Horace Mann: “Ignorant slaves stand upon a coal mine, and to them it is only a worthless part of the inanimate earth.”

The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.

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.

A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates.

But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,--yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,--these are “factitious and imaginary” causes of…