A commissioner who could bring himself down to send a man to a Georgia cotton-field under this law, the first time trying, could send a virtuous and spotless woman into enforced harlotry the second time; and the prince of darkness only knows what he could not set him to do afterwards.
Mann warns of the moral degradation that can occur when individuals are complicit in the oppression of others.
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Has the fact never yet come to the knowledge of the magistrates of the District of Columbia, that the constitution of the United States declares that “excessive bail shall not be required”?
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Did the law ever contemplate so cruel and revengeful a proceeding?
Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.
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