1858 (38 page)

The heart of his argument was a brilliant intellectual parry that he was certain would win the debate over slavery once and for all. For years, slave owners had argued that since slavery was lawful and protected by the Constitution it had to be respected. No one could break the law in order to eliminate or curb slavery. Even the staunchest abolitionists had agreed that slavery was legal and attempts to overthrow it were against the law.
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Seward’s new argument changed the debate forever. The Constitution, he said, was pledged “…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…”
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Seward’s “higher law” speech stunned the country. Abolitionists heralded it and saw it as a justification for attacks on every aspect of slavery, from aiding runaways to harassing slave owners and publishing virulent antislavery books, pamphlets, and speeches. Senator John Hale of New Hampshire, elected as an antislavery Free-Soil Party candidate, thundered in the Senate, “Shall the united and universal shout of a regenerated people go up in one strong, swelling chorus to the throne of the Most High, unmingled with the groans or prayers of the victims of oppression…?”
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Tens of thousands of abolitionists even began to refer to themselves, as did the newspapers, as “the higher-law people.” Seward’s office was asked to mail out more than fifty thousand copies of the speech; friends sent out fifty thousand more. The American Antislavery Society printed up ten thousand copies. Greeley’s
Tribune
published the entire speech as a special edition, distributing hundreds of thousands of copies. All of the Northern newspapers carried the speech and stories about it, plus letters about it for weeks. The speech was even printed in German for German Americans.

Approval in the North was loud. Catholic bishop John Hughes of New York said the force of its appeal would end slavery. Wrote one college professor, “You have revived the age of Burke. All his comprehension, his eternal truth is yours.”
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Greeley wrote in the
Tribune
that “Seward’s speech will live longer, be read with a more hearty admiration, and exert a more potential and pervading influence on the national mind and character than any other speech of the session.”
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Denunciation of the speech from the South was even louder. Clay and other Southern lawmakers criticized him, dozens of Southern clergymen wrote him insulting letters and governors and state legislators throughout the Southern states lambasted him in public and private. Wrote Clay, “Mr. Seward’s latest abolitionist speech…has eradicated the respect of almost all men for him.” Mississippi’s Foote became so angry at Seward in the Senate, calling him the “counselor to bloodshed and violence,” that his own party leaders had to tell him to tone down his language.
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The
Washington Republic
blistered Seward in its editorial columns, as did all of the Southern editors. The
New Orleans Picayune
called him “an unscrupulous Demagogue.” The
Charleston Courier
said that Seward had “sunk…to his proper level.”
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None was harsher than Edwin Pollard, of the
Richmond Enquirer
, who wrote that the New Yorker was “a wretch whom it would be a degradation to name.”
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Seward read all the criticism, but never waffled in his belief that he had delivered an important speech. He wrote Weed, “I know that I have spoken words that will tell when I am dead, and even while I am living, for the benefit and blessing of mankind, and for myself this is consolation enough.”
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Ironically, the “higher law” speech would ultimately pale in comparison to the address he would deliver in Rochester this night. He must have remembered the clashes across the nation over the 1850 speech that night in Corinthian Hall as he got ready for yet another loud and public joust with the slaveholders.

The “higher law” speech, eight long years ago, had made it clear to everyone where Senator William Seward stood on the slavery question. He was not only against slavery, but had become the leader of the antislavery cause throughout the country. All of the other firebrands in the abolitionist movement were local ministers, newspaper editors, or state officials. Seward was a famous and highly influential United States senator, two-term governor, an increasingly proficient public orator, and a man from the largest state in the Union. He had influential friends and allies and spread his message through his newspaper contacts. His reference to God in his “higher law” speech had not only galvanized those who hated slavery, but made them realize that it was no longer just a political or moral issue, but a religious one. The combination of those three elements gave new life and strength to the antislavery movement, all exemplified by Senator William Seward.

