William Henry Seward

“ When the insurgents shall have disbanded their armies, and laid down their arms, the war will instantly cease, and all the war measures then existing, including those which affect Slavery, will cease also, and all the moral, economical and political questions, as well questions affecting Slavery as others which shall then be existing between individuals and States and the Federal Government, whether they arose before the civil war began, or whether they grew out of it, will, by force of the Constitution, pass over to the arbitrament of courts of law, and to the councils of legislation. ”

“ I am not unsophisticated enough to expect that conspirators while yet unsubdued, and exercising an unresisted despotism in the insurrectionary States, will either sue for, or even accept, an amnesty based on the surrender of the power they have so recklessly usurped. ”

“ The Constitution of our country commands that Administration to surrender its powers to the people, and the people to designate agents to assume and exercise them four years. You receive the Executive Government in a condition very different and highly improved. We found it practically expelled from the whole country south of the Delaware, the Ohio, and the Missouri, with the most of the army and navy betrayed of fallen into the hands of insurgents, and a new and treasonable Confederacy with the indirect but effective cooperation of foreign powers, establishing itself on the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ It proves that though you deal rigorously with your public servants, exacting reasons for their policy, energy in their conduct of affairs, and explanations for failures, and disappointments in their administration, yet you are nevertheless just, because you willingly allow them to rejoice with you, when you have successes, victories and triumphs, to celebrate. The news that brings us together is authentic. ”

“ A hundred dollars in gold is only a year's purchase of the labor of the working man in every part of the United States. At less than half that price you could buy all the slaves in the country. Nevertheless, our opponents want a distinct exposition of the President's views on the ultimate solution of the Slavery question. ”

“ Nay, more, if such, a thing could happen as that the Chicago candidate, nominated upon such an agreement, should be elected President of the United States on the first Tuesday of November next, who can vouch for the safety of the country against the rebels during the interval which must elapse before the new Administration can constitutionally come into power? It seems to me that such an election would tend equally to demoralize the Union and to invite the insurgents to renew their efforts for its destruction. ”

“ While the rebels continue to wage war against the Government of the United States, the military measures affecting Slavery, which have been adopted from necessity, to bring the war to a speedy and successful end, will be continued, except so far as practical experience shall show that they can be modified advantageously, with a view to the same end. ”

“ True, no arms have been imported here. Yet delegates went out from among you and sat down in council at Chicago with those Indiana conspirators, and agreed with them not only that that importation of arms should be defended in the election canvass, but also to demand the cessation of the war upon the ground that success in restoring the Union is unattainable. ”

“ The impunity they everywhere enjoy under the protection of constitutional debate, shows alone and the same time, that their complaints are groundless, and that the Union in the element of moral stability is stronger than they know. ”

“ By such a proceeding we shall have agreed with the enemy, and shall have given him the victory. But in that agreement the Constitution and the Union will have perished, because when it shall have once been proved that a minority can by force or circumvention, defeat the full accession of a constitutionally chosen President, no President thereafter, though elected by ever so large a majority, can hope to exercise the Executive powers unopposed throughout the whole country. ”

“ Not by any skill or art of the Administration, or even through the sagacity, or activity of the loyal people, hut through the cunning of the conspirators, overreaching itself, and thus working out their own defeat and confusion. They do say that the father of evil always indulges his chosen disciples, with such an excess of subtlety, as to render their ultimate ruin and punishment inevitable. ”

“ A cessation of hostilities on the heel of decisive naval and land battles, at the very moment that the rebellion, without a single fort in its possession on the coast, or on either of the great rivers or lakes, is crumbling to the earth, and at the same time a dozen new ships-of-war are going to complete the investment by sea, and three hundred thousand volunteers are rushing to the lines, to complete the work of restoration and pacification. ”

“ The disputed succession still remains unadjusted. A new election has come on. For a time, the Northern Democrats, with notable exceptions, gave a more or less liberal support to the Government, against the Democratic insurgents of the South. But the same Democratic forces which figured in the election of 1860, now appear in the political field, with positions and policy unchanged since that time, as I think, except for the worse. The Southern Democracy is still in arms under the usurper at Richmond. ”

