On the record
The emancipated African, shut out from all participation in the Government, despoiled of the ballot, was enmeshed in a web of laws which left him no better than a fly in the toils of a spider.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Sumner illustrates the legal entrapment of freedmen, comparing their situation to a spider's web.
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Again I repeat, so long as the War System prevails under the sanction of International Law, these painful incongruities will be apparent.
They belong to a system so essentially irrational, that all the admitted virtues of many of its agents cannot save it from judgment.
I agree with the Convention in the importance of the new organization; nor do I think there are many candid persons, recognizing morals as the soul of all true politics, who will hesitate in this conclusion.
The subterfuges of the politician cannot escape it.
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