The drift toward the Irrepressible Conflict
William Seward was an outspoken critic of the institution of slavery. Because of his anti-slavery views, he was much involved in helping slaves escape to freedom and financed anti-slavery activists. He states his beliefs that the slave system was intolerable, unjust, and inhumane. His arguments in the speech about the irrepressible conflict were that the slave institution would soon cause a conflict between slaveholding states, particularly in the antebellum South and non-slaveholding states. In his argument, this conflict on the basis of differences in ideology about the institution of slavery would result in the entire nation taking one path, either slaveholding or free states.
A group of measures that tightened the fugitive slave act termed as the Compromise of 1850 were passed and were meant to maintain the slave trade in the South. Seward saw the challenge posed by the Compromise of 1850 with regard to the differences of the socioeconomic institutions of Northern and Southern states. According to Seward, “free-labor systems [secured] universal contentment [and] the state inevitably becomes … a republic or democracy” while in slaveholding states, “… the masters secured all political power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy” (71). Seward’s view, these opposing sides were set to achieve their interest where the Northern citizens would be compelled to return escaped slaves to the failure of the Southern state to which they would face imprisonment charges. As a result, these measures aggravated the tensions between the pro-slave and anti-slavery factions as many Northerners who were previously indifferent to slavery and abolitionists soon took their stand against the evils of the institution. Before the Compromise of 1850, many Northerners did not have firsthand experience with the cruelty and oppressive nature of slavery.
According to Seward, the westward expansion would encourage slavery to spread into the Southwestern territories of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. As a result, the issue of slavery continued to worsen as the nation expanded since either party wanted to have a say on the socioeconomic systems that the new states would adopt. The arguments around the subject of slavery soon resulted in conflicts about fairness in the representation of the interests of either party in Congress. Since the refusal to comply with the act by sympathizers was highly publicized, it brought about a rift between the Northern states and the Southern states. Consequently, the Southern states threatened to secede, and the union began to fall apart. The dispute over the institution of slavery proved to be an irreplaceable conflict resulting in the American Civil War between the Northern and the Southern states. This conflict culminated in the final unraveling of the Compromise of 1850 was the Emancipation proclamation of 1863 by Abraham Lincoln.