If it is honorable to produce corn and cotton, it is honorable to buy and sell them,--and if it is honorable to hold beings created in God’s image in slavery, it is honorable to stand between the producer and consumer, and to make merchandise of the bodies and the souls of men.
Mann argues that if it is considered honorable to produce and trade in agricultural goods, then it is equally honorable to acknowledge the moral implications of trading in human beings.
Share
More from Horace Mann
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
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.
Other voices in this conversation
