Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/187

 SEWARD HIS "IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT** SPEECH* (1858) Bom in 1801, died in 1872; elected to the New York State Senate in 1830; an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of New York in 1834; Governor of New York in 1838 and again in 1840; United States Senator in 1849-61 ; prominent candidate for the Republican nomi- nation for President in 1860; Secretary of State in 1861-69; his assas- sination attempted at the time Lincoln was killed in 1865, being severely wounded; prevailed on France to withdraw troops from Mexico; negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which occur all around me show that you are earnest men — and such a man am I. Let us, therefore, at least for a time, pass all secondary and col- lateral questions, whether of a personal or of a general nature, and consider the main sub- ject of the present canvass. Our country is a theater which exhibits in full operation two radically different political J From a speech delivered from the stump in Rochester on Octo- ber 25, 1858, and widely read and commented on at the time. Seward was then the chief leader of the Republican party, and was re- garded as its probable candidate for president in the election of 1860. Rhodes doubts if, in the position taken in this speech, Seward was influenced by what Lincoln had said of similar import on June 17 of the same year, at Springfield. " He would at that time," says Rhodes, " have certainly scorned the notion of borrowing ideas from Lincoln; and had he studied the progress of the Illinois canvass, h© must have seen that the declaration did not meet •with, general favor." IX—12 177