It is said by “members of Congress” from Vermont, that an alleged fugitive was carried before Judge Harrington of Vermont, in 1807, and on his being asked what evidence would satisfy him that the person was a slave, he replied, “A bill of sale from Almighty God.
Mann quotes a statement about a historical case involving a fugitive slave, highlighting the complexities of legal evidence in such cases.
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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 liberty of voting includes all other liberties.
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.
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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