If mere bones and muscles compacted into human shape be worth five hundred dollars, then, if the auctioneer can warrant the subject to have the meekness of Moses and the patience of Job, the same article may be worth seven hundred.
Mann uses a stark analogy to illustrate how the perceived virtues of a slave can inflate their market price, critiquing the valuation of human life.
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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.
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?
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…
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