While I desire to do every thing which may protect the rights of property which are guarantied to citizens of the slave states, I cannot consent to sacrifice the rights of liberty which belong to the citizens of the free states.
Mann articulates the balance he seeks between protecting property rights in slave states and upholding liberty in free states.
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Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the right, but the power, of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul’s interests.
Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction.
No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.
Out of universal education come genius, skill, and enterprise, and the desire of bettering one’s condition.
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