No; the liberty to which every man, of whatever color, in a free state, is prima facie entitled, invests him with its protection, and this investiture cannot be stripped from him but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land,--which, as we have before seen, means trial by jury.
Mann emphasizes that the protection of liberty cannot be stripped without due process.
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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.
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.
But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…
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.
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