constitution by means entirely proper and unobjectionable, and ask
admission as a State, before they have the requisite population for a
member of Congress, whether I will vote for that admission. Well, now,
I regret exceedingly that he did not answer that interrogatory himself
before he put it to me, in order that we might understand, and not
be left to infer, on which side he is. Mr. Trumbull, during the last
session of Congress, voted from the beginning to the end against the
admission of Oregon, although a free State, because she had not the
requisite population for a member of Congress. Mr. Trumbull would not
consent, under any circumstances, to let a State, free or slave, come
into the Union until it had the requisite population. As Mr. Trumbull is
in the field fighting for Mr. Lincoln, I would like to have Mr. Lincoln
answer his own question and tell me whether he is fighting Trumbull on
that issue or not. But I will answer his question. * * * Either Kansas
must come in as a free State, with whatever population she may have, or
the rule must be applied to all the other Territories alike. I therefore
answer at once that, it having been decided that Kansas has people
enough for a slave State, I hold that she has enough for a free State.
I hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with my answer; and now I would like to
get his answer to his own interrogatory--whether or not he will vote
to admit Kansas before she has the requisite population. I want to
know whether he will vote to admit Oregon before that Territory has the
requisite population. Mr. Trumbull will not, and the same reason that
commits Mr. Trumbull against the admission of Oregon commits him against
Kansas, even if she should apply for admission as a free State. If there
is any sincerity, any truth, in the argument of Mr. Trumbull in the
Senate against the admission of Oregon, because she had not 93,420
people, although her population was larger than that of Kansas, he
stands pledged against the admission of both Oregon and Kansas until
they have 93,420 inhabitants. I would like Mr. Lincoln to answer this
question. I would like him to take his own medicine. If he differs
with Mr. Trumbull, let him answer his argument against the admission of
Oregon, instead of poking questions at me.
The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people of
the Territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen
of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the
formation of a State Constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln
has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that
in my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means,
exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State
Constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over
and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle
all over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856; and he has no excuse
for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It
matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the
abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory
under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce it
or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist
a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police
regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the
local Legislature; and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they will
elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation
effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the
contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension.
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on
that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave
Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska
bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.
In this connection, I will notice the charge which he has introduced
in relation to Mr. Chase's amendment. I thought that I had chased that
amendment out of Mr. Lincoln's brain at Ottawa; but it seems that it
still haunts his imagination, and that he is not yet satisfied. I had
supposed that he would be ashamed to press that question further. He is
a lawyer, and has been a member of Congress, and has occupied his time
and amused you by telling you about parliamentary proceedings. He ought
to have known better than to try to palm off his miserable impositions
upon this intelligent audience. The Nebraska bill provided that the
legislative power and authority of the said Territory should extend to
all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the organic act
and the Constitution of the United States. It did not make any exception
as to slavery, but gave all the power that it was possible for Congress
to give, without violating the Constitution, to the Territorial
Legislature, with no exception or limitation on the subject of slavery
at all. The language of that bill, which I have quoted, gave the
full power and the fuller authority over the subject of slavery,
affirmatively and negatively, to introduce it or exclude it, so far as
the Constitution of the United States would permit. What more could Mr.
Chase give by his amendment? Nothing! He offered his amendment for
the identical purpose for which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to enable
demagogues in the country to try and deceive the people. His amendment
was to this effect. It provided that the Legislature should have power
to exclude slavery; and General Cass suggested: "Why not give the power
to introduce as well as to exclude?" The answer was--they have the power
already in the bill to do both. Chase was afraid his amendment would be
adopted if he put the alternative proposition, and so made it fair both
ways, and would not yield. He offered it for the purpose of having it
rejected. He offered it, as he has himself avowed over and over again,
simply to make capital out of it for the stump. He expected that it
would be capital for small politicians in the country, and that they
would make an effort to deceive the people with it; and he was not
mistaken, for Lincoln is carrying out the plan admirably. * * *
The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is--If the Supreme Court
of the United States shall decide that a State of this Union cannot
exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it? I am amazed
that Mr. Lincoln should ask such a question. Mr. Lincoln's object is to
cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was
but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency,
who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the
_Washington Union_, in an article published on the 17th of last
December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on
the floor of the Senate. * * * Lincoln's friends, Trumbull, and Seward,
and Hale, and Wilson, and the whole Black Republican side of the Senate
were silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And what was the
reply made to me on that occasion? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and
undertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemed
the article worthy of notice, and ought not to have replied to it; that
there was not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in any
slave State, who did not repudiate any such pretension. Mr. Lincoln
knows that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this
question! He might as well ask me--Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a
horse, would I sanction it; and it would be as genteel in me to ask him,
in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. He casts
an imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United States, by supposing
that they would violate the Constitution of the United States. I tell
him that such a thing is not possible. It would be an act of moral
treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln
himself would never, in his partisan feelings, so far forget what was
right as to be guilty of such an act.
