A slave, therefore, in this District, is deprived of his liberty and property, in pursuance of the laws of Congress, without any legal process whatever, and therefore in flagrant contradiction of the fifth article of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Horace Mann: “A slave, therefore, in this District, is deprived of his liberty and property, in pursuance of the laws of Congress…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann highlights the contradiction of enslaving individuals without legal process, violating constitutional rights.
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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.
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.
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.
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.





