The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 3

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In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided
that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories is
unconstitutional; that they have reached this proposition as a conclusion
from their former proposition, that the Constitution of the United States
expressly recognizes property in slaves, and from that other
Constitutional provision, that no person shall be deprived of property
without due process of law. Hence they reach the conclusion that as the
Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in
slaves, and prohibits any person from being deprived of property without
due process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who owned a
slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if he took him on
the other side, is depriving him of that property without due process of
law. That I understand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. I
understand also that Judge Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision;
and the difficulty is, how is it possible for any power to exclude
slavery from the Territory, unless in violation of that decision? That is
the difficulty.

In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a speech
substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge
Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the lawful power to
exclude slavery prior to the formation of a constitution. Judge Douglas
then answered at considerable length, and his answer will be found in the
Congressional Globe, under date of June 9th, 1856. The Judge said that
whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court. He
put that proposition, as will be seen by the Congressional Globe, in a
variety of forms, all running to the same thing in substance,--that it
was a question for the Supreme Court. I maintain that when he says, after
the Supreme Court have decided the question, that the people may yet
exclude slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is
not a question for the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I appeal to
you whether he did not say it was a question for the Supreme Court? Has
not the Supreme Court decided that question? when he now says the people
may exclude slavery, does he not make it a question for the people? Does
he not virtually shift his ground and say that it is not a question for
the Court, but for the people? This is a very simple proposition,--a very
plain and naked one. It seems to me that there is no difficulty in
deciding it. In a variety of ways he said that it was a question for the
Supreme Court. He did not stop then to tell us that, whatever the Supreme
Court decides, the people can by withholding necessary "police
regulations" keep slavery out. He did not make any such answer I submit
to you now whether the new state of the case has not induced the Judge to
sheer away from his original ground. Would not this be the impression of
every fair-minded man?

I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country
without police regulations is historically false. It is not true at all.
I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of
slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these "police
regulations," which the Judge now thinks necessary for the actual
establishment of it. Not only so, but is there not another fact: how came
this Dred Scott decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a negro
being taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming
his freedom because the Act of Congress prohibited his being so held
there. Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there without
police regulations? There is at least one matter of record as to his
having been held in slavery in the Territory, not only without police
regulations, but in the teeth of Congressional legislation supposed to be
valid at the time. This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery to
plant itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It
takes not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out. That is
the history of this country upon the subject.

I wish to ask one other question. It being understood that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves in the
Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of that property,
would not the United States courts, organized for the government of the
Territory, apply such remedy as might be necessary in that case? It is a
maxim held by the courts that there is no wrong without its remedy; and
the courts have a remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a
wrong.

Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of the
Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to do before
entering upon your duties? Swear to support the Constitution of the
United States. Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the
Constitution of the United States guarantees to your neighbor the right
to hold slaves in that Territory; that they are his property: how can you
clear your oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to
enable him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting
the Constitution of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give
such constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution
as may be practically needed? Can you, if you swear to support the
Constitution, and believe that the Constitution establishes a right,
clear your oath, without giving it support? Do you support the
Constitution if, knowing or believing there is a right established under
it which needs specific legislation, you withhold that legislation? Do
you not violate and disregard your oath? I can conceive of nothing
plainer in the world. There can be nothing in the words "support the
Constitution," if you may run counter to it by refusing support to any
right established under the Constitution. And what I say here will hold
with still more force against the Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly
legislation." How could you, having sworn to support the Constitution,
and believing it guaranteed the right to hold slaves in the Territories,
assist in legislation intended to defeat that right? That would be
violating your own view of the Constitution. Not only so, but if you were
to do so, how long would it take the courts to hold your votes
unconstitutional and void? Not a moment.

Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to give
legislative support to any right that is established under the United
States Constitution? I repeat the question: Is not Congress itself bound
to give legislative support to any right that is established in the
United States Constitution? A member of Congress swears to support the
Constitution of the United States: and if he sees a right established by
that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he
clear his oath without giving that protection? Let me ask you why many of
us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our acquiescence to a
Fugitive Slave law? Why do we hold ourselves under obligations to pass
such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? Because the Constitution
makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to reclaim
them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge
Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
enforce it.

