Horace Mann

Now I wish to ask the manufacturers and commercial men of the north, whether, if they had seen,--as it was seen by every unbiased man at the seat of government,--that upholding the compromise would put down protection, they would have…

They have not obtained the tariff they were promised, though they have given for it the price of blood.

And we now have this stubborn fact to show for the soundness of that opinion,--the event has ratified it.

For the correctness of the first of these propositions, I appeal to every man who has a conscience, or even any elementary ideas of right or wrong, which are not smothered by his interests or his passions.

That every new concession we made to the south on the subject of slavery, for the sake of getting protection for our manufactures and other industrial interests, only impaired and postponed our chance of getting that protection.

That a proposition to barter or to jeopard the liberty of our fellow-beings for any amount of money, however great, was intrinsically inhuman and wicked.

Until something can be done to allay the feeling now separating different men and different sections, there can be NO USEFUL AND SATISFACTORY legislation in the two houses of Congress.

He offered to add new states to its power, and to take two hundred millions of dollars from the treasury of the United States, to be expended for its extra-constitutional security and defence.

He went far, far out of his way, to fortify and extend the institution of slavery.

He saw fit to curl his lip and to intonate his voice in scorn of the principle of the ordinance of 1787, and to dishonor the memory of Nathan Dane, whom, a few years before, on the same spot, he had eulogized.

But on that ever-memorable day a senator of the United States, from Massachusetts, saw fit to trample under foot every thing that he had ever said in behalf of human freedom and against human bondage.

Especially does it behoove us to inquire, by what means, by whose instrumentality, the country has been instigated to this treason against the rights of men, and when we may expect their machinations will be brought to an end.

Fellow-citizens, if you wish to coöperate in bringing on this glorious era, your first step is to vote for that noble man who ransomed his own slaves,--JOHN G.

Paul shall preach what he preached, when standing “in the midst of Mars Hill,”--a God of equity, of righteousness, of justice, of benevolence; the God who made “of one blood all nations of men,” who, alas! to so many in our day is “the…

But in that glorious day, the men who sit in the Areopagus of the nation, clothed with the ermine of the law, shall be, as the heathen of old figured the emblem of Justice, blind in the outward eye; and all they know of color shall be to…

In that day, the gospel of human brotherhood, of doing as we would be done by, and of loving our neighbors as ourselves, shall no longer be doled out to us by priests of the broad phylactery sort, in homœopathic doses, reduced to the five…

In that day, the merchant, for the lucre of trade, shall not pay tribute in human beings, and send his flesh-tax across the free waters.

In that day, the lawgivers of the land shall be no longer “compromisers” between duty and mammon, and the judges shall judge in righteousness.

That age has passed; and how contemptible does all its greatness now appear!

The pulpit is false to its trust” if it does not follow and rebuke them, under whatever robes of official dignity they may hold their revels.

I only desire to awaken your attention to the great duty of extending the domain of conscience over politics; of holding public men answerable for those vices which it is a great misnomer to call private when they are committed in the face…

Now, fellow-citizens, you know that all the men who are guilty of these great derelictions from civil and social duty are the men who uphold the Fugitive Slave law.

Well, if this be your philosophy, don’t do the work by halves, but import Lucifer at once!

Do you want your children to grow up inflamed by such examples of excess and wantonness?

Can they be good citizens, or, at least, are they not grievously deluded, who will give such purses to such a man for being the advocate and agent of their special interests, while there are hundreds of suffering men and women, and more…