Seward's friends say he means to carry out his destructive tendencies only through constitutional means. They might as well argue a murderer does not wish to kill a man — only to cut his jugular vein. His 'irrepressible conflict' bloomed again at Harper's Ferry.
Original passage & context
"Mr. Seward's friends defend him, by asserting that he wants to carry out these destructive tendencies only through constitutional means; but they might as well argue that a murderer does not wish to kill a man, but only to cut his jugular vein. Should William H. Seward ever be elected President of the United States, his brutal and bloody "irrepressible conflict," started by political 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."
Bennett's Herald, two days after the raid, pins Harpers Ferry on Seward's 'irrepressible conflict' doctrine ahead of the New York election. From rough microfilm OCR, reconciled per policy ('Shquld' -> 'Should').
Read it in the original — LoC scan, NY Herald, Oct 19, 1859, p. 6 ↗
Northern press · Democratic-leaning Condensed — not verbatim Source scan differs from our text — see the record