But as though this was not absurd enough, the commissioner goes on to say, that though the alleged fugitive from justice must be proved, in the place where he is taken, “to have committed a crime,” yet, after his removal, he must be proved again to have committed it.
Mann criticizes the contradictory legal standards applied to alleged fugitives from justice.
Share
More from Horace Mann
Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?
Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.
Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be not FREE!
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.
Other voices in this conversation
