Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1853
Mr. MANN. May it please your honor, while nothing, on the one hand,
will ever deter me from doing my duty to a client, yet, on the other
hand, I am moved to say that I have been trained from my youth to
such respect for a court of justice, that I would say nothing to it
or before it which should not be fitting and appropriate, as apples
of gold in pictures of silver. Let me then restate my argument, that
we may see whether, and by whom, this rule has been departed from. I
reiterate, then, if slaves are property, they are a peculiar kind of
property. They are instinct with the common desires of humanity, and
among them one of the deepest and strongest is the love of liberty.
And just in proportion as their value is increased by intelligence and
development, just in that proportion is the bond weakened by which they
are held. In all places slaves hear something, but in this place they
hear much, of what is said in behalf of human liberty and of human
rights. If they hear this, and are above the condition of brutes,
they will apply it to themselves. Every Fourth of July oration, if
understood, is a torch to light up another St. Domingo. If they hear
the word “_slave_” used in reference to those who have been deprived of
their natural rights in other countries, they will apply that word to
their own condition in this. If they hear the word “_tyrants_” used in
reference to one who deprives others of their rights, for “_tyrants_”
they will read “_masters_;” and no mortal power, or law, or art, can
help it, but by blotting out all that is human within them. The slaves
in this city are constantly hearing what must remind them that they are
slaves; and therefore they are constantly incited to escape from their
bondage. The torchlight procession, with its speeches and parade, was
_one_ among ten thousand of these incitements. The slaves, therefore,
who went on board the Pearl, might have obtained the idea of escape
from some other person than from the prisoner,--from some orator who
lays down rules for the meridian of Europe, which do not quite suit
the meridian of America. Hence they might have gone and applied to the
prisoner for a passage. To this he might have assented. And if so, then
his offence can be nothing beyond the offence of “transporting,” and is
not the offence of _stealing_, as charged in this indictment.
And, as to the inflammatory language which the court charges me with
having used: every word which was uttered by me, and which the court
characterizes and denounces as “inflammatory,” and thinks not proper to
be spoken in this court room, because it may endanger the institutions
of this city, was the exact language of the Hon. Mr. Foote, senator
in Congress from the State of Mississippi, uttered by him from the
rostrum, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the most public place in this city,
on the evening of the 13th of April last, to thousands of people there
assembled, men, women, children, negroes and all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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