Horace Mann: “In selecting men to be our political leaders, we have sometimes committed the gravest moral error.”

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.

A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.

Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.

But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…