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.
Original passage & context
"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."
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 ↗