The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is--Are you in favor of acquiring
additional territory in disregard as to how such acquisition may affect
the Union on the slavery question? This question is very ingeniously and
cunningly put. The Black Republican crowd lays it down expressly that
under no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unless
slavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he
is in favor of that proposition? Are you opposed to the acquisition
of any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery is
prohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask him
whether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party, he
turns, Yankee fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I am
in favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect
the Union on the slavery question. I answer that, whenever it becomes
necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, I am
in favor of it without reference to the question of slavery, and when
we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please,
either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer. It is idle
to tell me or you that we have territory enough. * * * With our natural
increase, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other part of the
globe, with the tide of emigration that is fleeing from despotism in the
old world to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouring
into this country that requires more land, more territory upon which
to settle; and just as fast as our interest and our destiny require
additional territory in the North, in the South, or in the islands of
the ocean, I am for it, and, when we acquire it, will leave the people,
according to the Nebraska bill, free to do as they please on the subject
of slavery and every other question.
I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem him-self answered on his four
points. He racked his brain so much in devising these four questions
that he exhausted himself, and had not strength enough to invent the
others. As soon as he is able to hold a council with his advisers,
Love-joy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglas, he will frame and propound
others ("Good," "good!"). You Black Republicans who say "good," I have
no doubt, think that they are all good men. I have reason to recollect
that some people in this country think that Fred Douglas is a very good
man. The last time I came here to make a speech, while talking from
a stand to you, people of Freeport, as I am doing to-day, I saw a
carriage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position on
the outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was sitting on the box
seat, whilst Fred Douglas and her mother reclined inside, and the owner
of the carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your own town. ("What
of it?") All I have to say of it is this, that if you Black Republicans
think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives
and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive
the team, you have a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of Fred
Douglas' kinsmen, another rich black negro, is now travelling in this
part of the State making speeches for his friend Lincoln as the champion
of black men. ("What have you to say against it?") All I have to say on
that subject is, that those of you who believe that the negro is your
equal, and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically,
and legally, have a right to entertain those opinions, and of course
will vote for Mr. Lincoln.
WM. H. SEWARD,
OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1801, DIED 1872.)
ON THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT;
ROCHESTER, OCTOBER 25, 1858.
THE unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me, show that
you are earnest men--and such a man am I. Let us therefore, at least
for a time, pass all secondary and collateral questions, whether of a
personal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of the
present canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, the
party which wears that attractive name--is in possession of the Federal
Government. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss
it from its high trust.
The main subject, then, is, whether the Democratic party deserves to
retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to prove
it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against that
party, or by pre-possessions in favor of its adversary; for I have
learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and
selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in
their motives than in the policies they pursue.
Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in full operation, two
radically different political systems; the one resting on the basis of
servile or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor of freemen. The
laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or less
purely of African derivation. But this is only accidental. The principle
of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed,
is necessarily unintellectual, grovelling and base; and that the
laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State,
ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native or
foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reduced
to bondage.
You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two,
and that once it was universal. The emancipation of our own ancestors,
Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of
five hundred years. The great melioration of human society which modern
times exhibit, is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the
system of voluntary labor for the one of servile labor, which has
already taken place. This African slave system is one which, in its
origin and in its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habits
of the races which colonized these States, and established civilization
here. It was introduced on this continent as an engine of conquest, and
for the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and the
Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South America,
Central America, Louisiana, and Mexico. Its legitimate fruits are seen
in the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy which now pervade all Portuguese
and Spanish America. The free-labor system is of German extraction, and
it was established in our country by emigrants from Sweden, Holland,
Germany, Great Britain and Ireland. We justly ascribe to its influences
the strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom, which the
whole American people now enjoy. One of the chief elements of the value
of human life is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The slave system
is not only intolerable, unjust, and inhuman, toward the laborer, whom,
only because he is a laborer, it loads down with chains and converts
into merchandise, but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to whom,
only because he is a laborer from necessity, it denies facilities for
employment, and whom it expels from the community because it cannot
enslave and convert into merchandise also. It is necessarily improvident
and ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper and
flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise
or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity.
