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.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “The main and primary object of the constitution was to protect natural rights; but the object of the Fugitive Slave…”
Editor'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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More from Horace Mann
Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
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