Horace Mann

Under such a law, is there a single colored person at the north who can rise to his labor in the morning, or lie down to his repose at night, with any feeling of security that avarice and false swearing may not then be at work for his…

It is offering bounties and premiums on villany, and turning the courts into brokers’ offices for perjury.

It is what even barbarians might be ashamed of.

It is a right without which all trials are but mockery.

I will prove by a reference to the act itself that these atrocities are among its conspicuous features.

It is not enough that it should be declared void by the courts as against the fundamental law of the land; it deserves to be branded by the people as abhorrent to humanity, to civilization, and to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Should the courts, hampered by previous decisions, and habituated to the spectacle and the support of a cruel institution, pronounce this law to be constitutional, such a judgment would give new force to every reason why the people should…

In its scornful rejection of all those common-law principles of evidence which have been ratified by the wisdom of ages; in the “summary” and piratical haste of its proceedings, and in the indelible blood with which its judgments are…

I denounce the Fugitive Slave law for all these qualities.

But before the tribunal of the people, a law may be impeached for any attribute of cruelty, oppression, or meanness.

It may be impolitic, unrighteous, atrocious; but if it be constitutional they must sustain it.

In opposing a law, a distinction is to be made between the courts and the people; between the bench and the ballot-box.

I now proceed to lay open for the abhorrence of mankind other deformities of this most odious law.

By the principles of the English law, the privilege of the habeas corpus attaches to all, whether bond or free.

If the argument of the attorney-general be sound, then the whole “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus,” under any corrupt law that any corrupt Congress may pass, will consist in the privilege of applying to a court for the writ, and…

There is, at the present time, a set of politicians amongst us, who are so alarmed at agitation that each one of them is a kind of Peter the Hermit, getting up a crusade to prevent it.

Yet whether the law be constitutional or not, is the very question to be determined.

The statement may be all very true, if the law be constitutional; but suppose the law to be unconstitutional, would not the statement be superlatively absurd?

Is it not most clear that this assumes the very question in dispute, whether the law on which the certificate is founded be constitutional or not?

For, if unconstitutional, it is no law, and no justification of the restraint.

The very return brings the Fugitive Slave act before the court; and if the act is before the court, then, surely, the question is also before the court, whether it is constitutional or not.

The shield of the law is not continued over him; nay, the Fugitive Slave act expressly provides that, whatever his rights may be, yet, while in transitu, the law shall not recognize them.

If he be not a slave, then he is delivered into the hands of a man-stealer.

All the time and all the way, he has the solemn pledge of the government, that if not found guilty on the prosecution then pending, he shall be discharged.

Yet the word guilty is no stronger in reference to a fugitive from justice than is the word held in reference to a fugitive from service.