If it did not,--if a man who has a legal right to a slave in Virginia, has a legal right to him anywhere,--then the provision in the constitution, and the act of 1793 for recapturing fugitive slaves, would have been unnecessary.
Mann highlights the necessity of laws regarding fugitive slaves, indicating that legal rights are not universal across states.
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Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
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.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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