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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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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
States
Perpetual
Right
Resolve
Must
Mutual
Make
Slave
Would
Equal
State
Society
War
Implies

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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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There is a higher law than the Constitution.
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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.
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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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Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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 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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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.
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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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