These considerations demonstrate that slaves are not property, within the meaning of this word, when it is affirmed that if the north can carry its property into the territories, so can the south.
Horace Mann: “These considerations demonstrate that slaves are not property, within the meaning of this word, when it is affirmed that…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann argues against the notion that slaves can be considered property under the law, emphasizing the moral implications of such a classification.
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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.
I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…
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.





