"The restive bullock chafes when the tender skin first feels the heavy yoke"

I was re-reading Thomas R.R. Cobb's November 12, 1860 speech to the Georgia legislature advocating immediate secession and noticed how nimbly he addressed the concern that some Georgians might reach an accommodation with the Republicans:

[W]hy wait for two years when at their close we hope for nothing? Will our hearts become braver by submitting to this rule? Will our arms become stronger by the paralysis of shame? Will our people be more unanimous when party spirit has enchained them by its bonds? The restive bullock chafes when the tender skin first feels the heavy yoke, but a few days hardens the neck, and the sober, patient ox receives uncomplainingly the lash and the goad as well as the yoke. Two years of shame may crush out mountains of patriotism.

What a powerful image! In Secession Debated: Georgia's Showdown in 1860 (where you can read the full speech), editors William Freehling and Craig M. Simpson record that a person who heard Cobb deliver a similar speech in Athens, Georgia a few days earlier "proclaimed it 'the greatest speech I ever heard. . . . Get Mr. Cobb to make the same speech in Milledgeville' and 'that dilapidated little village will dissolve the Union forthwith.'"