There are two main objects, as I understand it, of this Harper’s Magazine essay.  One was to show, if possible, that the men of our Revolutionary times were in favor of his popular sovereignty, and the other was to show that the Dred Scott decision had not entirely squelched out this popular sovereignty.  I do not propose, in regard to this argument drawn from the history of former times, to enter into a detailed examination of the historical statements he has made.  I have the impression that they are inaccurate in a great many instances,—­sometimes in positive statement, but very much more inaccurate by the suppression of statements that really belong to the history.  But I do not propose to affirm that this is so to any very great extent, or to enter into a very minute examination of his historical statements.  I avoid doing so upon this principle,—­that if it were important for me to pass out of this lot in the least period of time possible, and I came to that fence, and saw by a calculation of my known strength and agility that I could clear it at a bound, it would be folly for me to stop and consider whether I could or not crawl through a crack.  So I say of the whole history contained in his essay where he endeavored to link the men of the Revolution to popular sovereignty.  It only requires an effort to leap out of it, a single bound to be entirely successful.  If you read it over, you will find that he quotes here and there from documents of the Revolutionary times, tending to show that the people of the colonies were desirous of regulating their own concerns in their own way, that the British Government should not interfere; that at one time they struggled with the British Government to be permitted to exclude the African slave trade,—­if not directly, to be permitted to exclude it indirectly, by taxation sufficient to discourage and destroy it.  From these and many things of this sort, judge Douglas argues that they were in favor of the people of our own Territories excluding slavery if they wanted to, or planting it there if they wanted to, doing just as they pleased from the time they settled upon the Territory.  Now, however his history may apply and whatever of his argument there may be that is sound and accurate or unsound and inaccurate, if we can find out what these men did themselves do upon this very question of slavery in the Territories, does it not end the whole thing?  If, after all this labor and effort to show that the men of the Revolution were in favor of his popular sovereignty and his mode of dealing with slavery in the Territories, we can show that these very men took hold of that subject, and dealt with it, we can see for ourselves how they dealt with it.  It is not a matter of argument or inference, but we know what they thought about it.