We thought that Massachusetts was the impregnable citadel of freedom; but unconstitutional and inhuman laws, dictated by slaveholders, are now enforced amongst us, and at our very doors; and our services are commanded for their execution.
Mann expresses dismay that Massachusetts, once a stronghold of freedom, is now enforcing unjust laws dictated by slaveholders.
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The kidnapper, Alberti, now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of a southern taskmaster.
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.
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.
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