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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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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
Nature
Recognition
Must
Slave
Repugnant
Would
Property
Recognizes
Constitution
Reply
Answer
Constitutional
Answers
Slaves
Law
Void
Nations
Sufficient

More quotes by William H. Seward

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But I deny that the Constitution recognizes property in man.
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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.
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There is a higher law than the Constitution.
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I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.
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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.
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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.
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No man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.
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It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use force to subjugate the South.
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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.
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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.
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The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.
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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.
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It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces.
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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.
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Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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There is no social life outside of Christendom.
William H. Seward