On the record
On one side of the line, down to the nadir and up to the zenith, the blackness of the slave code pervades all things; but, on the other side, as high above and as deep below, is the purity of freedom.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “On one side of the line, down to the nadir and up to the zenith, the blackness of the slave code pervades all things…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann contrasts the oppressive nature of slave codes with the purity of freedom across state lines.
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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.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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.
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