The judgment of the court below is against their claims to freedom; the matter in dispute is, therefore, to the plaintiffs in error, the value of their freedom, and this is not susceptible of a pecuniary valuation.
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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By authorizing the courts to exercise, or their assumption of, equity or admiralty jurisdiction over cases at law.” “This amendment,” says he, “preserves the right of jury trial against any infringement by any department of the…
Justice Baldwin, one of the judges of the supreme court of the United States, held that it was not in the power of Congress to take away the right of trial by jury, secured by the seventh amendment, either,--“1.
But can you destroy the right to a jury trial by changing the process?
Did they expect, then, that when an alleged slave, or a known freeman, should be seized, that he should be hurried into bondage without any right to this ancient muniment of the subject’s liberties?
According to the doctrine of the supreme court, then, in the above-cited case, the parties to such a proceeding have a right, under the seventh amendment, to a trial by jury.
Did they wage war for seven years in order to place themselves in a worse condition than they had been placed in by their “tyrant”?
It is now incorporated into all our state constitutions, as a fundamental right; and the constitution of the United States would have been justly obnoxious to the most conclusive objection, if it had not recognized and confirmed it in the…
Judge Story says, “When our more immediate ancestors removed to America, they brought this great privilege with them, as their birthright and inheritance, as a part of that admirable common law which had fenced round, and interposed…
In England, it has become a traditional saying, and drops from the common tongue, that the great object of king, lords, and commons, is to get twelve men into the jury box.
The object for which the constitution was framed, as set forth in its preamble,--namely, to “establish justice,” “promote the general welfare,” and “secure the blessings of liberty,” to the people,--could never be accomplished without the…
The trial by jury was necessary to the vitality of the constitution; and, I think, it would not be too strong an expression to say that the constitution, as it came from the hands of its founders, necessitated the trial by jury.
The trial by jury, in the important cases of life, liberty, and property, is essential to these rights.
Our constitution, as the present generation has always been taught, yearns towards liberty and the rights of man.
Feeble and humble as I am, great and formidable as he is, I join issue with him on this momentous question, and put myself upon the country.
Suppose this seventh amendment had never been adopted, on what ground would the trial by jury, in civil cases, have rested up to the present day?
They passed a law to put the practical enjoyment of this right into the hands of the people, well knowing that there is scarcely a right which we hold under the constitution which we can beneficially possess or use, without the…
The great men who submitted this seventh amendment to the states, treated the trial by jury, in civil cases, as a then subsisting constitutional right.
The phraseology of the amendment is full of significance: “The right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” Not created, but preserved.
And what is the seventh amendment but a “declaratory and restrictive clause,” securing the trial by jury, in cases at common law, “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars,” and abandoning it where the value is less?
Congress, indeed, might fail to perform its duty; but in such case, no provisions of the constitution, however express and peremptory, would secure the rights of the people.
In controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.
By these considerations the laws of England, in every case, give favor to liberty.
On this account, that man is to be adjudged cruel, who does not favor liberty.
Wherefore, when torn from a man, it ever yearns to return; and it is the same with every thing when deprived of its natural liberty.
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