Personalities aside, the burden of his speech was the reassertion of his principle of popular sovereignty.  He showed how far he had traveled since the Fourth of January in no way more strikingly, than when he called in question the substantive character of the Missouri Compromise.  In his discussion of the legislative history of the Missouri acts, he easily convicted both Chase and Seward of misapprehensions; but he refused to recognize the truth of Chase’s words, that “the facts of the transaction taken together and as understood by the country for more than thirty years, constitute a compact binding in moral force,” though expressed only in the terms of ordinary statutes.  So far had Douglas gone in his advocacy of his measure that he had lost the measure of popular sentiment.  He was so confident of himself and his cause, so well-assured that he had sacrificed nothing but an empty form, in repealing the slavery restriction, that he forgot the popular mind does not so readily cast aside its prejudices and grasp substance in preference to form.  The combative instinct in him was strong.  He had entered upon a quarrel; he would acquit himself well.  Besides, he had supreme confidence that popular intelligence would slowly approve his course.

Perhaps Douglas’s greatest achievement on this occasion was in coining a phrase which was to become a veritable slogan in succeeding years.  That which had hitherto been dubbed “squatter sovereignty,” Douglas now dignified with the name “popular sovereignty,” and provided with a pedigree.  “This was the principle upon which the colonies separated from the crown of Great Britain, the principle upon which the battles of the Revolution were fought, and the principle upon which our republican system was founded....  The Revolution grew out of the assertion of the right on the part of the imperial government to interfere with the internal affairs and domestic concerns of the colonies....  I will not weary the Senate in multiplying evidence upon this point.  It is apparent that the Declaration of Independence had its origin in the violation of the great fundamental principle which secured to the people of the colonies the right to regulate their own domestic affairs in their own way; and that the Revolution resulted in the triumph of that principle, and the recognition of the right asserted by it."[492]

In conclusion, Douglas said with perfect truthfulness:  “I have not brought this question forward as a Northern man or as a Southern man.  I am unwilling to recognize such divisions and distinctions.  I have brought it forward as an American Senator, representing a State which is true to this principle, and which has approved of my action in respect to the Nebraska bill.  I have brought it forward not as an act of justice to the South more than to the North.  I have presented it especially as an act of justice to the people of those Territories, and of the States to be formed therefrom, now and in all time to come."[493]