Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?

Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?

LINCOLN'S FIFTH QUESTION

From Lincoln's Reply, Third Joint Debate, at Jonesboro, September 15, 1858

My fifth interrogatory is this:

If the slave-holding citizens of a United States Territory should need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for or against such legislation?

slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill."

Douglas had enunciated this principle previously, in the speech at Bloomington, July 16, 1858, in the presence of Lincoln. His words were: "If the people of a Territory want slavery, they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the necessary police regulations, patrol laws, and slave code; if they do not want it, they will withhold that legislation, and by withholding it slavery is as dead as if it was prohibited by a constitutional prohibition, especially if, in addition their legislation is unfriendly, as it would be if they were opposed to it."

This doctrine of "unfriendly legislation," which virtually nullifies the Dred Scott decision, is usually called the Freeport Doctrine, and Lincoln is credited with driving Douglas into the statement which ruined his political standing in the South. What Lincoln really did was to force Douglas to restate the doctrine in a debate which was sure to be read throughout the country.

THE GREAT ISSUE

From Lincoln's Reply, the Last Joint Debate, at Alton, October 15, 1858

That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

A SUMMARY OF LINCOLN'S POSITION

REGARDING SLAVERY

Captain Brown, who, like Lincoln, was a native of Kentucky, had been a Whig until 1857, when he declared himself a "Lincoln Republican." In 1858, through Lincoln's influence, he was nominated on the Republican ticket for the Illinois legislature. Late in the campaign he asked Lincoln for a lucid statement of the latter's views on negro equality. In reply Lincoln sent him a little notebook filled with clippings from several of his speeches and accompanied by the following letter. A facsimile of the notebook was published in 1901 under the title Abraham Lincoln, His Book. Springfield, Oct. 18, 1858

Hon. J. U. Brown,
My dear Sir:-

I do not perceive how I can express myself more plainly than I have in the foregoing extracts. In four of them I have expressly disclaimed all intention to bring about social and political equality between the white and black races and in all the rest I have done the same thing by clear implication.

I have made it equally plain that I think the negro is included in the word "men" used in the Declaration of Independence.

I believe the declaration that "all men are created equal" is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that negro slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that by our frame of government, States which have slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others - individuals, free States and national Government are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it.