All of a sudden, in the summer of 1850, the New Yorker had become the champion of all the different abolitionist movements and religious sects. Several abolitionist parties tried to convince him to leave the Whigs because their stand on slavery was far more in line with his. After all, they told him repeatedly, half the Whigs are proslavery. Seward refused all offers, reminding the leaders of these small splinter groups that the Whigs were one of the major parties in the country. He could accomplish his goals as a Whig; he could not accomplish them as part of a tiny ad hoc abolitionist group. He would not even attend abolitionist party conventions as a guest speaker or observer for fear that the public would paint him as one of them.
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Turning down one invitation to speak to an abolitionist assemblage, he wrote New York abolitionist leader Gerrit Smith that he would continue to be a Whig whether or not the party triumphed in elections. “[Whigs] are firm, fearless, resolved in the hour of defeat…willing and yet capable to take the cause of freedom into its keeping.” Yet Seward always acknowledged that the abolitionists made it possible for the radical Whigs, and later Republicans, to be as liberal as they were on slavery. He wrote a friend of the abolitionists that they “played a vital role in awakening the public conscience…opening the way where the masses can follow.”
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 changed Seward’s life, and more than any single event it drove him toward his fierce antislavery politics. Slavery in the Southern states was distasteful enough, Seward believed, but a decision to expand it to the territories, which encompassed half the United States, was unthinkable. He warned, “We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.”
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The Whig Party collapsed the following year, 1855, because the proslavery half of its membership found that it could no longer work with the antislavery half on any issue, not just slavery. Its fall did not hurt Seward; in fact, the dissolution might have helped him. A brand-new national party, the Republicans, had formed to replace the Whigs; it also consolidated more than a dozen growing antislavery parties, such as the Free-Soilers. To the new party, Seward was an invaluable asset because, in addition to his antislavery views, he was well known for supporting public education, public funds for parochial schools, rights for immigrants, and federal assistance for the working man; he advocated economic development and social mobility, and yet, on the conservative side, preached government assistance for business. He appeared to have something for everyone in any party. And, unlike most of the other Republicans, he was famous.

By the time Seward joined the Republicans, he had honed his hot phrases against slavery into short bursts of invective that the antislavery Republicans cherished. As an example, while many radical Republicans would require thirty minutes to explain their view, Seward would simply wail that slavery was “morally unjust, politically unwise, and socially pernicious, in some degree, in every community where it exists.”

He did it time after time, in rallies inside churches and halls in the winter and in front of large crowds at outdoor addresses in spring and summer. And each time he brought the throngs of merchants, farmers, craftsmen, and people of all walks of life to their feet, cheering every barb he tossed at the Democrats, every accusation against slavers, and any and all references to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. He had seized upon an issue, slavery, that seemed to galvanize an entire party and half of a nation. Others had spoken out against slavery, many as brazenly as he had, but somehow Seward had made it his issue and that issue had made him the very visible and very loud champion of the new political party.

Seward was, labor leader Carl Schurz wrote, “the intellectual leader of the antislavery movement.”
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Some of the Republican bosses courted Seward, telling him that he would not only become the leader of the party but would surely be its presidential candidate in 1856. The New Yorker, who had been promoting himself tirelessly since his arrival in the Senate in 1849, believed he now had the White House within his grasp. He would be just as well known in the new party as he had been in the old, perhaps more so because he was now one of its highest-ranking members. The Republicans spoke with one voice against slavery, too. Until 1855, the men that the antislavery parties (the Liberty Party and the Free-Soil Party) did get elected to the Senate and Congress were against the institution but disagreed on an approach to eliminate it. The few Democrats and the ex-Whigs opposed to slavery faced the same quandary. Consequently, they could not agree on how to end it. The Republicans were all united on their plans to halt the spread of the institution and were far better organized. So in 1855, Seward joined the Republicans, who warmly welcomed the veteran campaigner, political strategist, and antislavery champion.
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How to leave one drowning party and jump to another without looking like a political traitor? Easily, decided Thurlow Weed, who cleverly managed to merge the New York wings of both parties into one, the Republicans, preserving the dignity of all the state’s Whigs while at the same time anchoring them in the vibrant, liberal new organization.
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The New Yorker was very happy that he did so. The Republicans may have approved of slavery where it existed, for the moment, but they were defiant about allowing it to be extended to the territories. This viewpoint had become a staple of Seward’s speeches and beliefs, along with his fear that slaveholders would soon completely dominate the federal government. Furthermore, he found far more support among the Republicans than he had among the old Whigs. Upon joining in October 1855, he told a Republican conclave in Albany that the party had a “new, sound, liberal platform…equal and exact justice.” He saw the Republicans as salvation for a country under the heel of the slave empire. “It will rescue and save the country,” he said. “So long as the Republican Party shall be firm and faithful to the Constitution, Union, and the rights of man, I shall serve it with…zeal and devotion.”
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Seward had made the transition to successful Republican with so much ease that he paid little attention to a terrible feud involving himself, Weed, and
Tribune
editor Horace Greeley. The editor, who had political ambitions of his own, wanted to be the governor of New York and worked hard to win the Whig nomination in 1854. Weed did not see Greeley as a successful politician and crudely blocked his efforts, getting Henry Raymond, the editor of Greeley’s rival, the
New York Times
, the nomination. Greeley, accusing both Weed and Seward of betraying him, split with the pair, never to be reunited.