On the record
I aver, that before any moral tribunal, where right and wrong are weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, there is not a felony described in the whole statute book that is more felonious than such a law.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann argues that laws enforcing slavery are morally reprehensible and more felonious than any other crime.
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The north comes to the south, cuts their timber, carries it home, manufactures it, and then brings it back, wrought into a hundred different forms, to be sold to those who would see it rot before their eyes.
Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.
No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.
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.
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