By the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories to the ingress of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, but greatly alarmed the North.  He had sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by appending to his Kansas-Nebraska Bill the declaration that its intent was “not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.”  This he called “the great principle of popular sovereignty.”  When asked whether, under this act, the people of a Territory, before its admission as a State, would have the right to exclude slavery, he answered, “That is a question for the courts to decide.”  Then came the famous “Dred Scott decision,” in which the Supreme Court held substantially that the right to hold slaves as property existed in the Territories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and that this right could not be denied by any act of a territorial government.  This, of course, denied the right of the people of any Territory to exclude slavery while they were in a territorial condition, and it alarmed the Northern people still more.  Douglas recognized the binding force of the decision of the Supreme Court, at the same time maintaining, most illogically, that his great principle of popular sovereignty remained in force nevertheless.  Meanwhile, the proslavery people of western Missouri, the so-called “border ruffians,” had invaded Kansas, set up a constitutional convention, made a constitution of an extreme pro-slavery type, the “Lecompton Constitution,” refused to submit it fairly to a vote of the people of Kansas, and then referred it to Congress for acceptance,—­seeking thus to accomplish the admission of Kansas as a slave State.  Had Douglas supported such a scheme, he would have lost all foothold in the North.  In the name of popular sovereignty he loudly declared his opposition to the acceptance of any constitution not sanctioned by a formal popular vote.  He “did not care,” he said, “whether slavery be voted up or down,” but there must be a fair vote of the people.  Thus he drew upon himself the hostility of the Buchanan administration, which was controlled by the proslavery interest, but he saved his Northern following.  More than this, not only did his Democratic admirers now call him “the true champion of freedom,” but even some Republicans of large influence, prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and hoping to detach him permanently from the proslavery interest and to force a lasting breach in the Democratic party, seriously advised the Republicans of Illinois to give up their opposition to Douglas, and to help re-elect him to the Senate.  Lincoln was not of that opinion.  He believed that great popular movements can succeed only when guided by their faithful friends, and that the antislavery