Seward’s 1858 speech in Rochester: The spark of the irresistible conflict

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It was cold and drizzling on October 25, 1858, in Rochester. In Corinthian Hall, Senator William Seward walked to the podium amidst cheers. He held an unlit cigar in his hand and frequently during his speech, jabbed the air with his cigar to drive home his message.

To start, he asked: “Are you earnest?”  The audience was quiet. He shouted: “Are you earnest?” Intense applause erupted. “So am I,” the Senator shouted.

He got quickly to the point: the slave system in America’s south not only enslaved the Black man but the freed man as well because communities prosper or decline in “just the degree that they practice or neglect to practice the primary duties of justice and humanity.”

On that night in downtown Rochester, William Seward predicted America – half slave and half free — was on a collision course and an “irrepressible conflict” awaited the nation. Seward, a member of the newly-minted Republican Party, blamed the Democratic Party for a “dark record” of being beholden to the slave empire of the South. To stop slavery, Seward declared, required vanquishing Democrats, adding it was “high time for the friends of freedom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution.”

Compromise was unacceptable, Seward said, adding “a revolution has begun and I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.”

The speech drew praise and fire. One person in attendance compared Seward to a knight of the round table. Another observer said Seward’s delivery exhibited a ”self-absorbed man in a tense state of moral and mental excitement,” adding the effect was “electric.”

Democrats across the nation fired back: Southerners called the speech wicked, malicious, and even treasonous, accusing Seward of bombast and trying to create an “irrepressible conflict” where no such conflict existed. President James Buchanan, a Democrat, described Seward’s comments as “reckless fancies” that “raised a storm” that Seward lacked “both the courage and power to quell.”

The story behind the speech in Rochester suggests it had as much to do with local politics as it did with national sentiments.

Rochester’s importance to state politics in 1858 was undeniable. It was the home of both Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass and a center of anti-slavery sentiments. Douglass was a founder of the Radical Abolitionist Party or People’s Party and published his newspaper across the street from the Corinthian Hall. Rochester was the home of two of the most significant anti-slavery new Republicans in the state. Henry Selden, a Rochester attorney and founder of the Republican Party, was the sitting Lieutenant Governor. Addison Gardiner had served as Lieutenant Governor a decade before.

In the fall of 1858, when Seward came to Rochester, there was a New York gubernatorial election. The Democrats, after years of wrangling, were united. They had a formidable candidate, Judge Amasa Parker, who had been defeated in 1856 in large part  because two smaller parties – the People’s Party and the American Party – clouded the election landscape. The smaller parties – particularly the People’s Party (Radical Abolitionist Party) — were militantly anti-slavery.

The American Party, running under the banner of the Know Nothings, held its nominating convention in Rochester in 1856. They captured more than 20 per cent of the gubernatorial vote in the 1856 election, which allowed the first Republican Governor John Young to win with only 44 per cent of the vote.

Prior to arriving in Rochester, Seward knew that a similar spin-off of anti-slavery third-party voters in 1858 could tilt the governor’s race to Democrats, impacting his political future nationwide and potentially his re-election by the state legislature.

Weeks before, Seward had collaborated with his advisor and fellow anti-slavery confidant Thurlow Weed to convene a meeting with the smaller parties to field a unified anti-Democratic slate under the banner of a Union Party. The effort failed, leaving Seward, who had long held anti-slavery views, to conclude that only a militant anti-slavery campaign would bring the third-party voters into the Republican fold.

No doubt, Seward had national concerns as he headed to Rochester in October. He was the nominal leader of the new Republican Party. Many assumed he was a presidential candidate-in-waiting for the new party, which needed to continue a strong showing in the Northeast. Keeping a Republican in the New York governorship would confirm Seward’s political power.

Seward also knew that his speech would draw a stark contrast with the presumed Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who espoused a compromise for slavery in the West with his “popular sovereignty” doctrine that would allow new territories to decide by plebiscite whether to be slave or free. Seward, to the cheers of his Rochester audience, rejected that compromise, as he had in the Senate for most of the decade.

The fiery Rochester speech worked in New York in 1858. The Know Nothing vote dropped to only 10 per cent of the electorate,  enabling the Republican Party to win the governor’s race by only three percentage points and pick up seats in the state legislature.

But the spark that ignited New Yorkers’ fervor ultimately consumed Seward’s national ambitions. During the same election cycle, an unknown lawyer and one-term member of Congress described America’s choice in the slavery debate in less bellicose Biblical terms, claiming that a “house divided cannot stand.”  Abraham Lincoln nuanced his stance on slavery; even in later debates with Douglas during the 1858 Illinois Senate race, he repeated his personal opposition to slavery, but he accepted it in the states where it currently existed under the Constitution.

The moderation on the slavery question and Lincoln’s refusal to claim that war over the question was “irrepressible” or “inevitable,” cast him as a moderate in the eventual contest to select a Republican presidential nominee in 1860. Republicans, seeking an electoral college victory in the divided country, needed a moderate to attract voters from border and swing states who, although repelled by slavery, were fearful of an unavoidable civil war. Seward’s Rochester speech eschewed compromise on the slavery issue and Lincoln, cloaked as a moderate but privately concurring with Seward’s assessment, prevailed.

As the new president let it be known that his former rival Seward would be his Secretary of State, southern states began the march to secession and months later the “irrepressible conflict,” foretold in Rochester 187 years ago, began.

About the author:
Hon. Richard A. Dollinger is a retired former member of the New York Court of Claims and a former New York State Senator from Rochester.