Can aught be conceived more absurd or preposterous than that the prisoner should go round the streets of Washington, picking up a slave here and there, to complete his cargo, as the driver of a stage-coach goes round picking up passengers?
Mann uses a metaphor to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that the prisoner could casually gather enslaved people like passengers, highlighting the complexities of enslavement.
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A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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