Horace Mann: “But behold in the east the doleful consequences of letting slavery grow up to an oppressive and heart-sickening burden…”

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.

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.

Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?

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.