Now, can any reasonable man for a moment suppose that the constitution meant to debar Congress from passing acts of attainder against individuals, but to permit it to pass wholesale, sweeping laws, working disfranchisement of an entire race, and entailing degradation forever?
Mann challenges the notion that Congress can legally enact laws that disenfranchise an entire race, questioning constitutional interpretations.
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Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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.
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.
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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