On the record
Liberty cannot be very secure where four million human beings are held in hopeless bondage--where human blood, bone, muscle, and, I might almost say, immortal souls, are articles of merchandise.
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gutenberg.orgCydnor Tompkins: “Liberty cannot be very secure where four million human beings are held in hopeless bondage--where human blood, bone…”
Editor's note · Context
He highlights the moral and ethical implications of slavery, equating it to the commodification of human lives.
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More from Cydnor Tompkins
Yet the whole power of this Government is devoted to that one object; its entire strength concentrated in one spasmodic effort to extend slavery.
The agricultural, the manufacturing, the great commercial interests of this country, are entirely ignored, neglected, and forgotten, that the interests of one hundred thousand slaveholders may be advanced.
Take from place and power the men whose hands and faces are reeking and smoking with the blood of our people in Kansas, and put them to death.
Punish the thousands of others who have committed acts of violence against free-State men, and are yet unwhipped of justice.
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