Slavery Expansion Quotes

Hitherto, this tyranny of slaveholders over non-slaveholding citizens has been mainly confined to slaveholding communities. But Slavery has of late arrogantly claimed to be national. Congress is sanctioning the usurpation, and the Federal Courts and even State Courts are boldly enforcing it. In violation of the Constitution, Congress compels the non-slaveholders in the free States to capture and deliver the fugitive slave. Congress at its last session was on the eve of subverting the original, honored jurisdiction of State Courts over Federal officers

Just as much as the United States mattered to cotton, cotton mattered to the United States. Cotton reinvigorated slavery, established the young nation's place in the global economy, and eventually helped create the political and economic conflicts that resulted in civil war.

I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States - old as well as new - North as well as South.

The institution of African slavery, as it existed in about half the States of the Union, and the contests pervading the public mind for many years, between those who desired its curtailment and ultimate extinction and those who desired additional safeguards for its security and perpetuation, culminated in the effort, on the part of most of the States in which slavery existed, to separate from the Federal government, and to resist its authority. This constituted the war of rebellion, and whatever auxiliary causes may have contributed to bring about this war, undoubtedly the overshadowing and efficient cause was African slavery.

I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question—that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices,—I am inflexible.

If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers?

The history of our Union is lesson enough, for every candid mind, of the fatal effects of every, the least, compromise with evil. The experience of the fifty years passed under it, shows us the slaves trebling in numbers;--slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government;--prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;--trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. Why prolong the experiment?

If a supposed insurrection in the sparse slave population of Northern Virginia throws the whole South into consternation, what kind of security will that section enjoy when thousands of ship loads of the same incendiary material have been brought from Africa, filling up the southern States? We appeal to the conservative men of the country to say which is the safest and best policy: the Democratic, which is striving to multiply and expand this volcanic element, or the Republican which seeks to limit and circumscribe it, and place it on the way of ultimate extinction.

What Abraham Lincoln had to face was a culturally and politically cohesive bloc of states comprising half the country, refusing to discuss even the limitation of slavery; while he had only the most feeble means of enforcement. The British and the French could do their emancipating at a distance; Lincoln had armed resistance almost literally at his doorstep.

The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories, We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people.

Although anti-Slavery is weak in political circles, it was never stronger with the masses of the people. The great heart of the country is sound. Thousands and millions of true men all over the North wait but the occasion for a practical demonstration of their power, to show how firm is their attachment to the principles of freedom, and how deeply they scorn the shallow fools who have the impertinence to talk about "crushing out" those principles. We expect to see Slavery go on pressing and pushing the advantages it derived from the adjustment of 1850, till a reaction is created that will again convulse the country to its center. Slavery is imperious, encroaching, truculent, belligerent. Its own conduct will thus ultimately generate an explosive force that must blow it to atoms.

Come on then, Gentlemen of the Slave States. Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom. 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 the right.

We are playing for a mighty stake. The game must be played boldly... We are organizing. We will be compelled to shoot, burn and hang, but the thing will soon be over.... If we win we can carry slavery to the Pacific ocean.

There is this vital difference between all those states and the judge's [Douglas's] Kansas experiment; that they sought to disestablish slavery which had already been established, while the judge seeks, so far as he can, to disestablish freedom, which had been established there by the Missouri Compromise.

Don’t act on the defensive at all. Don’t refer to your past speeches or positions … hold Douglas up as a traitor and conspirator—a pro-slavery bamboozling demagogue.

The anti-slavery feeling has got to be so great at the North that the owners of slave property in these States have a presentiment that it is a doomed institution, and the instincts of self-interest impels them to get rid of that property which is doomed. The consequence is, that it will go down lower and. lower, until it all gets to the Cotton States--until it gets to the bottom. There is the weight of a continent upon it forcing it down.

This position of this Northern party brought about the troubles of 1850, and the political excitement of 1854.

I can not but hate the prospect of slavery's expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.