An apparently slight, yet especially odious feature of the law which served in large degree to render it inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, received a fee of ten dollars, and, if he adjudged him to be free, received only five dollars.
Blaine points out the financial incentive structure of the fugitive slave law, which he views as morally corrupt.
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The need of action and of energy so pressed upon him that he found no time to utter lamentation, none to indulge even in the most sacred personal grief.
I believe that if it should pass it will receive the sanction of nineteen-twentieths of the loyal people of the country.
An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected is simply absurd.
If you are not ready to be the Moses of an oppressed people, do not become their Pharaoh.
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