in the most celebrated seat of science and literature in the south, the University of Virginia, the professors were attacked by more than seventy armed students, and, in the words of a Virginia paper, were obliged ’to conceal themselves from their fury;’ also that almost all the riots and violence that occur in northern colleges, are produced by the turbulence and lawless passions of southern students.  That such are the furious passions of slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature, none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal encounters on the floor of our nation’s legislature—­smiting their fists in each other’s faces, throttling and even kicking and trying to gouge each other—­that during the session of the Congress just closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in debate, have either rushed at each other’s throats, or kicked, or struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their friends had not separated them.  Further, they know full well, these were not insignificant, vulgar blackguards, elected because they were the head bullies and bottle-holders in a boxing ring, or because their constituents went drunk to the ballot box; but they were some of the most conspicuous members of the House—­one of them a former speaker.

Our newspapers are full of these and similar daily occurrences among slaveholders, copied verbatim from their own accounts of them in their own papers and all this we fully credit; no man is simpleton enough to cry out ’Oh, I can’t believe that slaveholders do such things;’—­and yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their slaves, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking, kicking, knocking down and shooting them as well as each other—­the look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a study for a painter:  and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and hands uplifted, ’Oh, indeed, I can’t believe the slaveholders are so cruel to their slaves.’  Most amiable and touching charity!  Truly, of all Yankee notions and free state products, there is nothing like a ’dough face’—­the great northern staple for the southern market—­’made to order,’ in any quantity, and always on hand.  ’Dough faces!’ Thanks to a slaveholder’s contempt for the name, with its immortality of truth, infamy and scorn.[19]

[Footnote 19:  “Doe face,” which owes its paternity to John Randolph, age has mellowed into “dough face”—­a cognomen quite as expressive and appropriate, if not as classical.]