“ Some are Republicans, who cannot rejoice in the national victories because this war, for the life of the nation, is not, in all respects, conducted according to their own peculiar radical ideas and theories. They want guarantees for swift, and universal, and complete emancipation, or they do not want the nation saved. ”

“ Our Chicago teachers tell us that just as the rude boy is coming down, we must lay down the stones and resort again to the use of grass, with the consequence, of course, that the farmer must beg pardon of the trespasser. ”

“ It would be nothing less than to give up the very object of the war at the ballot-box. The moral strength which makes our loyal position impregnable would pass from us; and when that moral strength bas passed away material forces are no longer effective, or even available. ”

“ Others are Democrats. They received from their fathers the axiom that only Democrats could save the country, and they must save it by Democratic formulas and combinations which the progress of the age has forever exploded. They cannot come up to celebrate achievements which condemn their narrow and hereditary bigotry. ”

“ But it seems to me that the verlest croaker in all our loyal camp will take new courage and become heroic when he sees that the last hope of the rebellion hangs upon the ratification of this abominable and detestable compact by the American people. ”

“ But auspicious as the occasion is, it has nevertheless failed to bring out some whom we might have expected here. Why are they not here to rejoice in the victories that will thrill the hearts of the lovers of Freedom throughout the world. ”

“ All the world knows, that so far as I am concerned, and, I believe, so far as the President is concerned, all such applications will receive just such an answer as it becomes a great, magnanimous and humane people, to grant to brethren who have come back from their wanderings to seek a shelter in the common ark of our national security and happiness. ”

“ When you consider that among the Democrats at Chicago the Indiana Democrats were present, who have imported arms to resist the national authority and defeat the national laws, and that all the Democrats there assembled agreed to justify that proceeding, I think you will agree with me that the Richmond Democrats and the Chicago Democrats have lately come to act very much alike. ”

“ Others stay away because they want to be assured that in coming out of the revolutionary storm, the Ship of State will be found exactly in the same condition as when the tempest assailed it, or they do not want the ship saved at all, as if anybody could give each guarantees in the name of a people of thirty million. ”

“ We shall have no draft because the army is being reinforced at the rate of five to ten thousand men per day by volunteers. [Hurrah for the volunteers.] May I not add that this victory at Atlanta comes in good time as the victory in Mobile Bay does, to vindicate the wisdom and the energy of the war administration. ”

“ There is a maxim which thoughtful teachers always carefully inculcate: it is that inconstancy is imbecility, and that perseverance is necessary to insure success. This maxim was set forth in the form of a copy in the writing-book, when I was young -- "Perseverance always conquers." ”

“ Others, of both the Republican and Democratic parties, are willing that the nation shall be saved, provided it is done by some one of their chosen and idolized chiefs, which chief they mutually denounce and revile. ”

“ The Democracy at Chicago did there just what had been agreed upon by the Richmond agents at Niagara, namely, they pronounced for an abandonment of the military defence of the Union against the insurgents, with a view to an ultimate National Convention, and the defeat of the election of Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ But we may take this comfort ourselves, that as a whole people, we can appreciate the veterans. We can also appreciate SHERMAN, who has performed the most successful and splendid march through a mountainous and hostile country recorded in modern history, and in doing this we show ourselves inferior in virtue to no other nation. ”

“ They are not content with plotting sedition in secret places, but they go up and down the public streets uttering treason, vainly seeking to provoke arrest in order that they may complain of a denial of the liberty of speech. ”

“ And they received one. The answer was that white in this mortal state, men and women shall never cease to marry and to die, there will be in the resurrection neither death nor marrving or giving in marriage. ”

“ They complain that when we call for volunteers we present the alternative of a draft, as it when the ship has been scuttled the Captain ought to leave the sleeping passengers to go to the bottom without calling upon them to take their turn at the pump. ”