We are often reminded by gentlemen of the south, that, at the time of the adoption of that constitution, slavery existed in almost every state in the Union; and that some northern merchants, by a devilish alchemy, transmuted gold from its tears and blood.
Mann addresses the historical context of slavery in the U.S. Constitution and the complicity of Northern merchants in the slave trade.
Share
More from Horace Mann
What rights are more sacred or more dear to us than the conjugal and the parental?
Packed and stowed like merchandise between unventilated decks, so close that the tempest without could not ruffle the pestilential air within, the voyage was begun.
Mere knowledge, without the moral sense, can take no cognizance of the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong; and so the blind instinct, unguided by knowledge, will be forever at fault in its conclusions.
So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
Other voices in this conversation
