[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 75.

To this Lincoln replied that Republicans did not aim at abolition in the slave-States, but only the exclusion of slavery from free Territories; they did not oppose the Dred Scott decision in so far as it concerned the freedom of Dred Scott, but they refused to accept its dicta as rules of political action.  He repelled the accusation that the Republicans desired negro equality or amalgamation, saying:  “There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.  I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence—­the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.  I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—­certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment; but in the right to eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.”

In return he pressed upon Douglas his charge of a political conspiracy to nationalize slavery, alleging that his “don’t care” policy was but the convenient stalking-horse under cover of which a new Dred Scott decision would make slavery lawful everywhere.

  [Sidenote] Ibid., p. 82.

It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it.  When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done.  This being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be made national, let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end.  In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on public sentiment.  In this and like communities public sentiment is everything.  With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.  Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.  He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

The Democratic policy in regard to that institution will not tolerate the merest breath, the slightest hint, of the least degree of wrong about it.  Try it by some of Judge Douglas’s arguments.  He says he “don’t care whether it is voted up or voted down” in the Territories.  I do not care myself, in dealing with that expression, whether it is intended to