The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery: Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860Edgerton, Joseph K. (Joseph Ketchum)
History
The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery: Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860
Edgerton, Joseph K. (Joseph Ketchum)
Campaign literature; Slavery -- United States -- History
Mr. Seward hangs out the signal of uncompromising conflict. This, in
effect, if not in words, says he, is the Holy Land of freedom and
universal equality. Infidels and barbarians possess it in all its
Southern borders, and hold there black christians their coequals in all
the rights of men in an inhuman bondage. Let us then by the aid of the
exiles from foreign lands overcome the infidels and barbarians, and
plant in all that fair domain the standard of the higher law, of
universal suffrage and universal equality; and forthwith all through the
North, Republican _Wide-Awakes_ muster their forces for this great
political crusade. I am drawing no fancy picture. What I say is but a
legitimate comment upon the language of Mr. Seward in his Chicago
speech, already referred to, and in other speeches he has made during
his recent pilgrimage through the North-west. Mr. Seward is the
self-constituted exponent of the _higher law_ in its application to
political parties and measures, and to Constitutions and systems of
government, but in his pursuit of one idea, he seems to forget that the
sacred volume to which we all look as the source of our best and truest
knowledge of the will and purposes of Providence concerning man, if it
clearly reveals to us any thing, clearly reveals this fact, which all
human history confirms: that man is not a perfect being; that this earth
is not a perfect state; that disorder, and imperfection, and inequality,
and change must ever pervade it, and mark all human institutions. This
earth and its mortal life is but the threshhold--the vestibule of human
destiny--that reaches far into the eternal ages. Believe, as he may, in
human equality or in the perfectibility of humanity, no such theory has
ever yet been realized, nor will it ever be realized in this
probationary state of man. Philosophy may teach--political constitutions
may declare, and political parties may attempt to enforce as a practical
truth, that all men are equal. No such theory will ever find a perfect
realization in any system of human government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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