He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the Territory has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their territorial existence. This being so, the period of time from the first settlement of the Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State Constitution is not the thing that the Judge is fighting for; but, on the contrary, he is fighting for the thing that annihilates and crushes out that same popular sovereignty. ** * He is contending for the right of the people, when they come to make a State Constitution, to make it for themselves and precisely as best suits themselves. That is quixotic. Nobody is opposing or has opposed the right of the people when they form a Constitution to form it for themselves. This being so, what is he going to spend his life for? Is he going to spend it in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes? Does he expect to stand up in majestic dignity and go through this apothesis and become a god in maintaining a principle that neither man nor mouse in all God's creation opposes? * * * What is there in the opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution that entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it, * * * the very quintessence of that opposition? * * *He in the Senate and his class of men there formed the number of about twenty. It took one hundred and twenty to defeat the measure.
There were six Americans and ninety-four Republicans. Why is it that twenty should be entitled to all the credit for doing that work and the hundred to none? Does he place his superior claim to credit on the ground that he has performed a good act that was never expected of him? Perhaps he places himself somewhat on the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep found the one that was lost, there was more rejoicing over the one sheep that was lost and had been found than over the ninety-and-nine in the fold."In opposing the Dred Scott decision, he said, he was sustained by the authority of Mr. Jefferson, who denounced the doctrine that the Judges were the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions as dangerous and tending to oligarchic despotism and insisted that, while they were as honest as other men, they were not more so, having the common passion for party, for power and the privilege of their crops, and ought not to be trusted with the dangerous power of deciding the great questions of State. The Supreme Court once decided that the national back was constitutional. The Democratic party revolted against the decision. Jackson himself asserted that he would not hold a national back to be constitutional, even though the Court had decided it to be so. The declaration that Congress had not power to establish a bank was contained in every Democratic platform since that time, in defiance of the solemn ruling of the Court. In fact, they had reduced the decision to an absolute nullity. And still Douglas boasted in the very speeches in which he denounced others for opposing the Dred Scott decision that he stood on the Cincinnati platform which repudiated and condemned the old bank decision. He was for Supreme Court decisions when he liked them and against them when he did not like them.
Would he not graciously allow the Republicans to do with the Dred Scott decision what they did with the bank decision?
Springfield was Lincoln's home. He knew his audience and met it with confidence. He now felt that he was Douglas' equal in the field in which he had hitherto eclipsed all rivals.
But it was evident that the current was running with Douglas.
The great reception at Chicago had been a glorious opening. His journeys through the State were triumphal processions. Special trains, splendidly decorated, were at his service. Military escorts received him with the firing of cannon and the loud music of bands. He commanded and marshaled with the skill of a great artist all the pomp and circumstance of victory. He owned much property in Chicago, which with the growth of the city had greatly increased in value. He mortgaged this for campaign funds, borrowing eighty thousand dollars, a debt that harassed him to the grave.
Wealthy friends contributed freely and the campaign was run regardless of expense.
Yet with all these advantages the contest was evidently a hard one.
Two years before, the combined Republicans and Whigs of the State outnumbered the Democrats by nearly thirty thousand. The Whig party was breaking up. It was a serious question of practical politics whether they would drift to the Democrats or the Republicans.
Illinois comprised two utterly distinct communities. The northern part of the State was settled by people from New England and the Northwest. The Southern part was settled from Kentucky and the other Southern States. The growth of Chicago and the rapid development of the northern counties had made the State extremely doubtful even for Douglas. To any other man his task was hopeless. In the north the anti-slavery sentiment was strong, even to fanaticism, and many of his own supporters prayed fervently for the arrival of the day when slavery would be blotted from existence. In the south, though slavery was prohibited by law, it was cherished in the hearts of the people who remembered with warm affection the old homesteads in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Lincoln had, with more frankness than discretion announced his views on the great question. It was supremely important to compel Douglas to explicitly declare himself, to hold him down to the dangerous issue and force him to speak plainly. Each had the disadvantage of pleasing one section of the State at the cost of offending the other section. But Douglas was further embarrassed by the necessity of avoiding offense to the slave holding States of the South. He was a candidate not only for the Senate, but also for the Presidency.
