And in the same speech he shows us Slave-Masters:—
“Where the South cannot effect her object by browbeating, she wheedles.”
On another occasion, he announced, with accustomed power:—
“Insult, bullying, and threat characterize the Slaveholders in Congress; talk, timidity, and submission, the Representatives from the Free States.”
Nor were the Slave-Masters content with violence of words, or with ejaculation of personalities by which debate became a perpetual syringe of liquid foulness, and every one seemed to vie with Squirt the apothecary, according to the verse admired by Pope,—
“Such zeal he had for that vile utensil.”[113]
True to the instincts of Slavery, they threatened personal indignity of every kind, and even assassination. And here South Carolina naturally took the lead.
The “Charleston Mercury,” which always speaks the true voice of Slavery, said in 1837:—
“Public opinion in the South would now, we are sure, justify an immediate resort to force by the Southern delegation, even on the floor of Congress, were they forthwith to seize and drag from the Hall any man who dared to insult them, as that eccentric old showman, John Quincy Adams, has dared to do.”