"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 prior to the formation of a State Constitution?"
In proposing this question Lincoln rejected the advice and disregarded the entreaties of his wisest friends and most devoted adherents, for they predicted that it would give Douglas an opportunity to square himself with the people of Illinois and to secure his re-election to the United States Senate. Lincoln replied,—
"I am killing larger game; if Douglas answers he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."
This prediction, which was afterwards fulfilled, shows Lincoln's remarkable political foresight perhaps better than any single incident in his career. A private letter, written more than a month before, shows that Lincoln had long and carefully studied the probable consequences of the answer that Douglas must make to such an interrogatory, and its fatal effect upon his political fortunes; for, even then, he foresaw that Douglas was to be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and that his reply would deprive him of the support of more than half of the members of that party. With extraordinary sagacity, he pointed out that Douglas would eagerly seize upon such an opportunity as this interrogatory afforded to place himself right before his constituents in Illinois, and thus would recover his popularity and insure his re-election to the Senate. And he was confident that Douglas was so shortsighted as to do this and then trust to his cunning to set himself right afterwards with the people of the slave States, which Lincoln believed would be impossible. But even he did not realize the tremendous and far-reaching results of his inquiry, for the answer which Douglas gave split the Democratic party into irreconcilable factions, and enabled the Republican minority to select the President of the United States at the most critical period of the nation's history, and thus to save the Union.
"You will have hard work to get him [Douglas] directly to the point whether a territorial Legislature has or has not the power to exclude slavery," said Lincoln to a friend; "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 the ground that slavery cannot exist in the Territories 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." And that was exactly what Douglas did do. He repeated the sophism he had advanced in his speech at Springfield on the Dred Scott decision the previous year, and said,—
"It matters not 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. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension."
The supporters of Douglas shouted with satisfaction at the clever way in which he had escaped the trap Lincoln had set for him. His re-election to the Senate was practically secured, and Lincoln had been defeated at his own game. Lincoln's friends were correspondingly depressed, and in their despondency admitted that their favorite had no longer any prospect of election; that he had thrown his own chances away.
Mr. Douglas was re-elected; but when Congress met in December, and he was removed by the Democratic caucus from the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Territories, which he had held for eleven years, because he had betrayed the slave-holders in his answer to Lincoln, at Freeport, the Republicans of Illinois began to realize the political sagacity of their leader. Then when, for the same reason, the Democratic National Convention at Charleston was broken up by the Southern delegates rather than accept Douglas as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Lincoln's reputation as a political prophet was established.
In 1861 Lincoln asked Joseph Medill, of the Chicago Tribune, if he recalled his opposition to putting that fatal question to Douglas.
"Yes," replied Medill, "I recollect it very well. It lost Douglas the Presidency, but it lost you the Senatorship."