nor expected quarter from the Southern faction led by Jefferson Davis. So far from avoiding conflict, he seems rather to have forced the fighting. He flaunted his views in the faces of the fire-eaters. Prudence would have suggested silence, when a convention of Southern States met at Vicksburg and resolved that "all laws, State and Federal, prohibiting the African slave-trade, ought to be repealed,"" but Douglas, who knew something of the dimensions which this illicit traffic had already assumed, at once declared himself opposed to it. He said privately in a conversation, which afterwards was reported by an anonymous correspondent to the New York Tribune, that he believed fifteen thousand Africans were brought into the country last year. He had seen "with his own eyes three hundred of those recently imported miserable beings in a slave-pen at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and also large numbers at Memphis, Tennessee.''

In a letter which speedily became public property, Douglas said that he would not accept the nomination of the Democratic party, if the convention should interpolate into the party creed "such new issues as the revival of the African slave-trade, or a congressional slave code for the Territories.""3 And to leave no doubt as to his attitude he wrote a second letter, devoted exclusively to this subject; it also found its way, as the author probably intended it should, into the newspapers. He opposed the revival of the African slave-trade because it was abolished by one of the com promises which had made the Federal Union and the

1Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 371.

2 Ibid., pp. 369-370.

'Letter to J. B. Dorr, June 22, 1859; Flint, Douglas, pp. 168-169.

Constitution. "In accordance with this compromise, I am irreconcilably opposed to the revival of the African slave-trade, in any form and under any circumstances.""1 How deeply this unequivocal condemnation lacerated the feelings of the South, will never be known until the economic necessities and purposes of the large plantation owners are more clearly revealed.

The captious criticism of the Freeport doctrine by Southerners of the Calhoun-Jefferson Davis school was less damaging, from a legal point of view, than the sober analysis of Lincoln. The emphasis in Lincoln's famous question at Freeport fell upon the word lawful: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way," etc. Douglas had replied to the question of legal right by an assertion of the power of the people of the Territories. This answer, as Lincoln pointed out subsequently, was equivalent to saying that "a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has the lawful right to be." As a prediction, Douglas's simple statement, that if the people of a Territory wanted slavery they would have it, and if they did not, they would not let it be forced on them, was fully justified by the facts of American history. It has been characteristic of the American people that, without irreverence for law, they have not allowed it to stand in the way of their natural development: they have not, as a rule, driven rough-shod over law, but have quietly allowed undesirable laws to fall into innocuous desuetude.

1Letter to J. L. Peyton, August 2, 1859; Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 465-466.

2 Speech at Columbus, Ohio, September, 1859; see Debates, p. 250.

But such an answer was unworthy of a man who prided himself upon his fidelity to the obligation of the Constitution and the laws. Feeling the full force of Lincoln's inexorable logic,1 but believing that it was bottomed on a false premise, Douglas endeavored to give his Freeport doctrine its proper constitutional setting. During the summer, he elaborated an historical and constitutional defense of popular sovereignty. The editors of Harper's Magazine so far departed from the traditions of that popular periodical as to publish this long and tedious essay in the September number. Douglas probably calculated that through this medium better than almost any other, he would reach those readers to whom Lincoln made his most effective appeal.2

The essay bore the title "The Dividing Line between Federal and Local Authority," with the sub-caption, "Popular Sovereignty in the Territories." In his interpretation of history, the author proved himself rather a better advocate than historian. He had traversed much the same ground in his speeches-and with far more vivacity and force. Douglas searched the colonial records, and found-one is tempted to say, to find our fathers contending unremittingly for "the inalienable right, when formed into political communi

1On his return to Washington after the debates, Douglas said to Wilson, "He [Lincoln] is an able and honest man, one of the ablest of the nation. I have been in Congress sixteen years, and there is not a man in the Senate I would not rather encounter in debate.' "" Wilson, Slave Power in America, II, p. 577.

"It does not seem likely that Douglas hoped to reach the people of the South through Harper's Magazine, as it never had a large circulation south of Mason and Dixon's line. See Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. 292.

ties, to exercise exclusive power of legislation in their local legislatures in respect to all things affecting their internal polity-slavery not excepted.""

Douglas took issue with the fundamental postulate of Lincoln's syllogism-that a Territory is the mere creature of Congress and cannot be clothed with powers not possessed by the creator. He denied that such an inference could be drawn from that clause in the Constitution which permits Congress to dispose of, and make all needful rules for, the territory or other property belonging to the United States. Names were deceptive. The word "territory" in this connection was not used in a political, but in a geographical The power of Congress to organize governments for the Territories must be inferred rather from the power to admit new States into the Union. The Federal government possessed only expressly delegated powers; and the absence of any explicit authority to interfere in local territorial affairs must be held to inhibit any exercise of such power. It was on these grounds that the Supreme Court had ruled that Congress was not authorized by the Constitution to prohibit slavery in the Territories.

sense.

It had been erroneously held by some, continued the essayist, that the Court decided in the Dred Scott case that a territorial legislature could not legislate in respect to slave property like other property. He understood the Court to speak only of forbidden powers-powers denied to Congress, to State legislatures and to territorial legislatures alike. But if ever slavery should be decided to be one of these forbidden subjects of legislation, then the conclusion 1 Harper's Magazine, XIX, p. 527.

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would be inevitable that the Constitution established slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people to control it by law, and guaranteed to every citizen the right to go there and be protected in the enjoyment of his slave property; then every member of Congress would be in duty bound to supply adequate protection, if the rights of property should be invaded. Not only so, but another conclusion would follow,— if the Constitution should be held to establish slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people to control it,--Congress would be bound to provide adequate protection for slave property everywhere, in the States as well as in the Territories.

Douglas immediately went on to show that such was not the decision of the Court in the Dred Scott case. The Court had held that "the right of property in slaves is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." Yes, but where? Why in that provision which speaks of persons "held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof"; not under the Constitution, not under the laws of Congress, Douglas emphasized, but under the laws of the particular State where such service is due. And so, when the Court declared that "the government, in express terms, is pledged to protect it [slave property] in all future time," it added "if the slave escapes from his owner." "This is the only contingency,” Douglas maintained, "in which the Federal Government is authorized, required, or permitted to interfere with slavery in the States or Territories; and in that case only for the purpose of 'guarding and protecting the owner in his rights' to reclaim his slave property." Slave-owners, therefore, who moved with their property to a Terri