If any state in this Union had adopted polygamy as its peculiar institution, could an inhabitant of that state take a dozen wives with him into the new territories, and defend his claim to live with them there, because he could do so at home?
Mann poses a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the absurdity of carrying polygamy into new territories, paralleling it with the issue of slavery.
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The liberty of voting includes all other liberties.
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.
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!
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