alan polk
2nd Lieutenant
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2012
The National Era, March 9, 1854
Below: William Seward Senate Speech Continued -
Seward concludes his speech by examining the political gains and losses shared between freedom and slavery throughout the past 15 or so years. He compares the political shifts as a pendulum that swings back and forth, at once to favor freedom then slavery.
In this portion of his speech, we see Seward express a variation on the statement, “the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He appears to give it his own spin, one that would eventually be popularized (and brought into its modern form) by Martin Luther King Jr. in the next century.
Nevertheless, the concept was first expressed by an abolitionist minister named Theodore Parker, in 1853, less than a year before Seward gave this particular speech. So, I’m assuming Seward heard the expression from Parker or his acolytes, though I have no way of knowing that to a certainty.
Pendulum of Freedom
Seward informs the Senate slaveholders that they must consider for themselves which way they think the pendulum is ultimately swinging. They obviously want it to point toward the abrogation of the Missouri line and the opening up of Nebraska. So be it, Seward seems to say, but he implies that such sentiment is politically shortsighted and fails to take into consideration the universal movement of things toward freedom.
Where slave States may see the political pendulum swinging temporarily from point to point, advantage or disadvantage, Seward sees it as something akin to a truth, momentarily vibrating on a pivot:
“I see in the changes of the times only the vibrations of the needle, trembling on its pivot. I know that in due time it will settle; and when it shall have settled, it will point, as it must point forever, to the same constant polar star, that sheds down influences propitious to freedom as broadly as it pours forth its mellow but invigorating light.”
Struggle Seemingly Eternal
The interests of slave States and free States are not going away. They never have and won’t anytime soon, or so Seward declares. As soon as it is thought issues are settled, dead and buried, those differing interests are eventually resurrected in the halls of Congress and begin to clash all over again:
“Say what you will, do what you will, here, the [differing] interests of non-slaveholding States and of the slaveholding States remain just the same; and they will remain just the same, until you shall cease to cherish and defend slavery, or we shall cease to honor and love freedom!”
Conservatism vs. Progressivism
Neither side, according to Seward, is willing to give ground. That ground, he suggests, is between conservatism and progressivism, and he makes no bones about which side he thinks wrong:
“The slavery agitation you deprecate so much,” Seward informs his fellow Southern Senators, “is an eternal struggle between Conservatism and Progress, between Truth and Error, between Right and Wrong. You may sooner, by act of Congress, compel the sea to suppress its upheavings, and the round earth to extinguish its internal fires, than oblige the human mind to cease its inquirings, and the human heart to desist from its throbbings.”
European and Asian Immigration
The slave interest of the South cannot stop the flood of immigrants pouring in from Europe. These immigrants are “educated, vigorous, enlightened, enterprising freemen,” Seward notes. Twenty years from now, he predicts, these Europeans will be followed up by freemen from Asia.
“You may obstruct, and so turn the direction of those peaceful armies away from Nebraska. So long as you shall leave them room on a hill or prairie, by river side or in the mountain vastnesses, they will dispose of themselves peacefully and lawfully in the places you shall have left open to them; and there they will erect new States upon free soil, to be forever maintained and defended by free arms, and aggrandized by free labor.”
Freemen vs. Slaves
Seward agrees that slavery has “an ever-flowing spring” as well, but the South’s spring pours forth “a blackened tide” that cannot keep up with the volumes of immigrants as he describes above.
Southern slaveholders, he asserts, should be wise enough to understand that these “tides of freemen and of slaves will never meet, for they will not voluntarily commingle.”
If, however, they are somehow forced to mingle, “it is easy to see,” Seward asserts, “which of them will overcome the resistance of the other, and which of them, thus overpowered, will roll back to drown the source which sent it forth.”
Higher Law
Seward informs the Southern Senators that they “may legislate and abrogate and abnegate as you will, but there is a Superior Power that overrules all your actions, and all your refusals to act . . . and overrules them to the advancement of the happiness, greatness and glory of our country - that overrules, I know, not only your actions, and all your refusals to act, but all human events, to the distant, but inevitable result of the equal and universal liberty of all men.”
