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There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.

William H. Seward

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William H. Seward
Age: 71 †
Born: 1801
Born: May 16
Died: 1872
Died: October 10
Diplomat
Former Governor Of New York
Lawyer
Politician
Florida
New York
William Henry Seward
William Seward
Alternatives
Slavery
Slave
State
Free
States
Founded
Would
Establish
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More quotes by William H. Seward

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The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make the slave that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war.
William H. Seward
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We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.
William H. Seward
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The United States are a political state, or organized society, whose end is government, for the security, welfare, and happiness of all who live under its protection.
William H. Seward
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There is a higher law than the Constitution.
William H. Seward
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But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nature and of nations.
William H. Seward
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Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.
William H. Seward
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But the Constitution was made not only for southern and northern states, but for states neither northern nor southern, namely, the western states, their coming in being foreseen and provided for.
William H. Seward
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The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.
William H. Seward
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The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.
William H. Seward
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But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.
William H. Seward
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Idea is a noble one — an idea that fills and expands all generous souls the idea of equality — the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they all are equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.
William H. Seward
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I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.
William H. Seward
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I deem it established, then, that the Constitution does not recognize property in man, but leaves that question, as between the states, to the law of nature and of nations.
William H. Seward
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The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.
William H. Seward
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Revolutions never go backward.
William H. Seward
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There is no social life outside of Christendom.
William H. Seward
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It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state.
William H. Seward
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Simultaneously with the establishment of the Constitution, Virginia ceded to the United States her domain, which then extended to the Mississippi, and was even claimed to extend to the Pacific Ocean.
William H. Seward
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It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.
William H. Seward
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I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.
William H. Seward