On the record
The main and primary object of the constitution was to protect natural rights; but the object of the Fugitive Slave clause was to protect a legal right in conflict with natural right.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann points out the conflict between protecting legal rights and natural rights in the context of the Fugitive Slave clause.
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The wickedest white man, in a company of slaves, bears a charmed life.
Can any man give a reason why Norfolk should not have grown like New York, other than the difference in the institutions of the people?
So far as legal rights against his oppressors are concerned, the slave lives in such a world of darkness.
But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge.
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