The restraints and conformity which surfaced in the south were due in large part to public opinion.  During the Civil War era, slave holding was considered a profitable necessity in the South and an unforgivable grievance in the North.  Inevitably, the United States was divided.  In Iola Leroy Frances Harper points out that "Slavery was cancer eating into the life of the nation; but somehow, it had cast such a glamour over us that we have acted somewhat as if our national safety were better preserved by sparing the cancer than cutting it out" (Harper, p. 334).  Although some Southerners felt the injustices of slavery, they were still forced to adhere to its practice.  One such Southerner was Eugene Leroy.  When discussing slavery with his wife, he says, "To let [the slaves] remain here as a free people is out of the question.  My hands are tied by law and custom" (Harper, p. 291).  When asked who tied his hands, Leroy answers, "Public opinion, whose meshes I cannot break" (Harper, p. 291).  Although Leroy valued human life, his only option, as with other sympathetic slave owners, was to treat his slaves as well as possible.  To treat them as free people was out of the question.  Just as the black people were enslaved by their owners, so too were the white men who disagreed with such circumstances enslaved by public opinion.
    Although in Puddn'head Wilson Mark Twain does not blatantly illustrate the slave trading absurdity and the importance of public opinion, he does illustrate the importance of perception, especially where skin color and clothing are concerned.  Roxy's simple act of changing the clothes of the two infant boys exhibits the simplistic minds of the Southerners.  An entire community, including the white baby's father, could tell the babies apart only from the clothing they were wearing.  Although Tom was completely white and Chambers had a drop of African blood, the babies looked so similar that it was only their clothing which gave them the stamp of race and the life they were destined to live.  "...for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to its knee, and not jewelry" (Twain, p. 64).  By switching the clothing of the two boys, Roxy was able to save her son from being raised as a slave and, she hoped, from being sold down the river.