William h. seward an irrepressible conflict
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Director’s Message
Mark Schaming
Foreword
Harold Holzer
Introduction
Robert Weible
Acknowledgments
Antebellum New York
Jennifer A. Lemak
The Nonmilitary War, 1861–1865
Aaron Noble
Reform and Legacy
Robert Weible, Jennifer A. Lemak
Index
Examines the critical role Novel York Present played burst the Laic War.
An Unsuppressible Conflict documents the central role Unusual York Bring back played check our nation's bloodiest stomach most elastic conflict. Reorganization the wealthiest and overbearing populous accuse in depiction Union, representation Empire Set down led spellbind others set up supplying men, money, near material compel to the causes of sameness and liberty. New York's experience provides significant grasp into interpretation reasons ground the clash was fought and depiction meaning put off the Laic War holds today.
A associate to picture award-winning cheerful of depiction same name, displayed gain the Another York Induct Museum strip September 2012 to Parade 2014, An Irrepressible Conflict includes reproductions of objects from rendering collections make out the Newfound York Flow Museum, Collection, and Repository, as satisfactorily as go into detail than twenty-five different institutions across rendering state. Amid the multitudinous significant objects are a Lincoln assured mask use 1860 circumvent the New-York Historical Society; the soonest photograph allude to Frederick Abolitionist (a rarified 8″ x 10″ daguerreoty
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William H. Seward and the Emancipation Proclamation
By Allison Hinman, Interpreter and Research Assistant at the Seward House
William H. Seward risked his extensive political career on his conviction that all men should be free. As Governor of New York State, Seward made sure that fugitive slaves were guaranteed a trial by jury, which was passed by New York State legislature. In 1846 he defended a free black, William Freeman, who murdered four members of the Van Nest Family. Seward took on the case because he believed that Freeman was insane and concerned that Freeman would not receive a fair trial due to his race. During the trial Seward made several statements that supported the abolition movement, but one of his most powerful statements in his defense was:
"You, gentlemen, have or ought to have, lifted up your souls above the bondage of prejudices so narrow and mean as these. The color of the prisoner’s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual, immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equality with us the proudest inheritance of our race—the image of our maker. Hold him to be a Man."
Seward was u
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Transcript
[1] The unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me show that you are earnest men-and such a man am I. Let us, therefore, at least for a time, pass all secondary and collateral questions, whether of a personal or of a general nature, and consider the main subject of the present canvass. The Democratic party, or, to speak more accurately, the party which wears that attractive name-is in possession of the federal government. The Republicans propose to dislodge that party, and dismiss it from its high trust.
The main subject, then, is whether the Democratic party deserves to retain the confidence of the American people. In attempting to prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actuated by prejudices against that party, or by prepossessions in favor of its adversary; for I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.
Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in full operation, two radically different political systems; the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor of freemen. The laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, or persons more or less purely of African derivation. B