On the record
It wounds our moral and religious sensibilities, because we believe the institution to be cruel towards men, and sinful in the sight of Heaven; and yet we are made apparently to sanction it.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “It wounds our moral and religious sensibilities, because we believe the institution to be cruel towards men, and sinful…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann expresses the moral conflict surrounding the institution of slavery and its perceived cruelty.
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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.
My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.
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.
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
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