End -
Below: William Seward Senate Speech Continued -
Seward concludes his speech by examining the political gains and losses shared between freedom and slavery throughout the past 15 or so years. He compares the political shifts as a pendulum that swings back and forth, at once to favor freedom then slavery.
In this portion of his speech, we see Seward express a variation on the statement, “the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He appears to give it his own spin, one that would eventually be popularized (and brought into its modern form) by Martin Luther King Jr. in the next century.
Nevertheless, the concept was first expressed by an abolitionist minister named Theodore Parker, in 1853, less than a year before Seward gave this particular speech. So, I’m assuming Seward heard the expression from Parker or his acolytes, though I have no way of knowing that to a certainty.
Pendulum of Freedom
Seward informs the Senate slaveholders that they must consider for themselves which way they think the pendulum is ultimately swinging. They obviously want it to point toward the abrogation of the Missouri line and the opening up of Nebraska. So be it, Seward seems to say, but he implies that such sentiment is politically shortsighted and fails to take into consideration the universal movement of things toward freedom.
Where slave States may see the political pendulum swinging temporarily from point to point, advantage or disadvantage, Seward sees it as something akin to a truth, momentarily vibrating on a pivot:
“I see in the changes of the times only the vibrations of the needle, trembling on its pivot. I know that in due time it will settle; and when it shall have settled, it will point, as it must point forever, to the same constant polar star, that sheds down influences propitious to freedom as broadly as it pours forth its mellow but invigorating light.”
Struggle Seemingly Eternal
The interests of slave States and free States are not going away. They never have and won’t anytime soon, or so Seward declares. As soon as it is thought issues are settled, dead and buried, those differing interests are eventually resurrected in the halls of Congress and begin to clash all over again:
“Say what you will, do what you will, here, the [differing] interests of non-slaveholding States and of the slaveholding States remain just the same; and they will remain just the same, until you shall cease to cherish and defend slavery, or we shall cease to honor and love freedom!”
Conservatism vs. Progressivism
Neither side, according to Seward, is willing to give ground. That ground, he suggests, is between conservatism and progressivism, and he makes no bones about which side he thinks wrong:
“The slavery agitation you deprecate so much,” Seward informs his fellow Southern Senators, “is an eternal struggle between Conservatism and Progress, between Truth and Error, between Right and Wrong. You may sooner, by act of Congress, compel the sea to suppress its upheavings, and the round earth to extinguish its internal fires, than oblige the human mind to cease its inquirings, and the human heart to desist from its throbbings.”
European and Asian Immigration
The slave interest of the South cannot stop the flood of immigrants pouring in from Europe. These immigrants are “educated, vigorous, enlightened, enterprising freemen,” Seward notes. Twenty years from now, he predicts, these Europeans will be followed up by freemen from Asia.
“You may obstruct, and so turn the direction of those peaceful armies away from Nebraska. So long as you shall leave them room on a hill or prairie, by river side or in the mountain vastnesses, they will dispose of themselves peacefully and lawfully in the places you shall have left open to them; and there they will erect new States upon free soil, to be forever maintained and defended by free arms, and aggrandized by free labor.”
Freemen vs. Slaves
Seward agrees that slavery has “an ever-flowing spring” as well, but the South’s spring pours forth “a blackened tide” that cannot keep up with the volumes of immigrants as he describes above.
Southern slaveholders, he asserts, should be wise enough to understand that these “tides of freemen and of slaves will never meet, for they will not voluntarily commingle.”
If, however, they are somehow forced to mingle, “it is easy to see,” Seward asserts, “which of them will overcome the resistance of the other, and which of them, thus overpowered, will roll back to drown the source which sent it forth.”
Higher Law
Seward informs the Southern Senators that they “may legislate and abrogate and abnegate as you will, but there is a Superior Power that overrules all your actions, and all your refusals to act . . . and overrules them to the advancement of the happiness, greatness and glory of our country - that overrules, I know, not only your actions, and all your refusals to act, but all human events, to the distant, but inevitable result of the equal and universal liberty of all men.”
End -
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