which he put to me, and which I have just answered, in relation to congressional interference in the Territories, by making a slave code there.

It is true that he goes on to answer the question by arguing that under the decision of the Supreme Court it is the duty of a man to vote for a slave code in the Territories. He says that it is his duty, under the decision that the court has made, and if he believes in that decision he would be a perjured man if he did not give the vote. I want to know whether he is not bound to a decision which is contrary to his opinions just as much as to one in accordance with his opinions. If the decision of the Supreme Court, the tribunal created by the Constitution to decide the question, is final and binding, is he not bound by it just as strongly as if he was for it instead of against it originally? Is every man in this land allowed to resist decisions he does not like, and only support those that meet his approval? What are important courts worth unless their decisions are binding on all good citizens? It is the fundamental principle of the judiciary that its decisions are final. It is created for that purpose, so that when you cannot agree among yourselves on a disputed point you appeal to the judicial tribunal, which steps in and decides for you, and that decision is then binding on every good citizen. It is the law of the land just as much with Mr. Lincoln against it as for it. And yet he says if that decision is binding he is a perjured man if he does not vote for the slave code in the different Territories of this Union. Well, if you [turning to Mr. Lincoln] are not going to resist the decision, if you obey it, and do not intend to array mob law against the constituted authorities, then according to your own statement you will be a perjured man if you do not vote to establish slavery in these Territories. My doctrine is, that even taking Mr. Lincoln's view that the decision recognizes the right of a man to carry his slaves into the Territories of the United States, if he pleases, yet after he gets there he needs affirmative law to make that right of any value. The same doctrine not only applies to slave property, but all other kinds of property. Chief Justice Taney places it upon the ground that slave property is on an equal footing with other property. Suppose one of your merchants should move to Kansas and open a liquor store; he has a right to take groceries and liquors there, but the mode of selling them, and the circumstances under which they shall be sold, and all the remedies, must be prescribed by local legislation, and if that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effectually as if there was a constitutional provision

against the sale of liquor. So the absence of local legislation to encourage and support slave property in a Territory excludes it practically just as effectually as if there was a positive constitutional provision against it. Hence I assert that under the Dred Scott decision you cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there are an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. If the people are opposed to it, our right is barren, worthless, useless right; and if they are for it, they will support and encourage it. We come right back, therefore, to the practical question, if the people of a Territory want slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it you cannot force it on them. And this is the practical question, the great principle, upon which our institutions rest. I am willing to take the decision of the Supreme Court as it was pronounced by that august tribunal, without stopping to inquire whether I would have decided that way or not. I have had many a decision made against me on questions of law which I did not like, but I was bound by them just as much as if I had had a hand in making them and approved them. Did you ever see a lawyer or a client lose his case that he approved the decision of the court? They always think the decision unjust when it is given against them. In a government of laws like ours we must sustain the Constitution as our fathers made it, and maintain the rights of the States as they are guaranteed under the Constitution, and then we will have peace and harmony between the different States and sections of this glorious Union.

The remaining debates were held at Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. While many strong arguments were presented on old issues, and new issues even were started up, the historical importance of the controversy had culminated in Lincoln's securing from Douglas a statement and defence of his "Freeport Doctrine" of "unfriendly legislation" as a means of enforcing popular sovereignty while accepting the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court. For this declaration Lincoln had been playing from the beginning. In a letter to Henry Asbury, of July 31, 1858, he had written of Senator Douglas:

He cares nothing for the South; he knows he is already dead there. He only leans Southward more to keep the Buchanan party from growing in Illinois. You shall have hard work to get him directly to the point whether a territorial legislature

has or has not the power to exclude slavery. But if you succeed in bringing him to it-though he will be compelled to say it possesses no such power-he will instantly take ground that slavery cannot actually exist in the Territory unless the people desire it, and so give it protection by territorial legislation. If this offends the South, he will let it offend them, as at all events he means to hold on to his chances in Illinois.

At a conference of Republican leaders the night before the Freeport debate Lincoln announced his intention of forcing this declaration from Douglas. He was counseled not to do so, since the theory would be popular with the Illinois voters and would probably win the Senatorship for Douglas. Lincoln replied that the South would never accept the man who enunciated the doctrine as President. "I am after larger game," he said; "the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.”

