In this capital of a nation so boastful of its freedom, the common air is vocal with the accents of liberty.
Horace Mann: “In this capital of a nation so boastful of its freedom, the common air is vocal with the accents of liberty.”
Editor's note · Context
Mann comments on the irony of living in a capital that boasts of freedom while slavery exists.
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Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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.
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.
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.





