William H. Seward Quotes
There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.
Seward, William H. The Works of William H. Seward. Edited by George E. Baker, vol. 1, Redfield, 1853, p. 73.
A few years later he had a clearer idea of what was to be done. However, the additional factor of the Civil War played a big part in driving his Emancipation Proclamation. See {609360}
He is often referred to as “of Lahore.” He was a much better theologian than a historian. His credit of Islam with the principles that would end slavery, ignored the fact that just as American founding fathers espoused equality and freedom yet some owned slaves, likewise Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a slaveholder. Historically, long after most of the world had abolished slavery, it still existed in the Islamic nations. They were forced out of the African slave trade by the European powers in the 19th century. But slavery was legal in Saudi Arabia as late as the 1960s. Slavery was still practiced in Sudan in 2005 with Muslims attacking Christians and Animists and taking them as slaves despite the official laws banning such practices. The government itself aided the slavers. Also, although Islam is credited with a major assault on slavery, it was not slavery per se that Muhammad banned. It was the slavery of another Muslim. Sharia and the Koran allows slavery so long as the slave is an unbeliever.
Contrast this view with that of Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
Many of the Americans captured by the Islamic Barbary pirates in the years leading up to the Barbary War were sold into slavery. Eaton, who was the American consul at Tunis, couldn’t help but notice the tragic parallel between the suffering of those captured by the pirates and slaves in the American South.
The highest court in New York.
Indian and Black slaves were outlawed very early in Connecticut, not on moral grounds of concern for the Indians and Blacks, but because of the negative effects on the white poor. Why would anyone pay the poor any more than the amortization costs of a slave? Therefore there was no way a poor white could make a living wage if slavery were to coexist.
Brown was then a member of the state legislature representing Providence. He was also himself a ship owner in the slave trade and he was the brother of the leading Rhode Island abolitionist, Moses Brown. See {585793}. John Brown became the first American, prosecuted in federal court for illegal slave trading –-- a prosecution brought, in part, by his own brother, Moses. He was acquitted.
The cotton industry and slavery were a very important part of the economy of Providence, RI. The Rhode Island cotton mills were supplied by Southern cotton produced by slaves and carried from the South on Rhode Island ships. Many of the southern slaves were kidnapped from Africa from Rhode Island slave trading ships. When the slave trade was made illegal, Brown was the first slave trader prosecuted. His brother, Moses Brown, a vehement abolitionist was one of the men who brought the prosecution.
William Henry Seward was United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as governor of New York and as a United States Senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a prominent figure in the Republican Party in its formative years, and was praised for his work on behalf of the Union as Secretary of State during the Civil War.
