Has it any barriers to keep the spirit of liberty, which has electrified the Old World, from crossing its own borders, and quickening its bondmen into mutinous life?--not all of them, but one in ten thousand, one in a hundred thousand of them.
Horace Mann: “Has it any barriers to keep the spirit of liberty, which has electrified the Old World, from crossing its own borders…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann questions whether any barriers can prevent the spread of the spirit of liberty to enslaved individuals.
Share
More from Horace Mann
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
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.
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.





