which they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business till I have the pleasure of seeing you." In another letter to Lafayette, he says:--