Verse 6 noted that their king, now named Anti-Nephi-Lehi, had prohibited the converted people who had taken that same name from taking up weapons. In verse 7 Alma begins to record that king’s speech to his people that is meant to reinforce and perhaps explain that command that they should not take up weapons of war.
As Anti-Nephi-Lehi begins, he gives thanks for the blessings that have come from understanding Jehovah’s covenants and gospel. Those who have been converted have become convinced of the “traditions of our wicked fathers.” That language doesn’t mean that all Lamanites were wicked in the sense of individual choices, but rather that their traditions opposed Jehovah’s gospel. In the black and white world of Nephite scripture, Jehovah’s gospel clearly represented good, and any who opposed it were wicked by definition, regardless of personal actions.
Anti-Nephi-Lehi also notes that the Spirit has softened their hearts. It is what that softening led to that requires a little explanation. The king says that having their hearts softened “opened a correspondence with these brethren, the Nephites.” In Webster’s 1828 dictionary that probably represents the meaning of words as Joseph Smith and his contemporaries knew them, the first meaning is “relation; fitness; congruity; mutual adaptation of one thing to another.” The other meanings would be more familiar to modern readers, dealing with communication at a distance, such as through letters. In this verse, however, the meaning really should be read as that first meaning. What was opened was their hearts to a conformity with what the Nephite brothers had taught. It was a relationship with what these brothers had taught them and had nothing directly to do with the larger Nephite population in the land of Zarahemla.