The constitution has provided that “cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted,” even for the perpetration of the worst of crimes; yet here is a case where the most cruel of punishments, or of privations, may be inflicted without even a charge of crime.
Mann critiques the constitution's allowance for cruel punishments, especially in the context of slavery.
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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.
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.
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.
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