this Union, and to persevere in that war until it shall be exterminated.  He then notifies the slave-holding States to stand together as a unit and make an aggressive war upon the free States of this Union with a view of establishing slavery in them all; of forcing it upon Illinois, of forcing it upon New York, upon New England, and upon every other free State, and that they shall keep up the warfare until it has been formally established in them all.  In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States—­a war of extermination—­to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave."[686]

But such uniformity in local institutions would be possible only by blotting out State Sovereignty, by merging all the States in one consolidated empire, and by vesting Congress with plenary power to make all the police regulations, domestic and local laws, uniform throughout the Republic.  The framers of our government knew well enough that differences in soil, in products, and in interests, required different local and domestic regulations in each locality; and they organized the Federal government on this fundamental assumption.[687]

With Lincoln’s other proposition Douglas also took issue.  He refused to enter upon any crusade against the Supreme Court.  “I do not choose, therefore, to go into any argument with Mr. Lincoln in reviewing the various decisions which the Supreme Court has made, either upon the Dred Scott case, or any other.  I have no idea of appealing from the decision of the Supreme Court upon a constitutional question to the decision of a tumultuous town meeting."[688]

Neither could Douglas agree with his opponent in objecting to the decision of the Supreme Court because it deprived the negro of the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizenship, which pertained only to the white race.  Our government was founded on a white basis.  “It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men.”  To be sure, a negro, an Indian, or any other man of inferior race should be permitted to enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities consistent with the safety of society; but each State should decide for itself the nature and extent of these rights.

On the next evening, Republican Chicago greeted its protagonist with much the same demonstrations, as he took his place on the balcony from which Douglas had spoken.  Lincoln found the flaw in Douglas’s armor at the outset.  “Popular sovereignty!  Everlasting popular sovereignty!  What is popular sovereignty”?  How could there be such a thing in the original sense, now that the Supreme Court had decided that the people in their territorial status might not prohibit slavery?  And as for the right of the people to frame a constitution, who