That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill.”  In May, 1854, this bill was passed.  Then the presidential election came.  “Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement was secured.  That was the second point gained.”  Meantime the celebrated case of the negro, Dred Scott, was pending in the Supreme Court, and the “President in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be.  Then in a few days came the decision,” which was at once emphatically indorsed by Douglas, “the reputed author of the Nebraska bill,” and by the new President.

“At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.

...  “The several points of the Dred Scott decision in connection with Senator Douglas’s ‘care not’ policy constitute the piece of machinery in its present state of advancement.  This was the third point gained.

...  “We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert.  But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,—­Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,—­and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few,—­not omitting even scaffolding; or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in,—­in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

“It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska bill the people of a State as well as a Territory were to be left ‘perfectly free,’ ‘subject only to the Constitution.’  Why mention a State?...  Why is mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law?

...  “Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may erelong see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits.  And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of ’care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up’ shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.  Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.”  Following out this idea, Lincoln repeatedly put to Douglas a question to which he could never get a direct answer from his nimble antagonist:  “If a decision is made, holding that the people of the States cannot exclude slavery, will he support it, or not?”