John C. Calhoun on Slavery

John C. Calhoun on Slavery “We of the South will not, cannot surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It can not be subverted without drenching the country in blood, and extirpating one or the other of the races.”

“I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.”

“I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion.”

Daniel Webster on the Union “I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States.… I am looking out for no fragment upon which to float away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, but for the good of the whole, and the preservation of all;… I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union.”

“There can be no such thing as peaceable secession.… Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, Sir! No, Sir!”

William Seward on Slavery “I feel assured that slavery must give way, and will give way, to the salutary instructions of economy, and to the ripening influences of humanity.”

“Shall I tell you what this collision means?… It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.”

“I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward.”