Political Quotes

On the record
Is it not a thousand times more probable that it was done by some citizen in the District, or by some colored acquaintance or friend of theirs, enjoying the means of constant communication with them, than that it was done by an entire stranger to them, as the prisoner was?
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann argues that it is more likely that local citizens influenced the enslaved individuals to escape rather than a stranger, emphasizing the community's role in the pursuit of freedom.

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No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.

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Her lowland neighbors of Maryland and the Carolinas were not far behind at the seeding; nor are they far behind at the ingathering of desolation.

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Her black children have sucked her so dry, that now, for a long time past, she has not milk enough for her offspring, either black or white.

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Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.

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