Horace Mann: “Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded white people among us, who, in this land of plenty…”

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 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.

Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!

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…