If the occasional subjection of a freeman instead of a slave, to all the horrors of bondage, constitutes no valid objection to the United States law, then, surely, the occasional enfranchisement of a slave from a bondage that was always unjust and cruel, should constitute no objection to the law of the free state.
Mann argues against the legality of the Fugitive Slave Law by highlighting the injustice of enslaving a free person.
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Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us.
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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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