What are these so-called Union meetings in northern cities but an extensive apparatus of agitation,--a piece of machinery to manufacture and send abroad the very articles which its managers declare to be contraband?
Horace Mann
The Public Record
Horace Mann was an American educational reformer, abolitionist and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education; he is thus also known as The Father of American Education. In 1848, after public service as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann was elected to the United States House of Representatives (1848–1853). From September 1852 to his death in 1859, he served as President of Antioch College.
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Throughout the north, that portion of the public press which volunteers its influence to extend the domain of slavery, and to maintain it by extra-constitutional laws, is constantly provoking the agitation it denounces.
It is remarkable, too, that of all the “agitators” in the country, there are none more violent than those who are agitating against agitation.
Wherein consists the advantage of a republican government over a despotism, if the freedom of speech and of the press, which can be strangled in the one by arbitrary command, can be stifled in the other by obloquy and denunciation?
It seems as if, when a freeman debases his soul by lending himself to the defence of slavery, God punishes him on the spot by demoralizing his own nature with that spirit of tyranny which belongs to slavery.
He convicts himself of wrong who refuses to hear the arguments of his opponent.
On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion.
If it be just and heroic to rebel against all arbitrary invasions of free thought and free expression, then is it not proportionably base and dastardly to utter menaces, or threaten social or political disabilities for the unconstrained…
Has that law been condemned for fifty years in order to make our shame more conspicuous by its revival under circumstances of intolerable aggravation?
By the common consent of this country, manifested in all forms for more than half a century, the old alien and sedition law has been condemned.
I think that those who say so much about recalling us to a sense of our constitutional obligations, would do well to remember, that the very first article of the amendments to the constitution secures the freedom of speech and the freedom…
If the subjects of a despotic government are bound to be jealous even of the poor privileges which they possess, how sensitive, how “tremblingly alive all o’er” ought we to be at these threatened encroachments upon freedom of speech and…
In Italy, the pope decides what books may be read; in Austria, the emperor decides what books may be written; but we are more degraded than the subject of pontiff or Cæsar, if we are to be told what topics we may discuss.
It is as hateful as any other form of that execrable code; and I do but express the common sentiment of all generous minds, when I say that for one, I am all the more disposed to use my privilege of speech, when imperious men, and the…
Such prescription is at best but a species of lynch law against free speech.
In this government, it is not tolerable for any man, however high, or for any body of men, however large, to prescribe what subjects may be agitated, and what may not be agitated.
If intended to silence me as the representative of the convictions and feelings of my constituents, I repel it all the more vehemently.
If such a prohibition is intended to be laid upon me personally, I repel it.
Discussion has been denounced as agitation, and then it has been dictatorially proclaimed that “agitation must be put down.” Sir, humble as I am, I submit to no such dictation, come from what quarter or from what numbers it may.
Those arguments have lost nothing of their weight by this enforced delay, and I have lost nothing of my right to present them.
For the honor of the country, therefore, at the present time, and for the cause of truth hereafter, it is important that the hideous features of that bill, which were then masked, should be now unmasked.
For, sir, I aver, without fear of contradiction, that the bill never could have become a law, had its opponents been allowed to debate it, or to propose amendments to it.
The previous question, which was originally devised to curb the abuse of too much debate, was perverted to stop all debate.
When bad men want authority for bad deeds, they will only have to go back to the legislation of Congress, in 1850, to find an armory full of the weapons of injustice.
When, in evil days, further encroachments are meditated against human rights, these old measures will be cited as a sanction for new aggressions; and, in my view, they will always be found broad enough, and bad enough, to cover almost any…
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