For a claim exceeding twenty dollars in value, every citizen has the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life, the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be consigned to perpetual enslavement on the fallible judgment of a single official.
This quote illustrates Blaine's argument about the disparity in legal rights for citizens versus alleged fugitives under the law.
Share
More from James Blaine
Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if war should come, it would be in the…
The wisdom of maintaining that institution was abundantly vindicated by the results of the war.
Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the year.
Such an opportunity would have been a menace to the public credit, and would have proved a constant source of corruption.
Other voices in this conversation
