On the record
The constitution says, “No state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Here we have a constitutional basis,--the same as for the reclamation of fugitive slaves.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann references the U.S. Constitution to argue against the legality of slavery and the reclamation of fugitive slaves.
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The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
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.
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