It taught the south the efficacy of clamoring; it taught them that there are cases where a Bombastes Furioso is as powerful as a Julius Cæsar; and it taught them also, notwithstanding all appearances of solidity and firmness, of what a delicate nervous tissue a money-bag consists.
Mann analyzes the lessons learned by the South from their political tactics and the fragility of economic power.
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Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us.
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