The indications thicken that the organization of this proposed Territory is to be attended with a renewal of strife. And mark what the Free-soilers now plead: not the higher law, but an act of Congress. A prodigious fall from the clouds.
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The post above is condensed. From the original, word for word
"The indications thicken that the organization of this proposed Territory is to be attended with a renewal of strife. [...] It is a prodigious fall from the clouds, for such high-reaching spirits as the Free-soilers."
Between the posts · the narrator, not the paper
January 23. The bill is rewritten. The new text declares the Missouri Compromise line inoperative and void, and the question of reading is closed.
The Mercury catches an irony worth keeping: antislavery writers who had spent years arguing from a "higher law" above the Constitution were now defending the Missouri Compromise, an ordinary act of Congress. The card is a Southern paper scoring a debating point — and recording, in passing, that the North had shifted its ground.
Read it in the original — Furman Secession Era Editorials transcription ↗