If it be just and heroic to rebel against all arbitrary invasions of free thought and free expression, then is it not proportionably base and dastardly to utter menaces, or threaten social or political disabilities for the unconstrained exercise of these birthrights of freemen?
Mann argues that it is cowardly to threaten consequences for exercising free thought and expression.
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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.
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.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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.
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