But such an answer was unworthy of a man who prided himself upon his fidelity to the obligation of the Constitution and the laws.  Feeling the full force of Lincoln’s inexorable logic,[795] but believing that it was bottomed on a false premise, Douglas endeavored to give his Freeport doctrine its proper constitutional setting.  During the summer, he elaborated an historical and constitutional defense of popular sovereignty.  The editors of Harper’s Magazine so far departed from the traditions of that popular periodical as to publish this long and tedious essay in the September number.  Douglas probably calculated that through this medium better than almost any other, he would reach those readers to whom Lincoln made his most effective appeal.[796]

The essay bore the title “The Dividing Line between Federal and Local Authority,” with the sub-caption, “Popular Sovereignty in the Territories.”  In his interpretation of history, the author proved himself rather a better advocate than historian.  He had traversed much the same ground in his speeches—­and with far more vivacity and force.  Douglas searched the colonial records, and found—­one is tempted to say, to find—­our fathers contending unremittingly for “the inalienable right, when formed into political communities, to exercise exclusive power of legislation in their local legislatures in respect to all things affecting their internal polity—­slavery not excepted."[797]

Douglas took issue with the fundamental postulate of Lincoln’s syllogism—­that a Territory is the mere creature of Congress and cannot be clothed with powers not possessed by the creator.  He denied that such an inference could be drawn from that clause in the Constitution which permits Congress to dispose of, and make all needful rules for, the territory or other property belonging to the United States.  Names were deceptive.  The word “territory” in this connection was not used in a political, but in a geographical sense.  The power of Congress to organize governments for the Territories must be inferred rather from the power to admit new States into the Union.  The Federal government possessed only expressly delegated powers; and the absence of any explicit authority to interfere in local territorial affairs must be held to inhibit any exercise of such power.  It was on these grounds that the Supreme Court had ruled that Congress was not authorized by the Constitution to prohibit slavery in the Territories.

It had been erroneously held by some, continued the essayist, that the Court decided in the Dred Scott case that a territorial legislature could not legislate in respect to slave property like other property.  He understood the Court to speak only of forbidden powers—­powers denied to Congress, to State legislatures and to territorial legislatures alike.  But if ever slavery should be decided to be one of these forbidden subjects of legislation, then the conclusion would be inevitable that the Constitution established