179 Irrepressible Conflict (1858)
Our country is a theatre which exhibits in full operation, two radically different political systems. The one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen.
The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous — they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this impossibility from the irreconcilable contrast between their great principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established it.
Hitherto the two systems have existed in different States but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of States. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population which is filling the States out to their very borders, together with a new and extended network of railroads and other avenues and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and more perfect social unity or consolidation. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact and collision results.
Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled by free labor and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the production of slaves and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is the failure to apprehend this great truth that induces so many unsuccessful attempts at final compromise between the slave and free States and it is the existence of this great fact that renders all such pretended compromises, when made, vain and ephemeral. Startling as this saying may appear to you, fellow citizens, it is by no means an original or even a modern one. Our forefathers knew it to be true and unanimously acted upon it when they framed the Constitution of the United States. They regarded the existence of the servile system in so many of the States with sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, and they looked upon the collision between them which was then just revealing itself and which we are now accustomed to deplore, with favor and hope. They knew that either the one or the Other system must exclusively prevail.
Unlike too many of those who in modem time invoke their authority, they had a choice between the two. They preferred the system of free labor and they determined to organize the Government and so to direct its activity, that that system should surely and certainly prevail. For this purpose and no other, they based the whole structure of Government broadly on the principle that all men are created equal and therefore free — little dreaming that within the short period of one hundred years, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, however popular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody. Or by any judge however venerated, that it was attended by mental reservations which rendered it hypocritical and false. By the Ordinance of 1787, they dedicated all of the national domain not yet polluted by Slavery to free labor immediately, thence-forth, and forever. While by the new Constitution and laws they invited foreign free labor from all lands under the sun and interdicted the importation of African slave labor at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances whatsoever. It is true that they necessarily and wisely modified this policy of Freedom by leaving it to the several States, affected as they were by differing circumstances, to abolish Slavery in their own way and at their own pleasure instead of confiding that duty to Congress. And that they secured to the Slave States, while yet retaining the system of Slavery, a three-fifths representation of slaves in the Federal Government until they should find themselves able to relinquish it with safety. But the very nature of these modifications fortifies my position that the fathers knew that the two systems could not endure within the Union and expected that within a short period Slavery would disappear forever. Moreover, in order that these modifications might not altogether defeat their grand design of a Republic maintaining universal equality, they provided that two-thirds of the States might amend the Constitution.
It remains to say on this point only one word, to guard against misapprehension. If these States are to again become universally slave-holding, I do not pretend to say with what violations of the Constitution that end shall be accomplished. On the other hand, while I do confidently believe and hope that my country will yet become a land of universal Freedom, I do not expect that it will be made so otherwise than through the action of the several States cooperating with the Federal Government and all acting in strict conformity with their respective Constitutions.
The strife and contentions concerning Slavery which gently-disposed persons so habitually deprecate are nothing more than the ripening of the conflict which the fathers themselves not only thus regarded with favor, but which they may be said to have instituted. It is not to be denied however, that thus far the course of that contest has not been according to their humane anticipations and wishes.
At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows now as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works: “Equal and exact justice to all men.” Even when it first entered the field, only half organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this its second campaign, it has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain.
The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea, but that idea 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.
I know and you know that a revolution has begun. I know and all the world knows that revolutions never go backward. Twenty Senators and a hundred Representatives proclaim boldly in Congress today sentiments and opinions and principles of Freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the Government of the United States under the conduct of the Democratic party has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to Slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the Constitution and Freedom forever.
Source: William H. Seward, The Irrepressible Conflict: a Speech Delivered at Rochester (1858), 1-7. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/138/mode/2up
