John Hay

“ 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. The territory is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards, and must so discharge our trust as to secure in the highest attainable degree their happiness."—William H. Seward, Senate Speech, March 11, 1850. ”

“ And so, sir, when we declare our tenacious adherence to the Union, it is the Union of the Constitution. If the compact between the States is to be trampled into the dust; if anarchy is to be substituted for the usurpation which threatened the Government at an earlier period; if the Union is to become powerless for the purposes for which it was established, and we are vainly to appeal to it for protection—then, sir, conscious of the rectitude of our course, and self-reliant within ourselves, we look beyond the confines of the Union for the maintenance of our rights. ”

“ Lincoln is, Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution. ”

“ The Democracy of the North hold, said he, that "if you repudiate the doctrine of non-intervention, and form a slave code by act of Congress, where the people of a Territory refuse it, you must step off the Democratic platform. I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry any one Democratic State of the North on the platform that it is the duty of the Federal Government to force the people of a Territory to have slavery when they do not want it." ”

“ Take these two things and consider them together; present the question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by the side of a question of who shall be Governor of Kansas for a year or two, and is there a man here, is there a man on earth, who would not say the governor question is the little one, and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local, the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be governor? while the durable, the important, and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery? ”

“ Silence will not be tolerated; we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. ”

“ Chicago was already a city of a hundred thousand souls. Thirty to forty thousand visitors, full of life, hope, ambition, most of them from the progressive group of encircling North-western States, and strung to the highest tension of political excitement had come to attend the convention. Charleston had shown a great party in the ebbtide of disintegration, tainted by the spirit of disunion. Chicago exhibited a great party springing to life and power, every motive and force compelling coöperation and growth. ”

“ Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. ”

“ Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground, save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality! if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension—its enlargement. ”

“ With the same mind to dictate a secession message to a Legislature and a non-coercion message to Congress—to assemble insurrectionary troops to seize Federal forts and withhold Government troops from their protection—to incite governors to rebellion and overawe a weak President to a virtual abdication of his rightful authority, history need not wonder at the surprising unity and early success of the conspiracy against the Union. ”

“ As citizens of a slave-holding State, we have no right to complain of our neighbors of Illinois, because they introduce into their State Constitution a prohibition of slavery; nor has any citizen of Missouri who removes with his slave to Illinois a right to complain that the fundamental law of the State to which he removes, and in which he makes his residence, dissolves the relation between him and his slave. ”

“ The city of New York is now a subjugated dependency of a fanatical and puritanical State government that never thinks of the city except to send its tax-gatherers among us or to impose upon us hateful officials, alien to our interests and sympathies, to eat up the substance of the people by their legalized extortions.... Nothing has prevented the city of New York from asserting her right to govern herself, except that provision of the Federal Constitution which prohibits a State from being divided without its own consent.... ”

“ What would have been the consequences to America and humanity had the Rebellion, even then being vaguely devised by Southern Hotspurs, burst upon the nation in the winter of 1856, with the nation's sword of commander-in-chief in the hand of the impulsive Frémont, and Lincoln, inheriting the patient wariness and cool blood of three generations of pioneers and Indian-fighters, wielding only the powerless gavel of Vice-President? ”

“ Eight years before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave law: "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The trial for life of one bold, and to some extent successful, man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population." ”

“ On the question of submitting the constitution to the bonâ fide resident settlers of Kansas I am willing to stand or fall. In sustaining such a principle we cannot fall. It is the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; the principle of popular sovereignty; and the principle at the foundation of all popular government. The more it is discussed the stronger it will become. Should the convention of Kansas adopt this principle, all will be settled harmoniously, and with the blessing of Providence you will return triumphantly from your arduous, important, and responsible mission. ”

“ There is something irresistibly exciting in the united voice of a great crowd. For a moment the struggle appeared to resolve itself into a contest of throats and lungs. Indiana seconded the nomination of Lincoln, and the applause was deafening. Michigan seconded the nomination of Seward; the New York delegation rose en masse, waved their hats, and joined the galleries in a shout which doubled the volume of any yet given. Then a portion of the Ohio delegates once more seconded Lincoln, and his adherents, feeling themselves put upon their mettle, made an effort. ”

