Horace Mann: “In regard to slaves, the constitution says,--“No person HELD to service,” &c.; but in regard to criminals, its language…”

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.

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

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 man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.