The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-10-19

william n. Stewards Irrepressible Com
Met ut Harpcr's Ferry-A Warning to
the Mem OF New York.
The events of Monday at Harper's Ferry are
such as call for the serious consideration Of
every honestly disposed man in this oommu-
nifty, IN this State and In this country Be-
tween events and ideas there is always logi-
cal connection, and the bloody and brutal
speech delivered in Rochester very nearly
year ago, reprinted in our columns to-day, and
the bloody and brutal acts committed on the
banks of the Potomac two days since, present
this connection as clearly as the sun at noon
day. One is the process and the other the fruit
Of the slavery agitation.
The question Of slavery formed one of the
hottest compromises of the constitution, which
is based upon the great truth that selfgoyerned
States, having different social organizations,
can exist and prosper in political union. Upon
this depends the very existence of the theory of
political selfgovernment Forty years ago
ambitious demagogues endeavored to disturb
that compromise, and their sophistries perilled
the existence of the Union. Then it was
that the statesmen reasserted the COM
promise, establishing what is known as
the Missouri Line. Twenty-six years later
the demagogues again raised the question,
aud in 1916 it was thrown like a fire.
brand into Congress in the shape of the Wilmot
Proviso, where it was famed into fame by
such men as Preston King and VIM. II. Seward.
From there it was carried to Buffalo, and stea-
Oily fostered by John Van Buren,, John A. Dix
and others, for their own purely selfish purposes.
In 1850 the statesmen again struck hands
on it, and seemed to put the question at rest by
the admission of California into the Union, and
the so-called compromise measures Of that
year. Clay and Calhoun, Webster and Benton,
stood side by side in their support, and with
them, and in their presence, the whole country
took solemn oath not to resuscitate the ques-
ton again.
On this pledge poor Pierce was elected in
1852, when the doctrines of Seward proved so
disastrous to the veteran hero General Scott.
But the politicians are all alike, and the very
thing that had swamped Seward in 1852 was in
1854 again preached by Jefferson Davis and
Stephen Arnold Douglas, bent alike on their
own selfish aims. The Kansas-N Nebraska bill,
which was forged by them, and which Pierce
was fool enough to support, opened the flood
gates Of agitation which patriotism and states
manship had twice closed. This produced
the Kansas strife, and that strife brought
into existence the Browns ana Ander-
sons, who are ever ready to lead igno-
rance into the field Of blood and plumber.
Driven from Kansas by the wisdom of Mr.. Bu-
chanan, the preachings Of Seward have attract
ed them eastward, and lead them to think that
in the populous counties of the northernmost
slave States they can re establish with impu-
nifty the lawless and bloody conflict they main
tanned in the wilds of the Kansas frontier.
We place these teachings again before our
readers to-day, and their precepts and their
consequences should not, for single moment,
be lost sight of. In that brutal and bloody
Rochester manifesto Seward proclaims that
this Union is the theatre of an ''irrepressible
conflict between two antagonistic social sys-
TENS, one of which must prevail throughout
the Union; that the system of negro slavery in
North; that free labor and slave labor cannot
exist under one government that it is ian ire
pressible conflict between enduring forces;"
that the cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice fields
Of the South must be titled by free labor, or
the rye and wheat fields of the North surren-
dered to slave culture; that the act Of
1908 is to be repealed and slaves enough
imported to fill the interior Of the CONT
nent; that this result is to be prevented
only by destroying slavery in the South; that
slavery in the South can only be destroyed
by getting the control of Congress; and that
this is the great object and aim of the republi-
can party. Mr.. Stewards friends defend him,
by asserting that be wants to carry out these
destructive tendencies only through constitu-
tional means; but they might as well argue
that murderer does not wish to kill man,
but only to cut his jugular vein.
SHOULD William II. Seward ever be elected
President of the United States, his brutal and
bloody "irrepressible conflict" started by po-
litical demagogues in Kansas, and blooming
again at Harper's Ferry, will spring into life
and action in all the northern border counties
of the slave States A thousand times the ex-
element would be witnessed among the slaves
everywhere that was felt during the Fremont
campaign, when, Notwithstanding that Fremont
rejected the ideas and the help of Seward, the
slaves were very generally impressed with the
idea that they were to be freed. Flaming
dwellings and murdered families would rouse
our Southern brethren on all sides to arm,
not alone to put down servile Instruction,
but to resist that insane federal Congress
sional action which Seward would impress
upon the government The slavery COM
promise is the grandest and hottest of
the constitution. 1t involves the right of
selfgovernment in the North as well as in the
South. IF sixteen Northern States NAV die