Political Quotes

On the record
If the south had not had slaves to do their work for them, they would have become ingenious and inventive like the north, and would have enlisted the vast forces of nature in their service,--wind, and fire, and water, and steam, and lightning, the mighty energies of gravitation and the subtle forces of chemistry.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann argues that the South's reliance on slavery stunted its innovation and progress compared to the North.

Share

More from Horace Mann

And yet, infinitely flagrant as the anomaly is, the slave is amenable to the laws of the land for all offences which he may commit against others, though he is powerless to protect himself by the same law from offences which others may…

gutenberg.org

Whoever intercepts knowledge, therefore, on its passage to a human soul; whoever strikes down the hand that is outstretched to grasp it, is guilty of one of the most heinous of offences.

gutenberg.org

Here the two systems have worked side by side for ages, under such equal circumstances, both political and physical, and with such ample time and opportunity for each to work out its proper effects, that all must admit the experiment to be…

gutenberg.org

Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.

gutenberg.org

Other voices in this conversation