On the record
A class of statesmen were thus raised up, who were prepared to figure as leaders in scenes of public life, where so much depends on manners and social address.
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gutenberg.orgHorace Mann: “A class of statesmen were thus raised up, who were prepared to figure as leaders in scenes of public life, where so much…”
Editor's note · Context
Mann notes that slavery has inadvertently produced a class of statesmen who are adept in public life despite its negative effects.
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More from Horace Mann
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.
A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.
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.
I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.
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