Douglas in his reply took up Lincoln's rather evasive answer to his second interrogatory submitted at Ottawa. "Lincoln," he said, "would be exceedingly sorry to be put in a position where he would have to vote on the question of the admission of slave States. Why is he a candidate for the Senate if he would be sorry to be put in that position? * * * * If Congress keeps out slavery by law while it is a Territory and then the people should have a fair chance and should adopt slavery, he supposes he would have to admit the State. Suppose Congress should not keep slavery out during their territorial existence, then how would he vote when the people applied for admission with a slave Constitution? That he does not answer; and that is the condition of every Territory we have now got. His answer only applies to a given case which he knows does not exist in any Territory. But Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held responsible for the black Republican doctrine of no more slave States. Why are men running for Congress in the northern Distracts and taking that Abolition platform for their guide when Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held to it down here in Egypt? His party in the northern part of the State hold to that Abolition platform, and if they do not in the south, they present the extra-ordinary spectacle of 'a house divided against itself' and hence 'cannot stand.'"In answer to Lincoln's last question, he said: "It is a fundamental article of the Democratic creed that there should be non-interference or non-intervention of Congress with slavery in the States or Territories. The Democratic party have always stood by that great principle and I stand on that platform now. * * * * Lincoln himself will not answer this question. * * * It is true * * * (he admits)that under the decision of the Supreme Court, it is the duty of a man to vote for a slave code in the Territories. If he believed in that decision he would be a perjured man if he did not give the vote. I want to know whether he is not bound to a decision which is contrary to his opinions just as much as to one in accordance with his opinions? * * * Is every man in this land allowed to resist decisions he does not like and only support those which meet his approval? * * * * It is the fundamental principle of the judiciary that its decisions are final. * * * * My doctrine is that, even taking Mr. Lincoln's view that the decision recognizes the right of a man to carry his slaves into the Territories, yet after he gets them there he needs affirmative law to make that right of any value.
The same doctrine applies to all other kinds of property.
"Suppose one of your merchants should move to Kansas and open a liquor store; he has a right to take groceries or liquor there;but the circumstances under which they shall be sold and all the remedies must be prescribed by local legislation; and if that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effectually as if there was a constitutional provision against the sale of liquor. Hence, I assert, that under the Dred Scott decision you cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there is an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. If the people want slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it you cannot force it upon them."Neither Lincoln nor Douglas could as yet fairly and fearlessly grapple with the great problem. Lincoln's virtual rejection and defiance of the decision of the Supreme Court suggests not reform but revolution. These dark hints that the decisions of the highest tribunal should not be accepted or obeyed, that they were binding only on those who believed in them, portended nothing less than war. Slavery being an established institution, recognized by the Constitution and regulated by law, had the right to exist. Lincoln and his party abhorred it and resented the injustice of the law.
Obeying the dominant instinct of the race, the scrupulously observed the form of the law while waging war upon it. On the other hand it is impossible to find either legal or philosophical foundation for Douglas' arguments. Slavery had been adjudged lawful in all the Territories. The proposition gravely argued by him, that the people could lawfully exclude a thing from a place where it had a lawful right to be, was monstrous. He sternly rebuked Lincoln for his irreverence in refusing to cordially accept the Dred Scott decision and in the next breath, with shocking inconsistency, dissolved its entire force in the menstruum of unfriendly legislation. The decision was utterly repugnant to the people of the State. The both viewed it as a political rather than a philosophic problem.
