On the record
I know it is said that the fact of slavery always precedes the law of slavery; that law does not go before the institution and create it, but comes afterwards to sanction and regulate it.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “I know it is said that the fact of slavery always precedes the law of slavery; that law does not go before the…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann critiques the idea that slavery is a natural institution, arguing that laws should not validate practices that are inherently wrong.
Share
More from Horace Mann
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
