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

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The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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Revolutions never go backward.
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I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.
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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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There is a higher law than the Constitution.
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Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.
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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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No man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.
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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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But I deny that the Constitution recognizes property in man.
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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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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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