The common notion is, that a man shows his love for a cause by the amount of sacrifice he will make for it; and as consistency, honor, and truth, are the most precious elements in character, he showed his devotion to the south by sacrificing them all.
Mann discusses the common belief that true devotion to a cause is shown through personal sacrifice.
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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.
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.
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.
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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