But, sir, it is the most painful aspect of this whole case, that the very object and purpose of claiming these ample and sovereign rights for the inhabitants of the territories is, that they may deny all rights to a portion of their fellow-beings within them.
Mann highlights the contradiction in claiming rights for territories while denying rights to enslaved individuals.
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Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
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 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.
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