I understand I have ten minutes yet.  I will employ it in saying something about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott decision, that the people of the Territories can still somehow exclude slavery.  The first thing I ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas constantly said, before the decision, that whether they could or not, was a question for the Supreme Court.  But after the court had made the decision he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme Court, but for the people.  And how is it he tells us they can exclude it?  He says it needs “police regulations,” and that admits of “unfriendly legislation.”  Although it is a right established by the Constitution of the United States to take a slave into a Territory of the United States and hold him as property, yet unless the Territorial Legislature will give friendly legislation, and more especially if they adopt unfriendly legislation, they can practically exclude him.  Now, without meeting this proposition as a matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional obligation.  Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the face before me, and let us suppose that he is a member of the Territorial Legislature.  The first thing he will do will be to swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States.  His neighbor by his side in the Territory has slaves and needs Territorial legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional right.  Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitution of the United States which he has sworn to support?  Can he withhold it without violating his oath?  And, more especially, can he pass unfriendly legislation to violate his oath?  Why, this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution of the United States!  There has never been as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man on earth.  I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States.  I believe the decision was improperly made and I go for reversing it.  Judge Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision.  But he is for legislating it out of all force while the law itself stands.  I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man.

I suppose most of us (I know it of myself) believe that the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law,—­that is a right fixed in the Constitution.  But it cannot be made available to them without Congressional legislation.  In the Judge’s language, it is a “barren right,” which needs legislation before it can become efficient and valuable to the persons to whom it is guaranteed.  And as the right is constitutional, I agree that the legislation shall be granted to it, and that not that we like the institution of slavery.  We profess to have no taste for running and catching