Events fulfilled Lincoln's prophecy. The South accused Douglas of violating a bargain with it. Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, said (in a speech in the Senate, May 22, 1860):

We accuse him [Douglas] for this: to wit, that having bargained with us upon a point upon which we were at issue that it should be considered a judicial point; that he would abide by the decision; that he would act under the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party; that, having said that to us here in the Senate, he went home, and under the stress of a local election his knees gave way; his whole person trembled. His adversary stood upon principle and was beaten; and lo! he is the candidate of a mighty party for the presidency of the United States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered; but lo! the grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because of his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble prize, has cost him the loss of the presidency of the United States.

In the election of State legislators which followed this debate the Republicans received a total majority of the votes cast, showing that Lincoln was the choice of the people for Senator. However, owing to a Democratic "gerrymander" of the State senatorial districts, a majority of Democrats were returned to the State Sen

ate, and these returned Douglas to the national Senate. Lincoln expected defeat and was thoroughly contented with the results of the contest, the chief of which, to his mind, were the assured defeat of Douglas for the next presidential nomination and the consequent division of the Democratic party into Northern and Southern factions, presaging the election of a Republican President. It was for this division that he had planned, even at the hazard of his own defeat.

Because of the opposition to him by Senator Benjamin and other Southern statesmen Senator Douglas made a speaking tour through the South to rebuild his political fences in that region. In a speech at Memphis, Tenn., in December, 1858, he declared:

"Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil, and production making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will have a slave code," and where conditions are unfavorable for slavery they will prohibit it. The Almighty, he said, had drawn a line on this continent, on the one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the other by white labor. That line did not run inflexibly along the parallel of 36° 30′, the artificial boundary once established by law [in the Missouri compromise], but meandered through the border States and Territories where the self-interest of the inhabitants formed the natural means for its determination.

In a speech at Chicago, on March 1, 1859, Abraham Lincoln replied to this sentiment as follows:

THE MORAL CLIMATE LINE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Suppose it is true that the Almighty has drawn a line across this continent, on the south side of which part of the people will hold the rest as slaves; that the Almighty ordered this; that it is right, unchangeably right, that men ought there to be held as slaves; that their fellowmen will always have the right to hold them as slaves. I ask you, this once admitted, how can you believe that it is not right for us, or for them coming here, to hold slaves on this other side of the line? Once we come to acknowledge that it is right, that it is the

law of the Eternal Being for slavery to exist on one side of that line, have we any sure ground to object to slaves being held on the other side? Once admit the position that a man rightfully holds another man as property on one side of the line, and you must, when it suits his convenience to come to the other side, admit that he has the same right to hold his property there. Once admit Judge Douglas's proposition, and we must all finally give way. Although we may not bring ourselves to the idea that it is to our interest to have slaves in this Northern country, we shall soon bring ourselves to admit that while we may not want them, if anyone else does, he has the moral right to have them. Step by step, south of the judge's moral climate line in the States, in the Territories everywhere, and then in all the States-it is thus that Judge Douglas would lead us inevitably to the nationalization of slavery. Whether by his doctrine of squatter sovereignity or by the ground taken by him in his recent speech in Memphis and through the South -that wherever the climate makes it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property they will pass a slave code whether it is covertly nationalized by congressional legislation, or by the Dred Scott decision, or by the sophistical and misleading doctrine he has last advanced, the same goal is inevitably reached by the one or the other device. It is only traveling to the same place by different roads.

It is in this direction lies all the danger that now exists to the great Republican cause. I take it that, so far as concerns forcibly establishing slavery in the Territories by congressional legislation, or by virtue of the Dred Scott decision, that day has passed. Our only serious danger is that we shall be led upon this ground of Judge Douglas, on the delusive assumption that it is a good way of whipping our opponents, when in fact it is a way that leads straight to final surrender. The Republican party should not dally with Judge Douglas when it knows where his proposition and his leadership would take us, nor be disposed to listen to it because it was best somewhere else to support somebody occupying his ground. That is no just reason why we ought to go over to Judge Douglas, as we were called upon to do last year.1 Never forget that we have before us this whole matter of the right or wrong of slavery in this Union, though the immediate question is as to its spreading out into new Territories and States.

1 Horace Greeley in his New York Tribune had advocated that the Republicans assist Douglas to return to the Senate in view of his opposition to the Administration.