The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is
written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always
and everywhere beneficent.
The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and
watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and
resources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature is
capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes
energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and
aggrandizement.
The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields
of industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to the
unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures
universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all
the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state. In states
where the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly,
secure all political power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy.
In states where the free-labor system prevails, universal suffrage
necessarily obtains, and the state inevitably becomes, sooner or later,
a republic or democracy.
Russia yet maintains slavery, and is a despotism. Most of the other
European states have abolished slavery, and adopted the system of free
labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systems
which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europe
would ultimately be either all Cossack or all republican. Never did
human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at once
perceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous--they
are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in
one country, and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this
impossibility, from the irreconcilable contrast between their great
principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has
conclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated,
existed in every state in Europe. Free labor has supplanted it
everywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities developed in
modern times are now obliging even those two nations to encourage and
employ free labor; and already, despotic as they are, we find them
engaged in abolishing slavery. In the United States, slavery came into
collision with free labor at the close of the last century, and fell
before it in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania,
but triumphed over it effectually, and excluded it for a period yet
undetermined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed,
so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is
organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act
a choice of the one and the exclusion of the other, even at the cost
of civil war, if necessary. The slave States, without law, at the last
national election, successfully forbade, within their own limits, even
the casting of votes for a candidate for President of the United States
supposed to be favorable to the establishment of the free-labor system
in new States.
Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different States, but side by
side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is
a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States
constitute only one nation. Increase of population, which is filling
the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended
network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which
daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a
higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these
antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and
collision results.
Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is
accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators,
and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an
irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it
means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become
either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.
Either the cotton- and rice-fields of South Carolina and the sugar
plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free-labor, and
Charleston and New Orleans become marts of legitimate merchandise alone,
or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York
must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the
production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets
for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehend
this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final
compromises between the slave and free States, and it is the existence
of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when
made, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you,
fellow-citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modern one. Our
forefathers knew it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it when
they framed the Constitution of the United States. They regarded the
existence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow and
shame, which they openly confessed, and they looked upon the collision
between them, which was then just revealing itself, and which we are now
accustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that one or the
other system must exclusively prevail.
Unlike too many of those who in modern time invoke their authority, they
had a choice between the two. They preferred the system of free labor,
and they determined to organize the government, and so direct its
activity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For this
purpose, and no other, they based the whole structure of the government
broadly on the principle that all men are created equal, and therefore
free--little dreaming that, within the short period of one hundred
years, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, however
popular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetorical
rhapsody; or by any judge, however venerated, that it was attended by
mental reservation, which rendered it hypocritical and false. By the
ordinance of 1787, they dedicated all of the national domain not yet
polluted by slavery to free labor immediately, thenceforth and forever;
while by the new Constitution and laws they invited foreign free labor
from all lands under the sun, and interdicted the importation of African
slave labor, at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances
whatsoever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified this
policy of freedom by leaving it to the several States, affected as they
were by different circumstances, to abolish slavery in their own way and
at their own pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to Congress; and
that they secured to the slave States, while yet retaining the system
of slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the Federal
Government, until they should find themselves able to relinquish it
with safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies my
position, that the fathers knew that the two systems could not endure
within the Union, and expected within a short period slavery would
disappear forever. Moreover, in order that these modifications might not
altogether defeat their grand design of a republic maintaining universal
equality, they provided that two thirds of the States might amend the
Constitution.
It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against
misapprehension. If these States are to again become universally
slave-holding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the
Constitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand, while I
do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a land
of universal freedom, I do not expect that it will be made so otherwise
than through the action of the several States cooperating with the
Federal Government, and all acting in strict conformity with their
respective constitutions.
The strife and contentions concerning slavery, which gently-disposed
persons so habitually deprecate, are nothing more than the ripening of
the conflict which the fathers themselves not only thus regarded with
favor, but which they may be said to have instituted.