Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1858 — MR. SEWARD’S LAST SPEECH. [ARTICLE]

MR. SEWARD’S LAST SPEECH.

A PROPHECY. The following are the closing portions of • Governor Seward's last speech on the English proposition; Mr. President, let me try for a moment to lift this debate up from temporary, eph.emerial incidents, to the hight of the argument where The sixteenth century dawned on the decay, throughout Europe and the world, of a slave civilization derived from an early antiquity, and left as a legacy by the Latin or southern States of the continent of Europe on the fall of the Roman empire. But it dawned also upon the rise of a new and better civilization—the civilization of freedom; the civilization, since developed, of the German and Sclavonic races; the civilization of Germany and of England, of Scotland and Ireland, and Switzerland, the modern civilization of western Europe. The principle of the old Latin civilization wh'xh was passing away, was that labor must be involuntary; must be secured by fraud and force, and must be converted into property. The new civilization was based upon the principle of'the freedom of labor, that it must be voluntary, and that it should be not only a political power, but that it should become the ascendent and dominating political power throughout the world. While Spain and Portugal proved themselves competent to open the way of discovery at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the one revealed Africa and the other America to the eyes of the astonished World, these two nations were, of all others, those whg were least fitted, least, qualified to inaugurate civilization on either continent. The Portuguese doomed Africa to remain in the perpetual barbarism with which she has been cursed from her earliest history, by establishing there the odious and atrocious slave trade; and the Spaniards doomed America to receive, and for a while to be incumbered with the civilization of African slaves, captured and brought there by the Portuguese. Our Constitution and our Union came into being seventy years ago, when it Wfls_necessary to decide between these two systems of civilization which wef-e found among us. The States which were founded upon the new civilization stand before you. Contemplate them; say whether the world has ever seen such States? You see also the States which were founded on the old declining civilization of the Roman empire. All new States have to elect between the two systems. We have a voice and influence in determining their decision. You are determined to force that effete and obselete civilization upon regions where it has never been known.

This question ought to have been dicided fifty years ago, in 1803, when Kansas was added to the national territory by the treatv with France, as pari of the Louisiana purchase. It was omitted then. Again, the question returned in 1820, and (hen it was well and wisely settled by dedicating Kansas forever to mpartial freedom. In 1854, you repealed the law; but the law of Kansas was written in the very rocks and upon the rivers of Kansas, as well as in the constitution of American society— All you have done since has consisted in" fruitless efforts to carry that ill-judged repeal into effect in defiance of the laws of nature. For what you have done heretofore you have had what the whole world received as an excuse. It was the action of the slave States, but it was not on their own motion; the suggestion came to them from Senators from the free States, and it was not in human nature that the slave States should resist it. ' So in 1856, when Kansas came here as a free State, under the Topeka Constitution, and you rejected her, you still had the show of excuse; for these same Representatives of the free States advised that the free States, as well as of Kansas, would acquiesce. But you are now, after having failed in these two efforts, persisting, without that excuse. Two of the Senators, one the leader of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the other, hardly less effective in that transaction, now remonstrate with you against the further prosecution of this attempt as impossible. Still another, from Michigan, remonstrates—l mean the late distinguished Senator from Michigan, now at the head of the Department of State. I do not say that he remonstrates in words, but I do say that the retirement of that eminent man from this Chamber, so suited to his talents, his genius and his fame, into a closet in the Department of State, under an appointment of the President of the United States, is a louder remonstrance than any words he could utter, if his constituents had allowed him to retain his place among us, the Representatives of the States. -That is not?all. Aj last a new voice issues from your own region, from the South, from the slave States, and protests against your further persi; tence in this mad enterprise, and admonishes you that it must and will fall. The cohorts are gathering in the South; the men of moderation and conservatism, who, as they have heretolore moderated in favor of slavery against freedom, will now be obliged,:,in consistency with their just and well established character, and their habitual patriotism, to mod 'r. te against you in favor of freedom, when the people demand freedom, and rise up unanimously against slavery. Sir, this whole controversy is contracted into a quarrel for revenge against these wise advisers. Instead of listening to their counsels, it results in this: that you will suppress their remonstrance, punish their authors as mutineers. Well, sir, that is a matter of small consequence to me. To me, personally, the future of these distinguished Senators and their associates in the House of Representatives is nothing, except so far as the political positions which they maintain in the country and before the world shall bear on the future of the country. I know not whether, hereafter, I shall be found laboring with them in efforts for the welfare of our country, or whether they will be found in your councils again, and laboringin your ranks. Nevertheless, lam sure of this, naineb’, that you will not succeed in discrediting and punishing them; for, either you provoke yourselves the defeat which the signs of the times indicate, Or, in lieu, you will con e down to 1860 under the influence of sentiments and feelings very different from those of 1858. A party in. power in the first year of an Administration, is bold and violent. A party going out of I

power, at the close?4f an Administration, is timid and hesitatifig. You will search the summits of thejrtibuntains in New Hampshire, the plainsbl Mexico, and the privileged courts of St-prunes, in London, to find a candidate in 1860 who was against the conference Lecojrrfltpn-Kansas bill in 1858; and then, if these Jpuiorable associates with whom I have labored for a short time so pleasantly, found remaining in your communion, I tliHiC f can promise them and you, you will comfr\to a much better understanding with therif than you have now, Mr. President, %vfajle I am’speaking I learn th%t this bill, of so much evil oir.tn, has passed the Hotfsasioi Representatives, and that the battle 1 tfim-e is ended. I confess to you, sir, that it produced on my mind, if some disappointment, no discouragement. I confess that I prepared tor the conclusion, and that when it has come, (for what remains to be done here is a matter of course,) it is to me. utterly indifferent. This I have known all t&e that this was to be our last defeat oar first victory. Either result would have been welcome. For Kansas, for freedom in Kansas, I have not so much concern I have about the place where I shall sleep Jo-night, although my home is hard by where I stand. Kansas, sir, is the tfliiiderella of the American family. She is buffeted, she is insulted, she is smitten and'disgraced, she is turned out of the dwelling, and the door is locked against her. These is always, however, a fairy that takes care of the young daughter, if she be the most Itonest, the most virtuous, the meekest and most enduring inmate of the domestic ci|jde;;

Kansas will live lend survive your persecution; she will live to defend, protect and sustain you; and Jhe time will come when elder sisters, arrogant, Louisiana, Virginia and Peisteylyania, will repent all the injustice they have done her. Her trials have not been imposed on her for nought. She has been madWto take the position, the dangerous and haz&doas position, of being the first to vindicate practically by labor, by toil, through desolation, through suffering and blood, the principle.that freedom is better for States and for the Republic than slavery. She will endure the trial nobly, and as she has beenjdu* first, so she will be the last to conteijfpi’sfnd to suffer. Every other Territory that-shull come into the Union hereafter, profiting by the sufferings and atonement of Wjgpias, will come into the Union a free Stated Sir, this unnecessary strife draws to The effort to make slave States within our domain is against reason arhl against nature. The trees do not spring: up from the roots and seeds scaitered by fine parent trunkk in the tores’ more naturatty that new free States spring up from the projected and seeds scattered by the old free States. New stars do not form out of the nebulas in the of and come out to adorn the;blue expand above us more naturally than new free States shape themselves out ot the ever-deve,§&tng elements of our benign civilization, Jafd rise to take their places in this greatssjhJitical constellation. Reason md hope in this majestic and magnificent process. Let, then, nature and reason an'l their heaven-ap-pointed way. Resisttjtfiein no longer.