William H. Seward

William Henry Seward, Sr. (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as Governor of New York and United States Senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a dominant figure in the Republican Party in its formative years. Although regarded as the leading contender for the party's presidential nomination in 1860, he was defeated by Abraham Lincoln.

• The color of the prisoner’s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race — the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.
  • Argument as defense attorney during the trial of an African-American criminal defendant, Auburn, New York (July 1846), published in Works of William H. Seward, vol. I (New York: Redfield, 1853), p. 417.

• He is the most gentle-looking and amiable of men. Every word and look indicate sincerity of heart, even to guilelessness.
  • Journal entry (27 February 1849) on President Zachary Taylor, published in The Autobiography of William H. Seward (1877).

• It is true, indeed, that the national domain is ours. It is true that it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold no arbitrary authority over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether lawfully acquired or seized by usurpation. The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare and to liberty.
  But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.
  • Speech, United States Senate (11 March 1850).

• 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.
  • Memorandum to President Abraham Lincoln (1 April 1861).

• Remember always that the cause of the United States is the cause of human nature.
  • Letter to Charles F. Adams (1863), as quoted in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 2, p. 150.

• Love one another.
  • Last words, spoken to his daughter-in-law (10 October 1872), quoted by Frederick William Seward in a postscript (chapter LXXIII) to The Autobiography of William H. Seward (1877).

• There is no social life outside of Christendom.
  • Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 142.

• Douglas, no man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.
  • A retort to Stephen A. Douglas on the Senate floor, after the Illinois senator used an offensive slur in a speech. As quoted in Team of Rivals (2006), by Doris Kearns Goodwin (New York: Simon and Schuster), p. 163.

Speech in the United States Senate (11 March 1850)

• The nation thus situated, and enjoying forest, mineral, and agricultural resources unequalled, if endowed also with moral energies adequate to the achievement of great enterprises, and favored with a Government adapted to their character and condition, must command the empire of the seas, which alone is real empire.

Speech in the United States Senate (29 July 1852)

• Who does not see, then, that every year hereafter, European commerce, European politics, European thoughts, and European activity, although actually gaining greater force and European connections, although actually becoming more intimate will nevertheless relatively sink in importance; while the Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events in the World's great Hereafter? Who does not see that this movement must effect our own complete emancipation from what remains of European influence and prejudice, and in turn develop the American opinion and influence which shall remould constitutions, laws, and customs, in the land that is first greeted by the rising sun?

Speech in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York (25 October 1858)

• 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.

• As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.
  The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state.

• 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 slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.

Speech (October 1859)

• The Democratic Party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders.

• The history of the Democratic Party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic Party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination.

• Such is the Democratic Party.

• 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.

• One of the first outspoken proponents of transoceanic imperialism was former abolitionist William H. Seward who was Lincoln's secretary of state and who considered it the destiny of the United States to dominate the Pacific Ocean.
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014)

• We have not Secretary Seward to thank, we have not President Lincoln to thank, we have not the govt of the United States to thank, we have not the commercial men nor the churches to thank; but we have Jeff Davis and the terrible persistency of the rebels to than, that there has been this change of conduct in the North. It was a matter of military necessity, and therefore we have it. And having been induced by military necessity, for the sake of self-preservation, we cannot rely upon it.
  • Abby Kelley, "The Overthrow of Slavery" (December 4, 1863)

• Seward House, Auburn, NY
• Brief Seward biography
• Mr. Lincoln and Friends: William H. Seward
• Mr. Lincoln and New York: William H. Seward
• Mr. Lincoln's White House: William H. Seward
• Works by William H. Seward at Project Gutenberg
• William Henry Seward, the Virginia controversy, and the anti-slavery movement, 1839-1841.