Horace Mann: “The very slaves upon whom we have trodden have risen above us, and their moral superiority makes our conduct…”

My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.

Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.

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.

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.