“ If it and other property are equal, his argument is entirely logical. But if you insist that one is wrong and the other right, there is no use to institute a comparison between right and wrong. You may turn over everything in the Democratic policy from beginning to end, whether in the shape it takes on the statute book, in the shape it takes in the Dred Scott decision, in the shape it takes in conversation, or the shape it takes in short maxim-like arguments—it everywhere carefully excludes the idea that there is anything wrong in it. ”

“ I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision. But he is for legislating it out of all force, while the law itself stands. I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man.
The announcement and subsequent defense by Douglas of his "Freeport doctrine" proved, as Lincoln had predicted, something more important than a mere campaign incident. ”

“ I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself. As to the matter of fusion, I am for it, if it can be had on Republican grounds; and I am not for it on any other terms. A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish and unprincipled. It would lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still carry the whole South. The question of men is a different one. ”

“ Major Anderson might have faith in the God of battles, but what faith could he have in a Government holding one-third of a vast continent peopled by thirty millions of freemen which could not or would not, in face of the most urgent reiterated appeals and the most imminent and palpable necessity, send him two or three companies of recruits, when the possession of three forts, the peace of a city, the allegiance of a State, if not the tremendous alternative of civil war, hung in the balance? ”

“ We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. ”

“ The character and dignity of the Pittsburgh proceedings assured the new party of immediate prestige and acceptance; with so favorable a sponsorship it sprang full-armed into the political conflict. That conflict which opened the year with the long congressional contest over the speakership, and which found its only solution in the choice of Banks by a plurality vote, had been fed by fierce congressional debates, by presidential messages and proclamations, by national conventions, by the Sumner assault, by the Kansas war; the body politic throbbed with activity and excitement in every fiber. ”

“ They desire a united South, "but not a united country. Their hope of embodying a sectional antagonism is to secure a sectional defeat. At heart, they do not wish the Democracy to be any longer national, united, or successful. In the name of Democracy they propose to make a nomination for 1860, at Charleston; but an ultra nomination of an extremist on the slavery issue alone, to unite the South on that one idea, and on that to have it defeated by a line of sectionalism which will inevitably draw swords between fanatics on one side and fire-eaters on the other. ”

“ He said, however, he did not believe any legislation would be a remedy. Unequivocal constitutional guarantees upon the points indicated in the resolution under consideration were in his judgment the only remedies that would reach and eradicate the disease, give permanent security, and restore fraternal feeling between the people, North and South, and save the Union from speedy dissolution. "Let us never despair of the republic, but go to work promptly and so amend the Constitution as to give certain and full guarantees to the rights of every citizen, in every State and Territory of the Union." ”

“ Lincoln is one of nature's orators," said the "Tribune," "using his rare powers solely to elucidate and convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well. We present herewith a very full and accurate report of this speech; yet the tones, the gestures, the kindling eye, and the mirth-provoking look defy the reporter's skill. The vast assemblage frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause, which were prolonged and intensified at the close. No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." ”

“ These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures. ”

“ Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no privilege of mine to scold her for what she does. Still, if from what she has done, an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I would do, I may, without impropriety, speak out, I say then, that, as I understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. ”

“ You need but one or two turns further until your minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all these things; and you will receive and support, or submit to, the slave trade revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the free North.
This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. ”

“ Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures whose inevitable consequence must be the overthrow and destruction of our Government. Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit. She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or divide it with others. ”

“ Every right guaranteed by the Constitution must be protected by law in all cases where legislation is necessary to its enjoyment. The judicial authority, as provided in the Constitution, must be sustained, and its decisions implicitly obeyed and faithfully executed. The laws must be administered, and the constituted authorities upheld, and all unlawful resistance to these things must be put down with firmness, impartiality, and fidelity." "The Constitution and the equality of the States," wrote Breckinridge, "these are symbols of everlasting union. ”

“ The eager convention would have accepted a weak or defective platform; the committee, on the contrary, reported one framed with remarkable skill. It is only needful to recapitulate its chief points. It denounced disunion, Lecomptonism, the property theory, the dogma that the Constitution carries slavery to Territories, the reopening of the slave-trade, the popular sovereignty and non-intervention fallacies, and denied "the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States." ”

“ This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning; of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. ”