... "Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may erelong see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of 'care not whether slavery be voted
down or voted up' shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States." Following out this idea, Lincoln repeatedly put to Douglas a question to which he could never get a direct answer from his nimble antagonist: "If a decision is made, holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, will he support it, or not?"
Even so skillful a dialectician as Douglas found this compact structure of history and argument a serious matter. Its simple solidity was not so susceptible to treatment by the perverting process as had been the figurative and prophetic utterance about the "house divided against itself." Neither could he find a chink between the facts and the inferences. One aspect of the speech, however, could not be passed over. Lincoln said that he had not charged "Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James" with collusion and conspiracy; but he admitted that he had "arrayed the evidence tending to prove," and which he "thought did prove," these things.[[79]] It was impossible for the four distinguished gentlemen[[80]] who owned the rest
of these names to refuse to plead. Accordingly Douglas sneered vehemently at the idea that two presidents, the chief justice, and he himself had been concerned in that grave crime against the State which was imputed to them; and when, by his lofty indignation, he had brought his auditors into sympathy, he made the only possible reply: that the real meaning, the ultimate logical outcome, of what Lincoln had said was, that a decision of the Supreme Court was to be set aside by the political action of the people at the polls. The Supreme Court had interpreted the Constitution, and Lincoln was inciting the people to annul that interpretation by some political process not known to the law. For himself, he proclaimed with effective emphasis his allegiance to that great tribunal in the performance of its constitutional duties. Lincoln replied that he also bowed to the Dred Scott decision in the specific case; but he repudiated it as a binding rule in political action.[[81]] His point seemed more obscure than was usual with
him, and not satisfactory as an answer to Douglas. But as matter of fact no one was deceived by the amusing adage of the profession: that the courts do not make the law, but only declare what it is. Every one knew that the law was just what the judges chose from time to time to say that it was, and that if judicial declarations of the law were not reversed quite so often as legislative makings of the law were repealed, it was only because the identity of a bench is usually of longer duration than the identity of a legislative body. If the people, politically, willed the reversal of the Dred Scott decision, it was sure in time to be judicially reversed.[[82]]
Douglas boasted that the Democrats were a national party, whereas the "Black Republicans" were a sectional body whose creed could not be uttered south of Mason and Dixon's line. He was assiduous in fastening upon Lincoln the name of "Abolitionist," and "Black Republican," epithets so unpopular that those who held the faith often denied the title, and he only modified them by the offensive admission that Lincoln's doctrines were sometimes disingenuously weakened to suit certain audiences: "His principles in the north [of Illinois] are jet black; in the centre they are in color a decent mulatto; and in lower Egypt[[83]] they are almost white."
Concerning sectionalism, Lincoln countered fairly enough on his opponent by asking: Was it, then, the case that it was slavery which was national, and freedom which was sectional? Or, "Is it the true test of the soundness of a doctrine that in some places people won't let you proclaim it?" But the remainder of Douglas's assault was by no means to be disposed of by quick retort. When Lincoln was pushed to formulate accurately his views concerning the proper status of the negro in the community, he had need of all his extraordinary care in statement. Herein lay problems that were vexing many honest citizens and clever men besides himself, and were breeding much disagreement among persons who all were anti-slavery in a general way, but could by no means reach a comfortable unison concerning troublesome particulars. The "all men free and equal" of the Constitution, and the talk about human brotherhood, gave the Democrats wide scope for harassing anti-slavery men with vexatious taunts and embarrassing cross-interrogatories on practical points. "I do not question," said Douglas, "Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother. But for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever." He said that "the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro,... or any other inferior and degraded race, when they spoke of the equality of men," but meant only "white men, of European birth and descent."
This topic opens the whole subject of Lincoln's political affiliations and of his opinions concerning slavery and the negro, opinions which seem to have undergone no substantial change during the interval betwixt this campaign and his election to the presidency. Some selections from what he said may sufficiently explain his position.
At Freeport, August 27, replying to a series of questions from Douglas, he declared that he had supposed himself, "since the organization of the Republican party at Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the party, then and since." He said: "I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law." He believed that under the Constitution the Southerners were entitled to such a law; but thought that the existing law "should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its efficiency." He would not "introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of slavery."
He should be "exceedingly sorry" ever to have to pass upon the question of admitting more slave States into the Union, and exceedingly glad to know that another never would be admitted. But "if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt