Now, in all this the Judge has me, and he has me on the record. I suppose he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining one set of opinions for one place, and another set for another place,—that I was afraid to say at one place what I uttered at another. What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois; and I believe I am saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons, and render them enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience.
Mr. Douglas had presented his interrogatories on the 21st of August, and Mr. Lincoln did not answer them until the 27th. They had no meetings between those days; and Mr. Lincoln had ample time to ponder his replies, and consult his friends. But he did more: he improved the opportunity to prepare a series of insidious questions, which he felt sure Mr. Douglas could not possibly answer without utterly ruining his political prospects. Mr. Lincoln struggled for a great prize, unsuspected by the common mind, but the thought of which was ever present to his own. Mr. Douglas was a standing candidate for the Presidency; but as yet Mr. Lincoln was a very quiet one, nursing hopes which his modesty prevented him from obtruding upon others. He was wise enough to keep the fact of their existence to himself, and in the mean time to dig pitfalls and lay obstructions in the way of his most formidable competitors. His present purpose was not only to defeat Mr. Douglas for the Senate, but to "kill him,"—to get him out of the way finally and forever. If he could make him evade the Dred-Scott Decision, and deny the right of a Southern man to take his negroes into a Territory, and keep them there while it was a Territory, he would thereby sever him from the body of the Democratic party, and leave him the leader of merely a little half-hearted antislavery faction. Under such circumstances, Mr. Douglas could never be the candidate of the party at large; but he might serve a very useful purpose by running on a separate ticket, and dividing the great majority of conservative votes, which would inevitably elect a single nominee.
Mr. Lincoln went to Chicago, and there intimated to some of his friends what he proposed to do. They attempted to dissuade him, because, as they insisted, if Mr. Douglas should answer that the Dred-Scott Decision might be evaded by the people of a Territory, and slavery prohibited in the face of it, the answer would draw to him the sympathies of the antislavery voters, and probably, of itself, defeat Mr. Lincoln. But, so long as Mr. Douglas held to the decision in good faith, he had no hope of more aid from that quarter than he had already received. It was therefore the part of wisdom to let him alone as to that point. Mr. Lincoln, on the contrary, looked forward to 1860, and was determined that the South should understand the antagonism between Mr. Douglas's latest conception of "squatter sovereignty," on the one hand, and the Dred-Scott Decision, the Nebraska Bill, and all previous platforms of the party, on the other. Mr. Douglas taught strange doctrines and false ones; and Mr. Lincoln thought the faithful, far and near, should know it. If Mr. Douglas was a schismatic, there ought to be a schism, of which the Republicans would reap the benefit; and therefore he insisted upon his questions. "That is no business of yours," said his friends. "Attend exclusively to your senatorial race, and let the slaveholder and Douglas fight out that question among themselves and for themselves. If you put the question to him, he will answer that the Dred-Scott Decision is simply an abstract rule, having no practical application."—"If he answers that way, he's a dead cock in the pit," responded Mr. Lincoln. "But that," said they, "is none of your business: you are concerned only about the senator-ship."—"No," continued Mr. Lincoln, "not alone exactly: I am killing larger game. The great battle of 1860 is worth a thousand of this senatorial race."
He did accordingly propound the interrogatories as follows:—
1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English Bill,—some ninety-three thousand,—will you vote to admit them?
2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits?
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?
4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?
The first and fourth questions Mr. Douglas answered substantially in the affirmative. To the third he replied, that no judge would ever be guilty of the "moral treason" of making such a decision. But to the second—the main question, to which all the others were riders and make-weights—he answered as he was expected to answer. "It matters not," said he, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution: the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature; and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst."
The reply was more than enough for Mr. Lincoln's purpose. It cut Mr. Douglas off from his party, and put him in a state of perfect antagonism to it. He firmly denied the power of Congress to restrict slavery; and he admitted, that, under the Dred-Scott Decision, all Territories were open to its entrance. But he held, that, the moment the slaveholder passed the boundary of a Territory, he was at the mercy of the squatters, a dozen or two of whom might get together in a legislature, and rob him of the property which the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and Mr. Douglas himself said he had an indefeasible right to take there. Mr. Lincoln knew that the Southern people would feel infinitely safer in the hands of Congress than in the hands of the squatters. If they regarded the Republican mode of excluding slavery as a barefaced usurpation, they would consider Mr. Douglas's system of confiscation by "unfriendly legislation" mere plain stealing. The Republicans said to them, "We will regulate the whole subject by general laws, which you participate with us in passing;" but Mr. Douglas offered them, as sovereign judges and legislators, the territorial settlers themselves,—squatters they might be,—whom the aid societies rushed into the new Territories for the very purpose of keeping slavery away. The new doctrine was admirably calculated to alarm and incense the South; and, following so closely Mr. Douglas's conduct in the Lecompton affair, it was very natural that he should now be universally regarded by his late followers as a dangerous heretic and a faithless turncoat. The result justified Mr. Lincoln's anticipations. Mr. Douglas did not fully develop his new theory, nor personally promulgate it as the fixed tenet of his faction, until the next year, when he embodied it in the famous article contributed by him to "Harper's Magazine." But it did its work effectually; and, when parties began to marshal for the great struggle of 1860, Mr. Douglas was found to be, not precisely what he had promised,—a Republican, "fighting their battles,"—but an independent candidate, upon an independent platform, dividing the opposition.