On the record
This enactment, too, is no theoretic affair; it is no dead letter on the statute book.
Source
gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “This enactment, too, is no theoretic affair; it is no dead letter on the statute book.”
Editor's note · Context
Mann warns that the Fugitive Slave Law is not just theoretical but actively harmful.
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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.
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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