On the record
The states being separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would return a fugitive slave.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “The states being separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage, as I would return a fugitive…”
Editor's note · Context
This powerful statement equates the act of returning a fugitive slave to betraying one's own family.
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More from Horace Mann
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.
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.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
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.
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