The Fugitive-slave
Bill is very much altered from what it was when originally offered. That bill
made all postmasters in the United States judges, who might decide the question
of freedom or slavery. As it stands, the courts of the United States are
authorized to appoint as many commissioners as they may think fit; and these
commissioners are also authorized to appoint marshals (whose duty it will be to
serve legal process), as many as they see fit, for making arrests, &c.: so
that there will be no deficiency of officers to carry out its nefarious
purposes. It is a surrender complete and abject, like those which characterized
the baseness of the courtiers in the time of the Charleses and the Jameses.
Posterity will treat the conduct of our leading men as Macaulay has treated
that of the sycophants and courtiers of the Stuarts.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler
Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 333
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