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There is a higher law than the Constitution.

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
Constitution
Higher
Law

More quotes by William H. Seward

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There is no social life outside of Christendom.
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Revolutions never go backward.
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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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It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.
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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.
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The two systems slave and free-labor are incompatible. They have never permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.
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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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I speak on due consideration because Britain, France, and Mexico, have abolished slavery, and all other European states are preparing to abolish it as speedily as they can.
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But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.
William H. Seward
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I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.
William H. Seward
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Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.
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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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Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly.
William H. Seward
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Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.
William H. Seward
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No man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.
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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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 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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It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use force to subjugate the South.
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