Yet here, in what we call republican America, are fifteen great states, vying with each other to see which will bring the blackest and most impervious pall of ignorance over three millions of human beings; nay, which can do most to stretch this pall across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Mann criticizes the competition among slave states to maintain ignorance among enslaved populations, illustrating the systemic nature of oppression.
Share
More from Horace Mann
Can any man give a reason why Norfolk should not have grown like New York, other than the difference in the institutions of the people?
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence.
This is the reciprocity of slave law.--to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection.
Other voices in this conversation
