On the record
The judgment of the court below is against their claims to freedom; the matter in dispute is, therefore, to the plaintiffs in error, the value of their freedom, and this is not susceptible of a pecuniary valuation.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “The judgment of the court below is against their claims to freedom; the matter in dispute is, therefore, to the…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann argues that the value of freedom cannot be quantified in monetary terms, emphasizing its intrinsic worth.
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.
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.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
Other voices in this conversation
