On the record
The commissioner declares a prima facie freeman to be a slave.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann highlights the troubling declaration that a presumed free person can be deemed a slave by the commissioner.
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Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.
Whoever intercepts knowledge, therefore, on its passage to a human soul; whoever strikes down the hand that is outstretched to grasp it, is guilty of one of the most heinous of offences.
Slavery is an unspeakable wrong to the conscience.
Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
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