The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one State
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of
any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor,
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce
it. Now, on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to
slavery in the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my
duty to do? Because there is a constitutional right which needs
legislation to enforce it. And although it is distasteful to me, I have
sworn to support the Constitution; and having so sworn, I cannot conceive
that I do support it if I withhold from that right any necessary
legislation to make it practical. And if that is true in regard to a
Fugitive Slave law, is the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any
better fixed in the Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the
Territories? For this decision is a just exposition of the Constitution,
as Judge Douglas thinks. Is the one right any better than the other? Is
there any man who, while a member of Congress, would give support to the
one any more than the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative
support to slave property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I
could not do it, holding the view that the Constitution establishes that
right. If I did it at all, it would be because I deny that this decision
properly construes the Constitution. But if I acknowledge, with Judge
Douglas, that this decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot
conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in
Congress to give such protection to that property as in its nature it
needed.

At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge my fifth
interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth
interrogatory is this:

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need and
demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that? I want to answer that question.]

If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need and
demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
or against such legislation?

I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made, he has
spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme Court had decided
that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude slavery. Precisely what the
Judge would say upon the subject--whether he would say definitely that he
does not understand they have so decided, or whether he would say he does
understand that the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know
that in his speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it, so far,
again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not yet been decided.
Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain that view, I think that he
is not mistaken in so far as it can be said that the court has not
decided anything save the mere question of jurisdiction. I know the legal
arguments that can be made,--that after a court has decided that it
cannot take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is
before it, and that is the end of it. A plausible argument can be made in
favor of that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one
of his speeches that the court went forward, like honest men as they
were, and decided all the points in the case. If any points are really
extra-judicially decided, because not necessarily before them, then this
one as to the power of the Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery is
one of them, as also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and
void. They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the court
held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties,
because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a suit in that
court. I want, if I have sufficient time, to show that the court did pass
its opinion; but that is the only thing actually done in the case. If
they did not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever
the matter was before them. What is that opinion? After having argued
that Congress had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United
States Territory, they then used language to this effect: That inasmuch
as Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed as a
matter of course that it could not authorize a Territorial government to
exercise it; for the Territorial Legislature can do no more than Congress
could do. Thus it expressed its opinion emphatically against the power of
a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us in just as
little doubt on that point as upon any other point they really decided.

Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while longer; my
time is nearly out. I find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas at
Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--published, I believe, in the
Missouri Republican, on the 9th of this month, in which Judge Douglas
says:

"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he concurred
in each and all of the principles set forth in it. He would not answer
these questions. At last I said frankly, I wish you to answer them,
because when I get them up here where the color of your principles are a
little darker than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. The
very notice that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble
in his knees so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up
seven days, and in the meantime held a consultation with his political
physicians; they had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the
Abolition party, they consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to
the conclusion that he would answer, so he came up to Freeport last
Friday."

Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical
contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really
come to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by
believing the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind I cannot
conceive how he would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of
his own friends who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried
from the platform, that there was not a word of truth in it.

[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]

There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas
exactly. He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?" but he
said then "he had to be carried off"; and he said it to convince the
country that he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had
to be carried away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they
carry you off?" Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell
the truth? I would like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it.
And then again "He laid up seven days." He put this in print for the
people of the country to read as a serious document. I think if he had
been in his sober senses he would not have risked that barefacedness in
the presence of thousands of his own friends who knew that I made
speeches within six of the seven days at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta,
Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough County, including all the necessary
travel to meet him again at Freeport at the end of the six days. Now I
say there is no charitable way to look at that statement, except to
conclude that he is actually crazy. There is another thing in that
statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states it, that he was going
to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have you infer that I would
not come to Egypt unless he forced me--that I could not be got here
unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That statement he makes,
too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the stipulation to
come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant to enter into
the stipulation. More than all this: Judge Douglas, when he made that
statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober senses, or
else he would have known that when he got me down here, that
promise--that windy promise--of his powers to annihilate me, would n't
amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away
trembling? Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour,
I want you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here;
and if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel
and put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, here is
something extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any
other living man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend
Casey, over there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out
and have his men take it as the truth? Did the Judge talk of trotting me
down to Egypt to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than
he does. I was raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this
people. But the Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he has some
horrid idea of what this people might be induced to do. But really I have
talked about this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great
thing; and yet the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal
with. The Judge has set about seriously trying to make the impression
that when we meet at different places I am literally in his
clutches--that I am a poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do
nothing at all. This is one of the ways he has taken to create that
impression. I don't know any other way to meet it except this. I don't
want to quarrel with him--to call him a liar; but when I come square up
to him I don't know what else to call him if I must tell the truth out. I
want to be at peace, and reserve all my fighting powers for necessary
occasions. My time now is very nearly out, and I give up the trifle that
is left to the Judge, to let him set my knees trembling again, if he can.
set my knees trembling again, if he can.