It expresses a determination on the part of its disciples to keep free the territory that is now free; to stand upon its frontiers as the cherubim stood at the gates of Paradise, with a flaming sword to turn every way, to keep the sin of slavery from crossing its borders.
Mann describes the commitment of Free Soilers to protect free territories from the spread of slavery.
Share
More from Horace Mann
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
The kidnapper, Alberti, now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of a southern taskmaster.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
Other voices in this conversation
