On the record
John Quincy Adams sounded the alarm; but men were so engrossed by their business, and by their paltry local and temporary political strifes, that even his voice, potent and prophetic as it was, passed by unheeded.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “John Quincy Adams sounded the alarm; but men were so engrossed by their business, and by their paltry local and…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann highlights the failure of society to heed John Quincy Adams' warnings about the dangers of slavery.
Share
More from Horace Mann
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
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.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
