In the months before O'Connell's death, Duffy circulated letters received from James Fintan Lalor in which he argued that independence could be pursued only in a popular struggle for the land. While he proposed that this should begin with a campaign to withhold rent, he suggested more might be implied. Parts of the country were already in a state of semi-insurrection. Tenants conspirators, in tradition of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen, were attacking process servers, intimidating land agents, and resisting evictions. Lalor advised only against a "general" uprising: the people, he believed, could not hold their own against the country's English garrison.