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Page 43
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.
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