I put it as a practical question, What shall these millions of our fellow-creatures be?--for it is more than probable that this very generation,--nay, that the actors in public affairs, before the sands of the present year shall have run out,--will prescribe and foreördain their doom.
Mann poses a critical question about the future of millions, urging consideration of their fate in society.
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I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
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.
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.
But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…
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