Political Quotes

On the record
It is alleged that the whole force of the above argument, otherwise conclusive, is annulled, because a slave is no party to the constitution, is not under its protecting shield any more than a horse or an ox, and therefore, any provisions, however strong, securing the jury trial, are inapplicable to him.
Said by
Horace Mann
Free Soil · Massachusetts

Editor's note · Context

Mann critiques the argument that slaves are not protected by the constitution, equating them to property rather than people.

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Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.

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No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.

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But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge.

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The institution of slavery is against natural right.

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