Webster had spoken more eloquent words for liberty than any other living man, and this distinguished neglect was doubtless intended to teach him the lesson, that the path to presidential honors did not lie through an advocacy of the rights of man.
Mann praises Webster's advocacy for liberty while lamenting the political consequences he faced.
Share
More from Horace Mann
No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.
But the impious hand of man divorces these twin capacities, wherever it denies knowledge.
Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction.
Other voices in this conversation
