due time, and we will be grappling with them hand to hand, if they are not now headed off.  They are not now the chief danger to the purpose of the Republican organization; but the most imminent danger that now threatens that purpose is that insidious Douglas popular sovereignty.  This is the miner and sapper.  While it does not propose to revive the African slave trade, nor to pass a slave code, nor to make a second Dred Scott decision, it is preparing us for the onslaught and charge of these ultimate enemies when they shall be ready to come on, and the word of command for them to advance shall be given.  I say this “Douglas popular sovereignty”; for there is a broad distinction, as I now understand it, between that article and a genuine popular sovereignty.

I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty.  I think a definition of “genuine popular sovereignty,” in the abstract, would be about this:  That each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him.  Applied to government, this principle would be, that a general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern them.  I understand that this government of the United States, under which we live, is based upon this principle; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have any war to make upon that principle.

Now, what is judge Douglas’s popular sovereignty?  It is, as a principle, no other than that if one man chooses to make a slave of another man neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.  Applied in government, as he seeks to apply it, it is this:  If, in a new Territory into which a few people are beginning to enter for the purpose of making their homes, they choose to either exclude slavery from their limits or to establish it there, however one or the other may affect the persons to be enslaved, or the infinitely greater number of persons who are afterwards to inhabit that Territory, or the other members of the families of communities, of which they are but an incipient member, or the general head of the family of States as parent of all, however their action may affect one or the other of these, there is no power or right to interfere.  That is Douglas’s popular sovereignty applied.

He has a good deal of trouble with popular sovereignty.  His explanations explanatory of explanations explained are interminable.  The most lengthy, and, as I suppose, the most maturely considered of this long series of explanations is his great essay in Harper’s Magazine.  I will not attempt to enter on any very thorough investigation of his argument as there made and presented.  I will nevertheless occupy a good portion of your time here in drawing your attention to certain points in it.  Such of you as may have read this document will have perceived that the judge