On the record
All such punishments not only nourish the love of freedom, but breed the purpose of revenge; and it is a kind of lesson which a brutalized nature is always prone to retaliate with improvements.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann argues that harsh punishments not only fail to deter the desire for freedom but can also incite a desire for revenge.
Share
More from Horace Mann
They cannot do otherwise with laborers who work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters, and whose sole interest in the matter is to do as little and to consume as much as possible.
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.
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.
The institution of slavery is against natural right.
Other voices in this conversation
