mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.  Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.  The crisis would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races.

[A voice:  “Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?”]

Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty! what is popular sovereignty?  Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the Territories?  I will state—­and I have an able man to watch me—­my understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it.  I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them.

When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains, and from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he ascribes to me at all.  I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a war between the free and slave states.  I had no thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political and social equality of the black and white races.  It never occurred to me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead uniformity all the local institutions of the various States.  But I must say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it.  It is just as fatal to the country, if I have any influence in producing it, whether I intend it or not.  But can it be true that placing this institution upon the original basis—­the basis upon which our fathers placed it—­can have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine logs in Maine, where they do grow?  The Judge says this is a new principle started in regard to this question.  Does the Judge claim