Webster cajoled and cozened so many honest men, when he assured them, that though they should violate the moral law, by opening all the territories to slavery, yet some physical law of geography or the weather would avert the penalties.
Mann criticizes Webster for misleading people regarding the consequences of supporting slavery.
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Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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