If the issue must come, we say let it come. If Southern insolence and bullyism can invade our legislative halls to find victims among American Senators, it is time they learn there is a North that will be mighty, powerful and united. It is time the South's sceptre was broken.
Original passage & context
"If the issue must come, we say let it come. If Southern insolence and bullyism is so rampant as to invade the sacred precints of our legislative halls, to find victims among American Senators to appease its fury, it is time that they should learn that there is a North that will be mighty, powerful and united, if it is not now. For years the South has reigned in Washington, with absolute sway. [...] It is time that its sceptre was broken and its domination destroyed."
Mary Ann Shadd Cary's paper — the first newspaper in North America edited by a Black woman — nine days after the caning. Transcribed letter-for-letter from the Canadiana page scans (no OCR layer exists); the paper's own spellings 'precints' and 'bullyism' preserved. The same article pairs the caning with Kansas: Southerners 'trying to play the same high-handed game in Washington... which they have been playing upon a poor, weak territory struggling into existence in the West.'
Read it in the original — Provincial Freeman, May 31, 1856 (Canadiana page scans) ↗