Horace Mann: “If Congress has no such power, by what right can a master recapture a fugitive slave escaping into a territory?”

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.

A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.

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.

Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.