that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. COUNTRY born and bred, in western New York State, SEWARD graduated at Union College, studied law, and practiced it in Auburn until 1830, when he was elected to the State Senate. He was a man of excellent sense and judgment, cool and clearheaded, gifted with a persuasive logic in speech, and wisely pursuant of ethical aims in legislation. He was also a shrewd reader of men and political conditions, and, both as a Whig party man and a promoter of statesmanlike views, he was soon a recognized leader. An unsuccessful candidacy for Governor of New York in 1834 was succeeded by a success in 1838, and a reëlection in 1840, while in 1843 he was sent to the United States Senate. He remained there through all the turbulent excitement of the ante-war period until 1861, and was, both in the Senate and in many addresses throughout the North, one of the most noted men of the new Republican party which he had helped organize in 1856. SEWARD was generally expected to be the Republican candidate in 1860, but Providence had for that place a simpler yet a stronger man in LINCOLN. He became, however, head of LINCOLN'S cabinet as Secretary of State, and was of signal service in various matters, especially in the Trent complication with England, in persuading France to withdraw her troops from Mexico, and in the purchase of Alaska from Russia. On the night of LINCOLN's assassination SEWARD was brutally attacked, but he recovered, and aided JOHNSON during the reconstruction tangle. He made several trips to Europe, in 1870-1871 going around the world. One of SEWARD'S most famous speeches—that on the "Irrepressible Conflict" (October 25, 1858) — is here given. Possibly suggested by LINCOLN'S Speech on The Divided House," it was yet a landmark in a time of political drifting, and showed the country its true position. 66 THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT and THE unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me show that you are earnest men 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 theater, 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. But this is only accidental. The principle of the system is, that labor in every society, by whomsoever performed, is necessarily unintellectual, groveling, and base; and that the laborer, equally for his own good and for the welfare of the State, ought to be enslaved. The white laboring man, whether native or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bondage. You need not be told now that the slave system is the older of the two, and that once it was universal. The emancipation of our own ancestors, Caucasians and Europeans as they were, hardly dates beyond a period of five hundred years. The great melioration of human society which modern times exhibit is mainly due to the incomplete substitution of the system of voluntary labor for the one of servile labor, which has already taken place. This African slave system is one which, in its origin and in its growth, has been altogether foreign from the habits of the races which colonized these States, and established civilization here. It was introduced on this continent as an engine of conquest, and for the establishment of monarchical power, by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them all over South America, Central America, Louisiana, |