On the record
What but affection should prevent the able-bodied and the profitable from escaping, and leaving the aged and the young on their masters’ hands.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “What but affection should prevent the able-bodied and the profitable from escaping, and leaving the aged and the young…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann questions the motivations that would prevent enslaved individuals from escaping, particularly the bonds of affection.
Share
More from Horace Mann
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.
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.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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
